The GNOME Foundation has entered into an agreement with Bitstream who will donate ten high quality fonts to be used with free software (KDE, XFree86, Gnome as well as others). This means distributions can finally ship free desktops/applications with a set of high quality fonts. On other X11 news, XFree86 4.2.99.4 snapshot (4.3 beta) is available for testing.
Bitstream Brings High Quality Fonts to the Linux Desktop
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It would be nice to see these in the imminent release of KDE 3.1.
The GNOME Foundation donates fonts to be used with free software (with KDE and XFree)?
Why the enphasis on KDE and XFree without mentioning GNOME? I understand what you intend to write but it sounds a bit funny. Better leave out the emphasis to avoid flames!
Anyway, this is great News for the Free Desktop projects!
Cool! The current release already has some pretty good fonts, but with these fonts, maybe Linux will have the best fonts of all OSses
Bitstream donates…!
no more ugly standard fonts!
Normally, fonts are coming bundled with XFree and not with Gnome or KDE, mostly because when you install KDE or Gnome on differnt distros or Unices, there are different ways of installing fonts. So when you do a “make install” for your DE, it is not the same for each one of these OSes, in fact it is really tricky to expect the DE to install fonts for you. However, that wouldn’t be a problem for XFree. I hope that the XFree 4.3 will have these new fonts bundled.
BTW, where can we see these 10 fonts? Are any good for a “normal desktop font” which is the kind of *good* font that today is missing for all Linux distros?
we need good fonts, and if Bitstream wants to provide them then more power to them…
Might be a great PR-move….
Please don’t be silly. The emphasis is not an emphasis. It is an explanation. The GNOME foundation did the agreement (and this is clearly mentioned in the article). The names of KDE and XFree are there in the parenthesis in order to further EXPLAIN that these projects also can have access to the fonts. So people won’t start asking things like “what about kde? Can I use these fonts with KDE”? and other such questions.
A few of them can be seen in this screenshot from FootNotes http://tieguy.org/fonts.png
Not too bad. The Sans Serif font is like a Verdana clone. That’s good. Do they have something that looks like Arial or Tahoma, so it would be more appropriate for an application font?
The initial announcement was:
The GNOME Foundation has entered into an agreement with Bitstream who will donate ten high quality fonts to be used with free software (KDE and XFree86). This means distributions can finally ship free desktops/applications with a set of high quality fonts. On other X11 news, XFree86 4.2.99.4 snapshot (4.3 beta) is available for testing.
And after my post you updated the parenthesis to:
(KDE, XFree86, Gnome as well as others)
Which means you agree with my point that the initial form sounded abit strange without the modifications.
That was exactly my point, so I don’t see any silliness coming into the picture here.
No, I did find it silly. I only added the word “Gnome” just because you whined. But I don’t agree with your assertions.
The Gnome project was not out of the loop. It was mentioned as the project doing the agreement, and its place was in the beginning of the sentence. I HAD to add the words “KDE and XFree86” because I know people. They would start asking questions about them. But you didn’t like it either.
The fonts look good! Anybody knows what character sets are supported? Greek in particular? 😉
http://www.bitstream.com/categories/news/press/2003_bitstream/01070…
Like this guy here!!!
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=51599&cid=5138029
THIS IS WHY I added the names of KDE and XFree and the “as well as others”. Because many people DON’T GET IT. They don’t understand!
Next time, if you have a problem about my writings please IM me or email me if you don’t understand WHY I do something the way I do.
Good news. I hope MS is listening. It would be nice if they could be a more sharing corporate citizen.
Since you’ve blown this out of proportion, let me reiterate my point again because it appears you did not understand me. (Please moderate this down so it doesn’t affect the flow of the forum):
…ten high quality fonts to be used with free software ( with KDE and XFree)
This is an exclusive statement that is factually inaccurate because it implies that the fonts are meant for KDE and XFree only. Additionally, it sounded strange because no mention was made of GNOME given that it was the GNOME foundation making the aggreement.
You probably intended to write:
…ten high quality fonts to be used with free software (including KDE and XFree).
This would have been perfect. Although it would have been even better to leave out the parenthesis altogether.
The current version is redundant.
[This would have been perfect. Although it would have been even better to leave out the parenthesis altogether.
The current version is redundant.]
as if nobody is copying MS core fonts for XFree
go on with your life.
in the lindows/bitstream deal, “delta-hinted” is (promanently ??) mentioned
http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/
They have at least a good Sans Serif, Serif, and Monospaced font.
I just had a look on these GNU free fonts.
They suck.
