Bitstream To Donate 10 Fonts To Free Software World

21mhz writes "Posted on FootNotes: The GNOME Foundation and Bitstream Inc. announce long-term agreement to bring high quality fonts to Free Software. Ten fonts will be released for use under a special open license agreement, giving advanced font capabilities to all free and open source software developers and users. Read the full press release for more details." Modification and re-release (under a different name) is explicitly allowed, too.

Comments

10 fonts /IS/ a big deal.

[Vengie]

Please save the "ohh but its only 10 fonts" comments.
The microsoft world does very well with ARIAL, COURIER, and TIMES NEW ROMAN.
(Actually, most of the personal computing world does fairly well with these fonts)
I used CHICAGO, TIMES and BOOKMAN exclusively for years on a Mac LCII.
The crux of the issue is that these should be high quality fonts. THAT is a big deal. Kerning is a huge pain.
"ae" vs "lk" vs "ld" vs "dl" vs "kl" -- spacing changes more than you think. Amen, hallelujah...now lets just see how they look.

Re:10 fonts /IS/ a big deal.

[Eightlines]

Amen. I think the cynicism in these messages is uncalled for. Bitstream at one time produced a great product that embedded fonts into the website while making sure they were restricted to the domain they were posted on. They've shown awareness of Type Designers copyright priveledges. They led the way to a W3C proposal. And now I have to read comments about the possibility of the fonts being released being "crappy"?

Months ago another font article was written about MS pulling their fonts from their site. The /. crowd wrote that more people should create fonts and release them to the opensource community. Now that we are getting them this is what you respond with?

10 Fonts (not typefaces, fonts - there is a difference) that are properly designed can take years to produce. There is no science behind fonts, its an art. Its something type designers take very seriously and its a whole different geek culture. Sure we have Arial, Courier, Helvetica, but one typeface is not good in all cases. Think about how many different typefaces you have seen in Newspapers, TV, Film, etc. For each their own purpose. If people can learn to apply the styles of good typography to their projects then we all benefit through better legibility, readability, and aesthetic means.

Personally, I really hope one of the fonts is Stone.

Re:What's the point?

[FooBarWidget]

The problem isn't free fonts, the problem is high-quality and Free (as in freedom) fonts. Sure you can download I don't know how many free beer fonts from the net, but they are either 1) not freely redistributable or 2) for fun only; not optimized for actual ready or 3) low-quality.

BitStream is donating high-quality AND Free fonts here! So soon we will get Linux distros with high-quality fonts out-of-the-box.

Re:fonts types vs anti-aliasing

[BrookHarty]

I'm currently running xft2+XFree86 4.2.99 on gentoo, and the fonts look better on my lcd than in WindowsXP.

The big difference, In Windows any application will use AA fonts by default. In Linux, your application needs to have AA compiled in via a supported method. Gentoo does this better, as its a source based distro, you configure it yourself. Redhat has to precompile the source with AA enable (via its supported methods).

Lots of dependencies on Linux, makes it is much more difficult to enable and use AA fonts. Also helps if you know what methods to enable, and configurations. (I dont have them, do you? Is your method the best? Is it a hack? Was it the correct supported procedure? Did it break anything?) Ugh. Good job for Redhat for trying to make it easy for the average/newbie linux user.