An initial proposal for a free font software movement
An initial proposal for a free font software movement, 10 years ago, is a fun read:
(A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups: comp.fonts) This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I'm sending it now because I wonder how do-able it would be. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm sending this to the www-font mailing list and to the comp.fonts newsgroups, sorry if this causes duplication for those subscribed to both. The problem : web designers can specify fonts using CSS, but have to issue a list of backup fonts in case the reader doesn't have the font installed on his system. Furthermore, different operating systems come with different fonts, so the web designer must specify backup fonts for different systems. Both Netscape and Microsoft have developed means of downloading fonts, but this greatly increases the overall amount of time spent downloading a web page, and many readers may disable this feature; also, each method is different, so what works in IE doesn't work in Navigator. A possible solution : There has been something of a tradition among some programmers to write free software (i.e. the GNU project, the Apache web server project, etc.) I don't know if that idea translates well in the graphic design world; my original idea was to win the lottery and hold a contest with cash prizes for the designers who could give the best fonts. Unfortunately, I haven't quite got the knack of picking winning lottery numbers yet, so I've had to think up other solutions. I know that some public domain fonts exist, so I've had this idea of putting together a collection of public domain fonts for everyone to use. Not just in Windows format, not just in Windows and Macintosh format, but in every format that my copy of Fontographer will translate to/from. People who write web pages can specify a font name and know that the readers who have Windows, Macintosh, or Linux machines can see the typeface that the writers see without downloading it. This collection would be a basic internet font set, kinda like how you get a set of fonts with your computer's OS. The difference is that this set could be on everyone else's computer as well. Some issues: 1) IDENTIFICATION OF FONTS: Which (good) fonts are the public domain and could be translated and distributed freely? How do I know if a public domain font isn't really just a rip-off of a commercial font (and more importantly, can it get me sued?) 2) COPYRIGHT/LEFT : Could the GNU public license be applied to a set of public domain fonts? Should these fonts be free, public domain, or CopyLeft? 3) QUALITY: A lot of the public domain fonts that I've seen so far might not be good for a archive of this sort. * A lot are display type and wouldn't be very useful for body text. * A lot don't have a complete western character set. * A lot have only one style when it would be best to have normal, italic, bold, bold italic, and (maybe) outline versions. * And who determines what a good font looks like? I know what I like, and I have good taste, but I have no formal graphic design training. 4) DISTRIBUTION : * They could be distributed in the shareware archives as a set. People who use the fonts in their web pages could put links to such archives, or perhaps links to one page with all the archives, sorted by platform. * They could also be distributed with the "Frankenbrowers" that may come now that Netscape has announced plans to release the source code to Navigator. 5) CATEGORIES : "serif" (e.g. Times) "sans serif" (e.g. Helvetica), "cursive" (e.g. Zapf-Chancery,) "fantasy" (e.g. Western) and "monospace" (e.g. Courier) are defined as generic font family names in the CSS 1 specification. I suppose it would be helpful to have at least two of each, and probably three each of serif and sans-serif? This means we'd need at least twelve fonts. You know, if this would work, and was used world-wide, the people who designed these fonts could be as famous as the person who designed helvetica. Hmmm.... actually, I don't know who designed Helvetica, but I do know that Ray Larabie designs some really nifty fonts that he distributes free on the web. There's no reason that someone couldn't get credit for something just because that person is giving it away for free. Some URLs I've been looking at while thinking about this: From Webmonkey: an article on fonts on the web that provides a good bit of background - http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/html/96/46/index2a.html "What is Free Software?" an article from the GNU web site http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html "The Value of Free Software" An article from BYTE magazine - http://www.byte.com/art/9712/sec8/art1.htm TrueType Typography - http://www.truetype.demon.co.uk/ comp.fonts Home Page - http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/ Larabie Fonts - www.delirium.com/larabiefonts Create 8 Fonts - http://thomas.simplenet.com/fonts/ The WWW Consortium's CSS web page - http://www.w3.org/Style/css/ The WWW Consortium's CSS font page - http://www.w3.org/Fonts/ "Free Fonts and Utilities" from Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/typography/free.htm -- Charles Peyton Taylor http://www.mbay.net/~cpt My words are my own.
The An initial proposal for a free font software movement by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
April 8, 2008 | Filed Under Personal Thoughts
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[…] o Apache, pero en la producción de alternativas tipográficas libres de calidad. David Crossland cita este texto en su blog, como un antecendente de esa idea, diseñar fuentes con licencias libres, en forma […]