From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Wed Dec 03 2003 - 13:08:42 EST
Arcane Jill writes:
> This should really be in a FAQ somewhere on the Unicode web site,
> methinks. One thing - the fonts print spectacularly well, but don't seem
> to display well on the screen (at least, not in Microsoft Word). Any
> idea why that might be?
Simple: for now the fonts are in beta, and do not include the hinting
instructions. This may be in development, but faces some legal issues
with Apple patents. So until there's a patent-free hinting mechanism,
for use in fonts, or Apple agrees with a royaltee-free license on
hinting mechanisms, hinted fonts cannot be freely distributed.
The alternative would be to build separate hints for Apple and Microsoft
OSes for users of these systems thart include a license to use the
Opentype engine. Then it remains the problem of Linux and Unix:
Unix vendors can pay to get the license in their distribs, asd well
as providers of Linux distribs, but they cannot be included in the
open-sourced version of Linux renderers (this could require a paid
licensed module for X font servers that wish to use hinting
instructions in fonts).
I don't know if the authors of FreeType and FreeFont want to pay a
license to Apple, so they may have disabled this support in their
binary distribution, warning users about the legal constraints if
they decide to compile FreeType with hinting support or
FreeFonts with hinting data...
__________________________________________________________________
<< ella for Spam Control >> has removed Spam messages and set aside
Newsletters for me
You can use it too - and it's FREE! http://www.ellaforspam.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Dec 03 2003 - 17:35:28 EST