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From: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Open Fonts
Message-ID: <29@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 13 Mar 89 15:01:17 GMT
References: <26962@apple.Apple.COM> <25@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <622@maxim.ERBE.SE>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett)
Organization: GE Corp. R & D, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 48
In-reply-to: prc@maxim.ERBE.SE (Robert Claeson)

In article <622@maxim.ERBE.SE>, prc@maxim (Robert Claeson) writes:
>In article <25@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>, I wrote:
>
>> I also would like to see more scalable symbol fonts, including electronic
>> components, pictures, icons, etc. If we could standardize on these, we
>> could perhaps have graphic electronic mail. Usenet with pictures!
>
>And quickly enough, my boss would come rushing to ask me why the phone
>bill has increased hundreds of times 8>.

Well, I was somewhat facitious. But if you had a font available on
your machine, you could switch fonts with just a few characters, a la
troff or TeX.  People also ship postscript and pic images in USENET articles.

I'll see it in my lifetime, or my name isn't Shirley MacLaine!

Seriously, I think OpenFonts has some other advantages.
One is that the fonts are licensed from the originators, just like the
fonts Adobe uses are licensed. But instead of waiting for Adobe to license
the font and convert it into a proprietary font, others are allowed to
license the fonts, removing a bottleneck.

The press release implies that there will be hundreds of fonts available,
all high quality. Another comment in the press release implies that
the time to create a scalable font is 4-6 weeks (with experience).
Also - this is done from a bitmap or raster image.

I believe this means that there will be more OpenFonts available than there is
for PostScript printers. This also implies (?) that a raster font can be
converted to a scalable font. If these fonts are public domain, then these
fonts can be used without requiring a license.

Also, this gives the user the ability to define a font and then use
charpath. PostScript does not support charpath for user defined fonts,
just those defined in the proprietary format.

Charpath is useful for special clipping outlines and several special effects.

With OpenFonts, you just need one font for all of your raster technology.
You are not limited to one programming language, one platform, or
the Roman alphabet. You can use it with non-PostScript printers.

It also allows NeWS to implement all of the PostScript language without
requiring a License from Adobe.

--
	Bruce G. Barnett 	barnett@ge-crd.ARPA, barnett@steinmetz.ge.com
				uunet!steinmetz!barnett