The quality of a font is NOT seen with how it renders on 14+ sizes, but how good its *hinting code* is and on sizes 8 to 12. And on these terms, these GNU fonts you linked are cheap and not better than what Linux already has. The BitStream fonts seem to be way better. When they say “high quality” they mean it. Bitstream can check out the GNU’s “FreeSerifItalic.ttf” on size 12 and have a laugh.
This is a big deal for desktop Linux. So far we’ve pretty much have had two font sets, the Luxi and URW families that shipped with XFree. Neither are great, Luxi is perhaps decent. To get nice fonts you’ve had to download the MS Webfonts package. MS license these fonts from Monotype for serious Big Bucks, they’re certainly some of the most refined fonts available.
Now I just hope upcoming distributions will understand to include these fonts with good defaults set in applications like Mozilla and OO. Perhaps removing some of the more horrible old fonts wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Fortunately at least Red Hat developers have stated in Mozilla’s bugzilla that they intend to deprecate the old core fonts (that’s the really ugly ones) and any applications that can not use fontconfig.
I’m sure Bitstream wants more distributions to do this. They give a nice minimal set of fonts away and then offer additional fonts at extra cost. By giving away the basic set for free, they build goodwill with the Linux community and distributions. The basic fonts provide everything that you “need”. Commercial distributions, like Lindows, could license additional fonts to differentiate themselves. Maybe they’ll be more likely to license from Bitstream instead of Adobe given Bitstream’s “gift”. They aren’t losing much by giving these away for free since Microsoft’s comperable “web fonts” are already free (for users, but not redistributable in for-sale products). Sounds good to me!
[I just had a look on these GNU free fonts.
They suck. ]
Agree, however they are trying to do UCS encoding table, so it is more than glyphs
[When they say “high quality” they mean it. Bitstream can check out the GNU’s “FreeSerifItalic.ttf” on size 12 and have a laugh.
]
Font hinting is not as exciting as hacking kernel, KDE, G** etc, I guess 😎
Yes, they aren’t professional quality, but there’s a reason for this. They are relatively new, so the work put into them is relatively nonexistant by comparison. They are also not made by people who get paid to do nothing but work on them. Free fonts are not like free software, outside contributions don’t work quite as well in the font world, so the quality will probably always be inferior to those fonts produced by professional font makers.
So, Eugenia, Ms. I know everything about fonts, how exactly do you personally compare the hinting? How about a screenshot showing the comparison? It’s easy to just come out and say “god that sucks”, but much more difficult to back it up with evidence and reason. I’m plenty content to use the Freefont fonts. They suit my needs plenty.
> but much more difficult to back it up with evidence and reason
http://img.osnews.com/img/2547/freefont.png
[So, Eugenia, Ms. I know everything about fonts, how exactly do you personally compare the hinting? How about a screenshot showing the comparison?]
I guess she doesn’t need to post a screen shot.
I just downloaded the freefont on to a .NET server and double clicked .ttf files inside with M$ font viewer and really thought Eugenia’s comment is quiet mild – just look at freeserif.ttf at 12 and 18 point, they feel like text printout from a printer running out of toner.
Thank you TTY.
The fact that they are free, don’t change the reality: they suck quality-wise. They have no hinting at small point sizes (that’s the difficult part, the MEAT of creating a high quality font).
If they work for you Strike, well, fine! I am happy for you. They certainly won’t work well for the most of us though.
The GNU guys took some outlines, put them in TTF format and didn’t write *any* hinting code at all. It’s like creating a splash screen and telling that your app is done…
The “meat” of font designing is the hinting code. These GNU fonts are no better (maybe even worse) than what Linux already got.
Strike: So, Eugenia, Ms. I know everything about fonts, how exactly do you personally compare the hinting? How about a screenshot showing the comparison? It’s easy to just come out and say “god that sucks”, but much more difficult to back it up with evidence and reason. I’m plenty content to use the Freefont fonts. They suit my needs plenty.
Just download the fonts and open them up in a font viewer. The difference is obvious. Some of the e’s look like c’s in sans fonts; the monospace fonts are all but unreadable because they look like notes written in pencil lead that has been lightly erased, and the serif fonts suffer the same problem but to a different degree. If they are willing to spend more time developing these fonts, that is all well and good, but it does not change the fact that these fonts are bad.
[sarcasm]
Wow, what a fantastic font – I mean, I’ve only see the lowercase letters and the digits, not the uppercase or the punctuation – and I already what to use this font exclusively, especially when I write code, because I think that it’s very easy on the eye…
[/sarcasm]
Unfortunately, that’s the kind of blunder that gives any project a bad reputation. No matter how much they improve their fonts, I’ll remember them in a year (or two or five) as the fonts that incredibly sucked, and they’ll have an incredibly hard time to overcome this first negative impression…
[The “meat” of font designing is the hinting code. These GNU fonts are no better (maybe even worse) than what Linux already got.]
