Hi folks!
I've been having a conversation with Mårten Nettelbladt over email lately. He is the creator of the freeware font Miso:
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Miso
We've been discussing the possibility of Mårten relicensing Miso under a Fedora-compatible font license. Mårten is amenable to such a license, but he very rightly has a concern about some issues with the font he'd like to correct before spreading the font far and wide with such a license. He doesn't have the time, however, to work much on the font anymore so he needs some help in getting them fixed. I think he would be doing us a great favor to open up the font license, so if we can chip in and help him out we can help each other.
I was wondering if anyone on the list would be willing to help address these issues, or even just provide instruction that I or someone else on the Fedora design team could use (since we are not experts on these points of fonts) to address them ourselves?
Here are the issues Mårten raised that he'd like help addressing - does anyone have ideas on how to do any of these? (Some of these are suggestions he's gotten from users - are they the right way to do it? E.g., the otf file naming suggestion?)
- The OTF file to all lower case and use the same base name for the regular as in the TTF files. This would result in miso-reg.otf, miso-bol.otf and mis-lig.otf.
- For fontconfig (which is used on Linux) it would be better the family and style for the light font would be slightly altered. This would result in "family=Miso Light" and "style=Regular", in stead of "family=Miso" and "style=Light" because most of the software only recognizes Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic and does not know how to make a Light available. Unless, it would be available as "Miso Light ~ Regular".
- Provide URL Vendor in the OTF and TTF metadata for all fonts.
- Provide PANOSE metadata, see http://panose.com/ProductsServices/pan1.aspx . Especially Family Kind (2) Serif Style (15) would greatly improve selection of this font via tools like fontmatrix.
- Offer an Italic and Bold Italic for Miso and an Italic for Miso Light. Probably for such a type, these will be simply slanted. However, when you do it (instead of a fake italic which is slanted with a default value of the software using your type) you are able to control the angle of the italic versions.
- Also, the TTF-files are the originals and they were converted to OTF by someone. Some people have reported trouble with the spacing of "c" "John" said: (http://www.omkrets.se/miso-spotted/#comment-117) using true type resolve problem also in xpress - So, that would have to be fixed as well, perhaps just a new conversion, or create OTF files directly from the font software. I used TypeTool and it didn't have that option.
This font is a very attractive-looking font, good for use in logos, and I think this is a great opportunity to add a nice openly-licensed font to Fedora. Even if you don't have the time to help us fix these, if you know what we can do to fix them, sharing that expertise with us would be a big help.
Thanks, ~m
Le Mer 3 février 2010 03:05, Máirín Duffy a écrit :
Hi folks!
Hi Máirín,
Thank you for your font evangelizing efforts! They're really appreciated, and not only Fedora-side.
I've been having a conversation with Mårten Nettelbladt over email lately. He is the creator of the freeware font Miso:
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Miso
We've been discussing the possibility of Mårten relicensing Miso under a Fedora-compatible font license. Mårten is amenable to such a license, but he very rightly has a concern about some issues with the font he'd like to correct before spreading the font far and wide with such a license.
We accept many font licenses but we really prefer OFL and GPL + font exception. That makes it easier to share material between fonts.
Here are the issues Mårten raised that he'd like help addressing - does anyone have ideas on how to do any of these? (Some of these are suggestions he's gotten from users - are they the right way to do it? E.g., the otf file naming suggestion?)
- The OTF file to all lower case and use the same base name
for the regular as in the TTF files. This would result in miso-reg.otf, miso-bol.otf and mis-lig.otf.
Linux and fontconfig does not care about file naming at all. It's better to have a clear base latin file name without spaces that tells people what's in the font, but for us it is a purely cosmetic issue.
- For fontconfig (which is used on Linux) it would be better the family
and style for the light font would be slightly altered. This would result in "family=Miso Light" and "style=Regular", in stead of "family=Miso" and "style=Light" because most of the software only recognizes Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic and does not know how to make a Light available. Unless, it would be available as "Miso Light ~ Regular".
This is very bad advice. We'll complain during package review if this change is made. We want fonts to respect strictly the naming standardised by Microsoft in its WWS whitepaper (for the same reasons Microsoft did it, have font names that apps can use to apply advanced style decisions). It is true all apps do not support the new naming style completely. They will be fixed faster than the font can be changed in the future (they need to be fixed anyway because of the new proprietary fonts that only use the new standard). In the meanwhile fonts can and should declare two sets of names, with the new-style one first. Old apps will only see the second one. This is what DejaVu does and what our default font does is good enough for other fonts. You can open DejaVu in fontforge or any other font editor and copy its naming logic.
