stable Squeak (Fonts) free Accuny for browser.

John M McIntosh johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com
Mon Jun 4 01:13:37 UTC 2001


>On Sunday, June 3, 2001, at 07:15 PM, John M McIntosh wrote:
>
>>>
>>At 7:35 PM -0400 6/2/01, Andrew C. Greenberg wrote:
>>>On the legal side, are you sure these fonts are all completely 
>>>Kosher?  There seem to me to be direct ripoffs, at least, of the 
>>>early Apple MacOS Chicago, Chancery and Symbol bitmap fonts.  If 
>>>we were aspiring to be purely license-clean, there may be some 
>>>serious issues.
>>>
>>This was address by Arts Management Systems Ltd (the suppliers of 
>>the fonts) in the early 1990's via correspondence with Apple Legal 
>>department. At the time it was a point of concern since these fonts 
>>were later marketed as a commercial product, which can be found in 
>>Informix products, Omnis (Blyth Software), and PowerBuilder 
>>(Sybase). The fact they got sold to these vendors in the 
>>early/mid/late 1990's is a result of the discussions with Apple.
>>
>>The legal reasoning is summed up on
>>http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1849 at the comment of
>
>I agree -- after all, those were my arguments!  However, various 
>members of the community have been troubled by the existence of the 
>Apple bitmap fonts in the Squeak image, and some have savaged SqC 
>for failing to remove them, citing to these new fonts as the second 
>coming of Squeak.  If the Accuny fonts heritage is identical to that 
>of the Apple bitmap fonts, however, what, then, has been gained?

Well I'm not sure the heritage is identical, I presume the original 
Squeak fonts were taken directly from Apple files and manipulated by 
some Squeak code to produce the bit images. Thus a clear 
heritage/usage of the apple font bits via the reference to the 
original bits. Also reference to them in the original license and of 
course they retain the same names which *is* a licence issue. I sure 
as far as Apple is concerned the Squeak folks just embedded the Apple 
font files with alterations into Squeak.

Now on the other hand the accufonts were painfully tapped into a 
Windows 3.0 SDK font bit editor by hand based on images printed to 
paper which were enlarged by silicon beachs SuperPaint, then compiled 
into windows 3.0 font files and compared to the macintosh originals 
for spacing and alignment using the high tech tool of printing to 
color transparencies and viewing the results by visually overlaying 
them and squinting. Now I understand these window font files were 
then read into Squeak by Duane Maxwell & company and translated into 
the squeak aware bit images. So although they look the same they *do 
not* share the same heritage from an understanding of were the bits 
come from. Certainly if they were computer derived from the original 
apple files (they are not) then we would be no better off.

Note: Since we can make clones of bitmap fonts then I'll ask is there 
a more proper/legal way to do it since the effort took weeks of 
time...

BTW the intercharacter spacing for some of the accufonts is different 
from the original Squeak fonts, I can't say without doing some 
analysis which font is wrong in the spirit of being bit identical to 
the original Apple font.

>
>So here it is, then.  Has AMS granted us rights to "their" fonts, 
>acknowledged their lack of a Copyright interest, dedicated them to 
>the public, or not?  If so, can we simply agree that there is no big 
>deal about using these fonts, any of them, including those in the 
>present Squeak image?

I'll refer you to the license text found in the stable squeak project 
files. I'll let other interpret what it means...

Squeak World Tour note:
	The Apple and Microsoft fonts referred to in this license 
have been expunged from this image. There are no Apple or Microsoft 
derived fonts in this image. Information on the fonts in this image 
may be found in the script titled, AccuFont License. This image is 
derived from the Squeak 2.8 base image and virtual machine. 
Additional code provided by Squeakers world wide has been included

The AccuFontLicense.text file reads:

"Copyright Arts Management Systems, Ltd."

© Arts Management Systems Ltd.

  The fonts distributed as part of this base image are derived from 
fonts copyright Arts Management Systems, Ltd. Use of the fonts in 
derivative software products is allowed.

  The fonts should retain their AccuFont names.

  The acknowledgement should read:

>Doug Easterbrook
>Arts Management Systems Ltd.
>mailto:doug at artsman.com
>http://www.artsman.com
>Phone (403) 215-5701    Fax (403) 215-5704



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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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