Liberation Fonts Increase Interoperability For Linux Users

hweimer writes "Most problems when opening Word documents under GNU/Linux are due to missing fonts. Therefore, Red Hat published a set of fonts metric-compatible with the Windows core fonts last year. However, there were some concerns regarding the licensing that prevented many other distros to ship them. We finally managed to settle these problems, leading to better document interoperability for all GNU/Linux users."

Comments

You think you're funny

[argent]

Well you are, OK, that was funny.

But it's also serious.

GOD DAMN the Word document structure sucks like something that sucks a lot.

Re:I fixed it for you

[ConceptJunkie]

From what I've heard you can sometimes get better results opening Word documents with OpenOffice.

Word can only be explained as a plot to sap the productivity of computer users, towards what end I cannot say.

Re:This is good, but

[RiotingPacifist]

Define better.
Also font making doesnt lend it self to collaboration, basically you need 100 font making drones to try their hardest and then you tell 99 of them to go home. Companies don't mind doing this but if you didn't even get paid to make your font, youd be pretty pissed when it hours of your work are ditched in favor of something with a few more curly bits.

Re:I fixed it for you

[plover]

No, Word is a cruel developer-led plot to sap the output of the business analysts. By keeping their conflicting requirements tangled up in Word, and by shifting their focus to fonts and colors, it keeps them from ever actually finishing them and so inflicting them upon the hapless developers.

By one estimation*, developers would have almost twice as many annoying requirements if business analysts were to switch to open-source word-smithing tools.

*In his defense, the estimator was both drunk and bitter at the set of requirements he had just been handed.

Re:I fixed it for you

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, the developers need better targetting because millions of people and billions of man-hours are wasted by Word. I bet Word causes more pain and wasted time than the U.S. tax code.

Is Word worse than Excel?

[mysticgoat]

Does Word have a greater Gross National Productivity Cost than Excel? It seems like they are about the same, except Excel might be worse since it is more likely to cause collateral damage (bad business decisions because the numbers were crunched wrong).

But there is software that has an even higher GNPC than either of these two: PowerPoint.

MS Office: the corporate equivalent of multiple sclerosis. Gets your business into the wheelchair races real quick.

Re:What's wrong with IBM Courier?

[Waffle Iron]

What's wrong with IBM Courier, which has been included with every distribution of X11 since X11R5?

The problem is that LCD monitors happened. Personally, I had been stuffing LucidaTypwriter (specifically, lutRS14) into every text editor in every OS I used for over 15 years. However, I finally gave up on it a couple of years ago because LCDs accentuate the jagginess of bitmap fonts. They overcome the problem (and surpass CRTs) with subpixel rendering, but that only works with scalable fonts.

So I recompiled my distro's FreeType package with the "good stuff" enabled and set my text editors to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono 10. Now I enjoy the smooth crisp text that looks almost as good as a paper printout, while trying to not get too nostalgic about my old favorite font.

Re:Thats what keeps them free.

[The Warlock]

Sometimes people want to install Linux on a computer without Internet access. Crazy, I know. MSTTCorefonts can't be distributed on the distro CD, so that computer wouldn't have a way to get them.