Hi,
One of the recurrent questions about open/libre font creation is where to get some funding. For people not aware of it:
1. The Mozilla Fundation has indicated in the past it is ready to sponsor initiatives to improve open/libre fonts (and indeed the OFLB has benefited from some funds).
2. The Internet Society has a grants program that includes this year « Enabling Access for Under-served Communities (including people that use non-Latin language scripts) », up to 10 000 $ per project
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/mission/initiative/access.shtml http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/projects/
Both of them are primarily interested in fonts as an access enabler. So as I read it they are unlikely to sponsor the creation of new fonts from scratch (because they are unlikely to get the level of distribution that would have an effect on access). However, a proposal to extend of fix non-latin support in one of the existing and widely-used open/libre fonts, is likely to meet the funding requirements.
Regards,
On 14 March 2010 16:19, Nicolas Mailhot nicolas.mailhot@laposte.net wrote:
Hi,
One of the recurrent questions about open/libre font creation is where to get some funding. For people not aware of it:
- The Mozilla Fundation has indicated in the past it is ready to
sponsor initiatives to improve open/libre fonts (and indeed the OFLB has benefited from some funds).
- The Internet Society has a grants program that includes this year «
Enabling Access for Under-served Communities (including people that use non-Latin language scripts) », up to 10 000 $ per project
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/mission/initiative/access.shtml http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/projects/
Both of them are primarily interested in fonts as an access enabler. So as I read it they are unlikely to sponsor the creation of new fonts from scratch (because they are unlikely to get the level of distribution that would have an effect on access). However, a proposal to extend of fix non-latin support in one of the existing and widely-used open/libre fonts, is likely to meet the funding requirements.
This really a good news, but there is really need funding for creating new font as Unicode is adding new script and we need some open source fonts for it, i was thinking to meet here (India/Pune) some Art. Institute for glyphs designing, or may be for creating new style for some existing scripts. having some budget for it will really help in motivating/improving contribution.
Thanks, Pravin S
Le Mer 17 mars 2010 05:41, प्रविण सातपुते a écrit :
This really a good news, but there is really need funding for creating new font as Unicode is adding new script and we need some open source fonts for it, i was thinking to meet here (India/Pune) some Art. Institute for glyphs designing, or may be for creating new style for some existing scripts. having some budget for it will really help in motivating/improving contribution.
You can try to propose another project, of course, but you'll have to convince isoc it's a good idea (and they seem to have a may deadline for 2010 proposals).
I think you also need to identify precisely what is missing in fontconfig/pango/fontforge to enable multi-script fonts. Creating one font per script only scales if you consider people only need access to their local language (script list × default css styles = huge number). When you add the requirement that the same system need to be usable from any point of the world without heavy reconfiguration, this does not work at all. isoc funding would certainly cover extending font libs this way. I think most of the needed bits are already in OpenType, we just need to get them implemented.
-
Nicolas Mailhot -
pravin.d.s＠gmail.com