True Type Fonts.

agree at carltonfields.com agree at carltonfields.com
Fri Dec 10 18:34:46 UTC 1999


Not meaning to start a patent war, but the conclusion Alan reaches shouldn't be jumped to without first, at least, looking at the patents and determining what is CLAIMED.  Even when a general subject matter is claimed, subtle nuances on the prior art can be sufficient (and morally defensible in many cases) for patent protection.  

Catapults, wood, hammers and nails have been around forever, but none of this would preclude a patent on a clever new trebuchet design.

My suggestion is not to guess.  At least get the patents (all of which are available both in printable and text-searchable form at http:www.uspto.gov) and see what is claimed.  Then, at least, you can be assured that you are practicing the prior art.  

(And hey, there is nothing MORE FUN than "engineering around" a patent, trust me!  Its easy to do, particularly in "crowded art" areas as Alan suggests Truetype finds itself, and its usually successful when undertaken.)

Does anyone know the applicable patent numbers?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MIME :Alan.Kay at disney.com > Sent: Friday, December 10, 1999 1:06 PM
> To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
> Subject: Re: True Type Fonts.
> > > Bob --
> > It's likely that that FreeType is fine.
>      (Andrew is more cautious ...)
> I was at Apple when the TrueType stuff was done and I don't > recall them
> doing anything that wasn't in prior art in the 70s (the > outline font idea
> was first done by Patrick Baudelaire at PARC, Dick Shoup and I (and
> Negroponte's group at MIT) did various early version of > antialiased fonts
> and came up with algorithms for same, Warnock at E&S and then PARC
> experimented with outline font conversion, hinting, etc., > Knuth did many
> wonderful things in his pursuit of computer generated fonts, > etc.). All of
> these are on record. It's the patent office that is to blame > for much of
> this, in that they have been willing to grant patents on just about
> anything for the last 30 or so years without vetting them, but simply
> leaving it up to unsophisticated people in civil courts (or > out of court)
> to resolve issues. This has been/is terrible and needs to be > combatted.
> > Cheers,
> > Alan
> > At 11:13 AM -0800 12/9/99, Bob Arning wrote:
> >On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 12:56:58 +0100 Henrik Gedenryd
> ><Henrik.Gedenryd at lucs.lu.se> wrote:
> >>And I don't think releasing your own code could ever get > you into trouble,
> >>could it? As long as everyone dl'ed the FreeType code > themselves. Of course,
> >>there might be a problem if you needed to modify the FT > code, but I was
> >>thinking you would only need to write an interface to it.
> >>
> >>What can you code do?
> >>
> >>And do you know if FT, when it has applied hinting to an > outline, can
> >>deliver the results to Squeak in the form of outlines or a pixmap?
> >
> >Henrik,
> >
> >The interface I wrote uses FreeType to generate pixmaps > (that may be the
> >only option, though I don't recall for sure). The pixmaps > (anti-aliased)
> >are then converted to 8-bit deep forms for display using the > normal squeak
> >StrikeFont routines.
> >
> >It may well be that the patent issues referred to by the > FreeType web page
> >will be resolved someday in an acceptable way, but until > then, it's just a
> >bit too spooky.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >Bob





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list