Freetype2

David N. Smith (IBM) dnsmith at watson.ibm.com
Wed Sep 6 17:11:58 UTC 2000


At 9:38 -0700 9/1/00, Dan Ingalls wrote:
> >Thanks for pointing the new things going on at: http://www.freetype.org
>>These new changes remove any legal objections I had to using freetype in
>>Squeak.
>>(I don't know what technical or practical issues there may be...)
>
>Folks -
>
>Just to let you know what's in the works...
>
>1.  A committed contributor to Squeak (I just want to let him be first to announce this) has followed up on John McIntosh's suggestion that we might be able to get a nice set of fonts from Doug Easterbrook.  These could then replace and augment the fonts now in Squeak.  It is likely that we will make this move as soon as they become available.
>
>2.  We are also looking at FreeType, and other schemes (such as a simple set of primitives that would allow Squeak to tap any font accesible in your OS).  The crux of the biscuit here is:  what is the legal status of content (ie exported projects) that have these derived glyphs in them.  We may put in FreeType support anyway, but I think solution 1 above is the best move for the short term.
>
>	- Dan


Dan & Font Fans:

I hope I'm not repeating the obvious, nor something that someone else has suggested, but there seem to be at least two completely different motivations for better font support in Squeak:

(A)	Default: Built-in fonts in Squeak need to be license-free, portable across all platforms, and include at least the basic styles of fonts (Helvetica clone, Times clone, and good screen fonts like Monaco and Geneva).

(B)	Special use: These fonts are ones that a user needs for an application. They may be TrueType, Type1, or other formats, and may have restrictive licenses. The problem is the user's to solve, by getting a license, or whatever. Note that there are a huge number of TrueType & T1 fonts out there, including high quality Adobe or ITC fonts, and well done CDs full of decent fonts.

We certainly need to solve case (A), and your (1) seems to do just that.

Case (B) is real. I'm currently using (by kludge and cheap glue) Gadget 24, 36, and 60 in an application. I'd love to have several other fonts, at least one that isn't 'basic', and in possibly odd font sizes. (Gadget is a new TT font in MacOs 9).

Your case (2) obviously solves (B).

Anyhow, (A) and (B) are two different requirements and that may well require two solutions.

Dave
_______________________________
David N. Smith
IBM T J Watson Research Center
Hawthorne, NY
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herein are those of the author  
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