That was what the situation 10 years ago, before URW donated 35 basic type 1 fonts, GNU ghostscript (2.4/2.5 ??)converted bitmap fonts to type 1 format.
In addition to quality fonts, the font rendering engine also plays an important part in the whole picture. that’s why even with Adobe basic 35, ghostscript couldn’t match Adobe PDF reader’s capability in rendering screen fonts. FreeType is better, but still need more work on anti-alias for LCD screen (M$ clear type)
Um, no antialiasing? The fonts are designed to look good antialiased. For things where you may not want antialiased text, like terminals, they even say:
For applications like xterm, users are referred to the existing UCS bitmap fonts.
I’ve never even bothered to look at the freefont collection without AA on because of that.
Agreed. The rendering engine also plays a very important role on how a Font renders. But when you have fonts with no hinting, or bad code in them, no matter how good your renderer is, fonts still going to suck.
And this is where you show that you don’t know enough about fonts.
“Hinting” is for sizes 5 to 11 or 12. “AA” is for sizes 12 to whatever. Using AA for small sizes _is wrong_ and it is also one of the reasons why the Linux distros don’t render well fonts. I am not sure if XFT2 address this issue, but using AA on small sizes does not bring the correct crispiness to the font. It is a hack and a bad idea to use AA on anything below 12. So, these fonts you are pointing out don’t have hinting code, so they are using AA to hide that fact. In other words, they are a hack and a bad one at that.
when every one gets that 200 dpi monitor, font hinting might not necessary any more 😎
just like when most people running video card with at least 16 bit/64K colors, color palette/dithering is no more headace, except for the handful few
[It is a hack and a bad idea to use AA on anything below 12. So, these fonts you are pointing out don’t have hinting code, so they are using AA to hide that fact. In other words, they are a hack and a bad one at that.]
I almost can’t live without M$ cleantype on a LCD screen, for any fonts between 8 and 12, although at first it feels like a monitor that’s a little bit out of focus 😎
In fact, others would say that 18 is the size at which you wonder whether hinting or AA is better. Below 16, they’d use hinting in 99% of the cases, and at 24 and above, AA is probably good in most cases.(that’s for latin letter. in CJK, you’ll use hinting to much higher point sizes, at least 36, possibly 48).
TTY is right, what matters is mostly pixel count, not font size. On a regular monitor (100dpi), 12 point is slightly over 16 pixels. The Sony F5x0 series displays 115 dpi, i.e. 12 point is 19 pixels.
[in CJK, you’ll use hinting to much higher point sizes, at least 36, possibly 48]
well, I am a native CJK speaker/user and I think it depends on particular fonts. Some looks good with AA starting around at 16. Not all CJK characters have 39 segements 😎
This is a subject matter, different people have different tastes. Some of my co-workers just set 15″ LCD to 800×600 to have a quasi AA feeling 8-)))))
For those who want more information about the fonts, Jim Gettys posted a nice summary at slashdot.
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=51599&cid=5138727
He also has a screenshot of it in action at:
http://zap.crl.dec.com/Screenshot-2.png
couldn’t get into store.bitstream.com since this news.
About the FreeType, they are quite good when printed on paper, though not quite up to Eugenia’s “real meat” standard.
( http://foundation.gnome.org/press/pr-bitstreamfonts.html )
It says: “The Bitstream Vera fonts will be available for free
copying and redistribution and can be modified as long
as the font name is changed.”
It should say:”…as long as the font name is NOT CHANGED”, or unchanged. Imagine everyone making up names to comply with the license, hehehehehe!, “Screaming Veris font”, …
I’d like to have a look at the license, ‘gonna look for it now, the announcement is a bit ambiguous.
http://zap.crl.dec.com/Screenshot-2.png
take a look at the lower left corner in terminal, java_vm used 95% CPU after the “killall java_vm”
fonts look nice though.
It will be interesting to see which format(s) bitstream will use. Their mention of “advanced font capabilities” in the press release leads me to believe that they are referring to truetype hints.
If this is infact the case, their release of these fonts is somewhat inconsequential for free software in general, because the method for employing native truetype hints is patented, and apple is not giving away licenses.
Part of the problem with display fonts in Linux has indeed been the lack of free fonts with high quality hints, but without equally high quality hinters as well, the quality of the fonts is irrelevant.
