Posted by: Administrator
on December 23, 2006 08:44 AM
Thanks, Bruce, for the nice writeup. And yes, as Karsten points out, my name is spelled "Raph." Just don't get me started on how to pronounce <a href="http://ghilbert.org/" title="ghilbert.org">ghilbert</a ghilbert.org>.
There's quite a bit more discussion over at <a href="http://typophile.com/node/30175" title="typophile.com">typophile</a typophile.com>, from font designers both who are and are not suspicious of the free software "ethic."
A couple of factual points. Museum Caps is not, in fact, released, as it is based on Centaur, and so I will only release it in cooperation with Monotype. We've had some talks about that, but no progress in the past few months. Also, my PhD thesis relates to curves in general, with type design a strong motivating application. I've done some work on font rendering too, but this is entirely different.
I'd like to clarify my argument about international character sets. With few exceptions, independent type designers don't have the resources or the financial incentives to make fonts with broad Unicode coverage. Most such proprietary fonts are sponsored by large corporations, in fact, while most indie fonts have just the European complement. But free fonts are very much the exception to this rule. I fully expect that we'll see a bunch of free fonts that are both independent and wide. The Bitstream Vera and the fonts derived from the URW release (the freefont project) hint at this potential, but they started life as corporate-sponsored, so I'm not sure they really count.
One problem which I think the free font movement might be able to solve is the provision of good web fonts. It's technologically difficult to put up typographically rich content on the web without also giving the fonts away, so we see site after site that uses the Microsoft "core fonts" because of the high probability they're available on the user's browser. See this <a href="http://typophile.com/node/19502" title="typophile.com">excellent typophile thread</a typophile.com> for a discussion of the issues involved. But if there are good free fonts, much of the tension goes away. Perhaps the ability to fill this need will motivate more free fonts, and maybe font designers can even get paid reasonable money for their work.
Finally, I'd like to give a shoutout to many of the other people who make up the "free font movement," including <a href="http://tug2000.tug.org/interviews/interview-files/karl-berry.html" title="tug.org">Karl Berry</a tug.org> of the TeX Users Group, <a href="http://www.openfontlibrary.org/wiki/index.php/Dave_Crossland" title="openfontlibrary.org">Dave Crossland</a openfontlibrary.org> and the rest of the crew at <a href="http://www.openfontlibrary.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" title="openfontlibrary.org">Open Font Library</a openfontlibrary.org>, and all the others who have contributed font designs, code, criticisms, and encouragement. It wouldn't be much of a movement if it were just me.
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Some followup
Posted by: Administrator on December 23, 2006 08:44 AMThere's quite a bit more discussion over at <a href="http://typophile.com/node/30175" title="typophile.com">typophile</a typophile.com>, from font designers both who are and are not suspicious of the free software "ethic."
A couple of factual points. Museum Caps is not, in fact, released, as it is based on Centaur, and so I will only release it in cooperation with Monotype. We've had some talks about that, but no progress in the past few months. Also, my PhD thesis relates to curves in general, with type design a strong motivating application. I've done some work on font rendering too, but this is entirely different.
I'd like to clarify my argument about international character sets. With few exceptions, independent type designers don't have the resources or the financial incentives to make fonts with broad Unicode coverage. Most such proprietary fonts are sponsored by large corporations, in fact, while most indie fonts have just the European complement. But free fonts are very much the exception to this rule. I fully expect that we'll see a bunch of free fonts that are both independent and wide. The Bitstream Vera and the fonts derived from the URW release (the freefont project) hint at this potential, but they started life as corporate-sponsored, so I'm not sure they really count.
One problem which I think the free font movement might be able to solve is the provision of good web fonts. It's technologically difficult to put up typographically rich content on the web without also giving the fonts away, so we see site after site that uses the Microsoft "core fonts" because of the high probability they're available on the user's browser. See this <a href="http://typophile.com/node/19502" title="typophile.com">excellent typophile thread</a typophile.com> for a discussion of the issues involved. But if there are good free fonts, much of the tension goes away. Perhaps the ability to fill this need will motivate more free fonts, and maybe font designers can even get paid reasonable money for their work.
Finally, I'd like to give a shoutout to many of the other people who make up the "free font movement," including <a href="http://tug2000.tug.org/interviews/interview-files/karl-berry.html" title="tug.org">Karl Berry</a tug.org> of the TeX Users Group, <a href="http://www.openfontlibrary.org/wiki/index.php/Dave_Crossland" title="openfontlibrary.org">Dave Crossland</a openfontlibrary.org> and the rest of the crew at <a href="http://www.openfontlibrary.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" title="openfontlibrary.org">Open Font Library</a openfontlibrary.org>, and all the others who have contributed font designs, code, criticisms, and encouragement. It wouldn't be much of a movement if it were just me.
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