Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 19, 2012 19:15 UTC (Tue) by juliank (guest, #45896)
Parent article: Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Please note that the Ubuntu font is considered non-free by Debian, as it imposes requirements on how derived works have to be named.

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 19, 2012 19:25 UTC (Tue) by directhex (guest, #58519) [Link] (3 responses)

Huh? DFSG clause 4:

The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form _only_ if the license allows the distribution of patch files with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. (This is a compromise. The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files, source or binary, from being modified.)

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 19, 2012 19:32 UTC (Tue) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (2 responses)

Right. A different name. But the Ubuntu font license requires it to carry a specific derivation of the Ubuntu font name in some cases, not just a different name. The requirement was thus to strict and thus non-free.

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 19, 2012 19:34 UTC (Tue) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (1 responses)

The "you must keep Ubuntu" in the name part can be considered equivalent to front cover and back cover texts in the GFDL.

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 19, 2012 19:57 UTC (Tue) by Jonno (subscriber, #49613) [Link]

Yes, and Debian don't consider GFDL-licensed works with invariant sections to be free either.

(GFDL-licensed works that don't contain any invariant sections are considered free by Debian, but not copyleft, as it is permissible to add an invariant section to it and thus make it non-free)

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 20, 2012 15:07 UTC (Wed) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (4 responses)

Really a pity that the license terms are such that they can hinder the adoption of a great font collection. Ubuntu Monospaced fonts replaced Inconsolata as my font of choice for programming.

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 21, 2012 20:41 UTC (Thu) by przemoc (guest, #67594) [Link] (3 responses)

Have you tried terminus? I'm using it (for ages) in debian as console font and as fixed-width font in X11. Indispensable.

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 22, 2012 11:19 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link] (2 responses)

>Have you tried terminus? I'm using it (for ages) in debian as console font and as fixed-width font in X11. Indispensable.

The problem is Terminus is a pure bitmap font. http://www.fixedsysexcelsior.com/ is the *real* thing ;-)

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 26, 2012 14:31 UTC (Tue) by Tet (guest, #5433) [Link] (1 responses)

The problem is Terminus is a pure bitmap font

That's a good thing. For printing, you want a vector font. But for terminal use, I still use bitmap fonts, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Liberation fonts and the tricky task of internationalization

Posted Jun 26, 2012 14:43 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link]

Pure bitmaps (like .fnt, .pcf) do not offer any advantage currently.
- There is no support to have them automatically scaled up. In contrast, you can run Fixedsys Excelsior TTF at 32px (i.e. twice its designed size) just by telling xterm/fontconfig to render it as such.
- Besides vectorized glyphs, truetype fonts can also have embedded bitmaps. This is very dominant in the CJK glyph range where the (antialiased) scaledown is often too blurry. But Arial/Times also have bitmaps for Latin scripts.
IOW, I'd love to have Terminus as TTF, just to be able to run it somehow at sizes larger than 32px.