Freetype keeps getting better by the minute, and they deserve much praise for the work they have done. It is a great peice of software. However, because Apple controls the truetype hinting patents, any truetype fonts rendered by freetype will only be as good as the autohinter (not the native truetype hinter).
I know that people can manually turn on native truetype hinting in freetype, and some distros like Yoper even ship with it turned on by default. However, this is not a large-scale solution, and it is technically illegal.
Hopefully, Bitstream will release the fonts in postscript version too, which will enable the use of freetype’s postscript hinter. But even then, because of the nature of ps hints and tt hints, the quality just wont be as good for onscreen display.
[It should say:”…as long as the font name is NOT CHANGED”, or unchanged]
When you add some ugly characters to their donated fonts, they don’t want you to distribute the modified version using their ORIGINAL name. So it is not a typo.
Font is a special beast in copyright terms, at least in the US ???
You can basically take Adobe’s Helvetica and rename it to say “Halfca”, and sell it. The font shape is not protected by copyright laws. But font users will know where your “Halfca” are coming from.
“Good news. I hope MS is listening. It would be nice if they could be
a more sharing corporate citizen. ”
To be fair to MS (for once), they did generously release their set of
free web fonts.
Woow, some of you are hyper-critical. You know folks, criticism is the easier job. The more difficult job is getting something done
> There is also some work on
> hinting, etc, to finish up.
See, says the real deal will show up in a month or so. Maybe we should give them some time to finish the work first and see how it looks. I think the font donation is a very good start, and I think we should appreciate that someone is willing to make the donation. One thing is for sure: linux is NOT any worse for getting these fonts.
>But even then,
Which brings us to the real meat of the whole situation:
The Freetype project NEEDS to use the patent from Apple. Either for free, or for a donated fee, they need the patented hinter. Without it, even in year 2020 fonts will still look crap on Linux (as long the humanity still uses TTF).
[Without it, even in year 2020 fonts will still look crap on Linux]
Unless of course that 300 dpi monitors are getting cheaper.
In twenty years, I guess computer users will get visualization through means other than a monitor – some probes befind your neck ??? and “smart fonts” will ask you “am I looking nice today ?”
>>
I know that people can manually turn on native truetype hinting in freetype, and some distros like Yoper even ship with it turned on by default. However, this is not a large-scale solution, and it is technically illegal.
>>
Being able to EASILY turn it on (by simply editing fontconfig, or whatever file), something that as you imply is happening with major distros, is also “technically illegal”, remember the DMCA Anti-circumvention clause. Hopefuly no one will sue.
I assume that as Redhat don’t play MP3s for patent reasons they wouldn’t break the Apple patent. Does anyone have comparison screenshots to see how much better it can get? As is, I’m quite happy with the Redhat rendering.
You can basically take Adobe’s Helvetica and rename it to say “Halfca”, and sell it. The font shape is not protected by copyright laws. But font users will know where your “Halfca” are coming from.
That’s not quite true.
The font shape cannot be copyrighted, but the implementation can be.
So it is illegal to resell Adobe’s Helvetica without permission from Adobe.
But, you can print out Helvetica, give it to a font creator and ask them to reproduce it and that’s legal (but probably not cost-effective)
Which brings us to the real meat of the whole situation:
The Freetype project NEEDS to use the patent from Apple. Either for free, or for a donated fee, they need the patented hinter. Without it, even in year 2020 fonts will still look crap on Linux (as long the humanity still uses TTF).
I don’t think the situation is so desperate as this. I just meant to say that what is really needed is work on the hinters, not just better free fonts.
As the quality of the autohinter and ps hinter continues to improve, and continues to be optimized for small faces, the situation will begin to look better. For instance, here’s a relatively recent shot of the autohinter (with some modifications) rendering Times New Roman:
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/tnr-auto.png
It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s better than it was, and it will continue to get better. Most of those modifications are being integrated into freetype’s CVS.
As the Linux-on-the-desktop movement continues, more people (and companies) will have a greater interest in improving that code, and even more work will get done. For example, look at what Red Hat has done (their solution is still not great, but it is indicative of a growing interest and motivation).
You are right tty, MY BAD, I’m sorry, it wasn’t a typo. It makes perfect sense that if you modify those fonts you must not use their brand name, however their brand name has to appear somewhere or else the license would dilute after being distributed. No one pretended to protect font shape here, this is software. ‘Still looking for the license, it sounds too good.
hehe, my head stuck at bitmap fonts
just render some nice fonts in bitmap format and then embedded them in un-hinted scalable font.
The “identifable” text is too close, as is “derived” and “themselves”… I know it will get better but I don’t like having to trust in the future of software to see any benefit in using it now.
