Older blog entries for yosch (starting at number 113)

Explicit support for the OFL now added to Launchpad

Thanks to the work of Curtis Hovey (sinzui) from the registry team, Launchpad now has explicit support for the OFL (Open Font License). Curtis has reworked my tiny patch on LP# 616229 to include support in the data model and has also improved the overall licensing choice widget.

Upstreams of various open font projects enjoying LP's features can now explicitly pick their chosen font license in the second dropdown list of supported licenses instead of using Other/Open Source. This will facilitate the use of Launchpad for collaborative font development.

Funding information for the open font community

I pulled together some information about funding-related issues for the wider open font community and put it up on funding.open-fonts.org. Rather crude at this stage but it's a first shot and it will be improved soon. Thoughts and feedback welcome.

6 Sep 2010 (updated 7 Sep 2010 at 17:36 UTC) »
Advanced font features in OpenOffice.org via Graphite

Now that the Graphite smart font rendering engine is fully included upstream in OpenOffice.org, you can more easily enjoy all the unique font features offered by libre/open Graphite-enabled fonts like Charis SIL, Doulos SIL, Gentium Basic, Andika, Padauk and others...

There is also a very useful Graphite Font Extension for OpenOffice.org by Keith Stribley from ThanLwinSoft to allow greater control over these features.

Last week at the OpenOffice.org Conference in Budapest, Hungary, László Németh presented his impressive work on using Graphite's font features capabilities in OOo via a branch of the Linux Libertine open font called Magyar Linux Libertine G and a dedicated OOo extension.

The Graphite source code (.gdl files) for the many smart font features (ligatures, small caps, old style numbers, proportional or monospaced numbers, automatic thousand separators, minus sign, real superscript and subscript, German umlaut variants and capital eszett, fractions, number to number name conversion, in 23 languages) is also released.

Pretty awesome for advanced typographic flexibility, isn't it? And in a standards-based unencumbered cross-platform way too :-)

26 Aug 2010 (updated 26 Aug 2010 at 11:01 UTC) »
open fonts and logos

While the licensing of Ubuntu's new open font is still being discussed ... it's interesting to note that the Wikimedia Foundation, as part of the new improved style of Wikipedia, has made the decision to switch the font used in the lettering of the famous puzzle globe logo to the Linux Libertine open font. You can see that the upstream authors made a dedicated font feature for the distinctive stylised crossing of the W.

If your project is libre/open then picking similarly unrestricted components to build your own visual identity does make sense :-)

23 Aug 2010 (updated 23 Aug 2010 at 15:23 UTC) »
Updated Open Font License FAQ available: version 1.1-update2

A updated version of the FAQ for the Open Font License - OFL-FAQ 1.1-update2 - has now been published on http://scripts.sil.org/OFL (html version on http://scripts.sil.org/OFL-FAQ_web).

Although this is not a legally binding document, it is a very useful resource for all users and authors of open fonts because it answers many questions people have had over the years (or more recently) about the most widely used FSF and OSI-validated font-specific software license. It explains in detail various usage scenarios, establishes open font design and maintainership best practices and offers templates like the FONTLOG for anyone running (or contributing to) collaborative open font design projects.

The overall structure of the document has been revised to make reading easier, various sentences have been clarified and plenty of new entries have been added to answer new questions we have received. A whole new section dealing with the subject of webfonts is now available.

The FAQ is highly recommended reading for any serious user, contributor or author of open fonts. Make sure you spend some time reading it before you ask questions, your answers are probably already in there.

And obviously if you are an upstream author or contributor to an open font project consider including the new OFL-FAQ.txt in your source tree and future releases for the benefit of your users and fellow designers.

CSS3 font features goodness

Even if you're not in Typecon2010 where among other things the subject of CSS3 font features was discussed and demoed, you can still enjoy the jaw-dropping new possibilities in the pipeline for designers in the area of advanced font features with webfonts. Come over to the playground to try a few things out. See the corresponding Mozilla bug for details.

20 Aug 2010 (updated 26 Aug 2010 at 10:07 UTC) »
Updates to the Google Font Directory

Good to see the recent updates to the Google Font Directory: new open font families are being added to both the directory itself and the upstream repository - interestingly both Roman and non-Roman - there are now direct links to the dynamic previewer and also direct download of the upstream font file in the "get the code" tab for local installation. Keep up the good work!

Go ahead, contribute your ideas and suggestions or even better ask for your own open font(s) to be added the directory.

Joining the Debian thankyous

Thank you, Debian and everyone involved one way or another (like for example i18n or fonts) for all your long-lasting efforts to create and maintain this unique OS and community. And thank you very much for the commitment to libre software values! Much appreciated.

Private beta program of open font for Ubuntu kicks off

The private beta program for the open font commissioned for Ubuntu has now been launched. With a webapp to help gather relevant feedback (submitted LP #602933 for better font detection).

The precise details of the DVCS tree holding the various font source formats and the licensing are still to be decided and revealed. Hopefully Kenneth (along with his design team @ Canonical) is looking into my recommendations from discussions at the last LGM and from follow-up emails on open font release and maintainership best practises.

Still waiting for more detailed feedback from you Kenneth...

Catching up with LGM recordings

Ben, I'm glad you're enjoying the content despite what I feel is - ahem - rather lousy delivery and insufficient preparation... I realise I need to work on my public speaking skills... Thankfully there were quite a few other font-related talks by key members of our growing community :-)

Anyway, hopefully some of the recommendations (and corresponding tools) provide useful food for thought for your various webdesign and open font projects.

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