See also : A. the naming parts of http://nim.fedorapeople.org/Understanding%20fonts%20and%20fontconfig.tar.gz (I need to finish this someday). B. fix-font-naming in fontpackages-tools C. http://blogs.msdn.com/text/attachment/2249036.ashx http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/typotechnica2007/Font%20names.pdf http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/atypi2006/CSS%20&%20OT%2015.pdf
- Provide URL Vendor in the OTF and TTF metadata for all fonts.
Moderately useful, especially if the URL is not stable long-term
- Provide PANOSE metadata, see
http://panose.com/ProductsServices/pan1.aspx . Especially Family Kind (2) Serif Style (15) would greatly improve selection of this font via tools like fontmatrix.
Completely optional. Too many fonts have bad panose info for apps to use it anymore.
URL and Panose are almost completely useless in practice. Focus on the fields which are shown in the GNOME font viewer (description and licensing). Please also make sure :
A. the font version is properly incremented each time the font is changed, and all the font files in the font family use the same versions
B. licensing is properly documented in the font metadata and as a plain text file distributed with the font in the same zip or tarball (the exact license text not a fuzzy reference that can mean anything legally)
- Offer an Italic and Bold Italic for Miso and an Italic for Miso Light.
Probably for such a type, these will be simply slanted. However, when you do it (instead of a fake italic which is slanted with a default value of the software using your type) you are able to control the angle of the italic versions.
This is a great long-term goal but should not block initial publication. We'll pick up additions later when they are published. Font authors tend to be perfectionists (which is good) but if they follow their instincts they never deem anything ready for publication.
- Also, the TTF-files are the originals and they were converted to OTF
by someone. Some people have reported trouble with the spacing of "c" "John" said: (http://www.omkrets.se/miso-spotted/#comment-117) using true type resolve problem also in xpress - So, that would have to be fixed as well, perhaps just a new conversion, or create OTF files directly from the font software. I used TypeTool and it didn't have that option.
Nowadays TTF and OTF are 100% similar feature-wise (even Adobe people say it). However they have slight technical differences, so converting between TTF and OTF can have side effects and is not recommended in general. Stick with the format the font used at first and do not try to change it.
Please also ask upstream to:
A. complete almost-complete language coverages (fontconfig will ignore a font if it is missing just one glyph in a language). You can identify those with FC=DEBUG=256 fc-query <font-file.ttf> | filter-langcover ttfcoverage <font-file.ttf> | filter-unicover (from fontpackages-tools, the second one is not as useful as the first one)
B. as many font format errors as reported by fontlint are fixed as possible (fontlint can be excessive so the font author need not follow fontlint blindly. But looking at fontlint messages is a good idea).
Best regards,
Le Mer 3 février 2010 11:52, Nicolas Mailhot a écrit :
A. complete almost-complete language coverages (fontconfig will ignore a font if it is missing just one glyph in a language). You can identify those with FC=DEBUG=256 fc-query <font-file.ttf> | filter-langcover
FC_DEBUG=256 fc-query <font-file.ttf> | filter-langcover
Sorry about the typo
Máirín wrote:
- Offer an Italic and Bold Italic for Miso and an Italic for Miso Light.
Probably for such a type, these will be simply slanted.
Yes, generally referred to as an oblique version.
- Also, the TTF-files are the originals and they were converted to OTF
by someone. Some people have reported trouble with the spacing of "c" "John" said: (http://www.omkrets.se/miso-spotted/#comment-117) using true type resolve problem also in xpress - So, that would have to be fixed as well, perhaps just a new conversion, or create OTF files directly from the font software. I used TypeTool and it didn't have that option.
The conversion doesn't appear to have been done very well at all, and I'd discard it in favour of the original TTF.
As the comments suggest (and FontForge shows), the "c" has conflicting widths in two of the font's tables.
If you look at some sample text in Fontmatrix, it is clear that the left sidebearings of "A", "J", "S" and "Y" have been changed (flip between the TTF and OTF and you'll see some wobbling!)
It doesn't even express Mårten's wish for the font to be free, as the conversion changes it from being an installable font without restrictions, to being "printable document, no subsetting".
-
Máirín Duffy -
Nicolas Mailhot -
Paul Flo Williams