On Tuesday, April 13, 2004, at 02:44 PM, Ned Konz wrote:

> To continue a discussion that wasn't properly concluded...

Thanks for keeping this discussion on track...

> On Thursday 19 February 2004 4:42 pm, Doug Way wrote:
>> Now, there were also the Comic bitmap fonts which were removed, which
>> did not really have a close equivalent in the Accufonts... you may be
>> referring more to these.  (The replacement used for these was Accujen,
>> which is at least sans-serif.)  The Comic fonts were actually not 
>> Apple
>> fonts, but fonts "borrowed" from MS.  So, there was no Squeak-L 
>> related
>> reason to remove these, but they were also removed simply because they
>> weren't legitimate free fonts.  However, there is some question as to
>> whether bitmap fonts are copyrightable at all, apparently there are
>> recent rulings indicating that they are not, so you could make the
>> argument that the Comic bitmap fonts should have been left alone.  I
>> decided to go along with the original StableSqueak decision to remove
>> them, though... seemed like the safer course of action.  Do people 
>> think
>> that we should re-add these fonts?
>
> Not necessarily.
>
> * The 'Comic' name is probably trademarked (though bitmap fonts 
> themselves
> aren't copyrightable in the US, their names are usually trademarked).

Probably true about the trademark.  I wonder if that means it's okay to 
give them a different name, if the bitmap fonts themselves are not 
copyrightable?

> * The StrikeFonts are in MacRoman encoding; this doesn't work well for 
> the
> m17n work (where Latin-1 is preferred).
> * The StrikeFonts do not have international glyphs (especially 
> Japanese).

True, although we have the same problem with all of our other 
StrikeFonts anyway.  This will be a general problem for the m17n work.

> I think we should remove ComicSansMS (see below) and find (or 
> construct) a
> replacement, licensed or freely distributable, TrueType font that is 
> suitable
> for Etoys and that includes a wider set of glyphs.

To summarize, we had two (bitmap) comic StrikeFonts, called ComicPlain 
and ComicBold... these were removed.  Then we also had the antialiased 
TrueType font called ComicSansMS, which is still in the image.

EToys formerly used the ComicPlain/ComicBold StrikeFonts, until they 
were removed.  We could either add some comic-ish StrikeFonts back in 
for EToys, or have them use a comic-ish TrueType font.  I'd guess 
either would be fine... a TTFont might be okay as long as the font 
sizes used aren't too small. (starts to get a bit fuzzy)

(And then there are your FreeType/2 changes, which displays TTFonts 
more crisply with hinting, but that's another ball of wax which is not 
ready for 3.7 in any case.)

> Some issues:
>
> ...
> And from their FAQ (now posted at 
> http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/faq8.htm):
>
> -------
> Q What can I do with these fonts?
>
> A For all the rules that govern the use of these fonts please read the 
> end
> user license agreement.
>
>     * Anyone can download and install these fonts for their own use.
>     * Designers can specify the fonts within their Web pages. Our 
> guide to
> specifying fonts in Web pages explains how to do this.
>     * You may only redistribute the fonts in their original form (.exe
> or .sit.hqx) and with their original file name from your Web site or 
> intranet
> site.
>     * You must not supply the fonts, or any derivative fonts based on 
> them, in
> any form that adds value to commercial products, such as CD-ROM or 
> disk based
> multimedia programs, application software or utilities. See Microsoft's
> permissions site for more details.
> -------
>
> Sounds like we're not following their rules here.

Yeah, it looks like we're definitely violating the third bullet 
point... we should probably remove ComicSansMS.

Perhaps we should look at one of the free comicsans replacements that 
John Pfersich just mentioned.  Or maybe just bring back the bitmap 
comic fonts with a different name (if that's legit).

- Doug