> No, but they note that the patent doesn't apply in Europe for > example. And
> you don't really need to distribute the plugin with a > product, you would
> rather generate the fonts' bitmaps yourself and include > those. Distributing
> along fonts to end users has always been a hassle. (You could > even ask me to
> run the plugin on your .ttf fonts over here and send the > results to you :)

I would not rely on this theory alone.  Fonts, and derivative works created therefrom are protected by Copyright, and copying and derivations are subject to the license agreements.  The process, to the extent protected, cannot be circumvented by performing parts of it outside the U.S. and the rest of it therein without substantial risk of a claim of contributory infringement.
 > For larger sizes, Andreas' non-hinting truetype support is > quite ok--with
> SPR, also smaller sizes yield pretty good results. I even > used that for 12
> pt size in all my browsers before the plugin was ready! Ok, I > got a small
> headache but it looked good.

I wonder if some simple anti-aliasing might not improve non-hinting rendering sufficiently for these purposes, at least at 12 point.

> The question would of course be the distribution of rendered > fonts to places
> where the patents are in effect. Would the patents at all > restrict such
> bitmap fonts that were rendered by code falling under the > patents? Even if
> they were produced by FT where the patents don't apply?

I don't know the answer, but I agree that this is the question.  (I guess I'm still sounding like a lawyer anyway, huh? :-))

> > Beside the ones I put out yesterday, I would say that URW's > freeware set of
> the standard PostScript fonts that someone mentioned here > (Times, Helvetica,
> etc.) would be our best bet for distributing with Squeak. They aren't
> exciting, but you need fonts you can look at for more than > ten minutes.

They would be fine, if only they weren't GPL'd.  Any chance we can get their consent to distribute these fonts as Squeakware?