Bytecode hinting is quickly becoming irrelevent. The FreeType autohinter has improved by leaps and bounds. If anybody remembers those screenshots of my desktop that I posted on OSNews a while ago ( http://heliosc.home.mindspring.com/fonts.png and http://heliosc.home.mindspring.com/kde31.png ), they were generated with Postscript fonts (no bytecode interpreter involved). in fact, improvements to the hinters from xft-hack (which should be included in 2.1.4 or 2.1.5) improve italic fonts quite a bit, so the current rendering is even better than what is shown in those screenshots. True, those were with Adobe fonts, but Postscript fonts have no conception of the tedious bytecode hinting programs that TrueType fonts use. Postscript fonts are simple, straightforward – actual hints. I just checked with the (free) Luxi Postscript fonts, and they look very good as well.
The font size you are using Rayiner is huge. Normal desktops don’t have so big fonts. Please use normal sizes and then post a screenshot. Rendering bigger sizes is not as difficult as rendering points 8 to 12.
here’s a question? do all these different fonts (and font types? PS, type 1, tt???) print accurately on postscript printers? by that i mean exactly correctly?
i know that i’ve tried to generate PDF via different “routes”, say from lyx, tex->pdf usinf pdftex… and tex->dvi->ps->pdf and the pages are slightly different. and different again on the printer!
anyone who knows – i’d be grateful if you shared the knowledge.
n
>>
The fonts look pretty good even with the Freetype hinter turned off: part of the reason why is that we do anti-aliasing these days. And the autohinter in freetype continues to improve (which also avoids the patents).
And Linux is even more important/likely to get to serious volume in parts of the world where the TrueType patents do not apply: they are only US and Britain.
>>
( http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=51599&threshold=1&co… )
Well reading JG’s comments on the agreement it seems like it is truly a honest donation from Bitstream, my concern really was if projects like OpenBeos could use them. So far, reading the press release and Jim Gettys comments on the agreement, looks like they can. Although Bitsream and the Gnome Foundation retain the right to modify/make additions to the fonts under the BitStream Vera brand name.
Full set of 10 fonts here:
http://store.bitstream.com/searchresults.asp?category=&searchtext=P…
(beware of the slashdot effect during sometime for the link above)
Okay, here I made my own instead. And the fonts are even small (and look good).
This webpage in galeon (using freetype):
http://57r1k3.pwn3d.us/~ddipaolo/misc/images/screenshots/galeon-fre…
(yeah yeah, the domain is l33t, it’s a joke)
The config used to get it:
http://57r1k3.pwn3d.us/~ddipaolo/misc/images/screenshots/galeon-fre…
Looks fine to me. Any comments?
*Are you sure* Galeon is using FreeFonts for the page? If you do have installed Verdana and Arial, Galeon WILL use these instead, because the HTML page asks for these particular fonts.
In any way, no, the fonts are not rendering as they should. The “By Eugenia…” line is one point bigger than it should be however the quality of THAT font is much better than the one showing inside the story text. The bold in the story headers is “edgy” and the normal rendering is not great either.
Again, the AA is not the answer for small sizes. Hinting is. And these freefonts have NO hinting code. And that makes them “not of high quality”.
You were right, they were in fact, using the font faces they were told. BUT, I forced them to use the config fonts (see the “Always use these fonts” checkbox in the config screenshot), and it still looks fine and dandy to me. The sizes also seem to be perhaps corrected now.
Until we get screens capable of much better resolution than those available nowadays, the best option for neatly displaying small font sizes is no AA: Microsoft standard method for smoothing fonts.
RedHat should copycat this and provide an option in the display settings menu for a smart font smoothing method like the one Microsoft has since Windows95.
Yuck!! I suggest you take the previous screenshot and the new one and you compare them side by side: see the lack of crispines or how the characters collide with each other now! See how much better Arial and Verdana were rendering (and the rendering still was not flawless) than these terrible free fonts you have now there that are so much out of focus because the lack of hinting!! Then, check out how badly characters are “colliding” with their next character! Bad, bad fonts!
Sweet Jesus !! Is that the best you Linuts can do ? God even on a bad day Windows stills blows Linux out the water. My god !! Why does everything need to look like you just turned on bold and forget to turn it back off ? Even when people give you guys free fonts you still can’t render worth snot !
which is a die hard linuts
http://tty.netfirms.com/xp_oss.htm
IE and linux browser side by side
clear type is on for XP, freefont screen shot is copied from a previous post
>IE and linux browser side by side
Windows’ rendering rocks. That AA showing inside Galeon is so blurry that it is impossible to read and not have a headache half an hour later. Plus, Linux browsers still don’t render the fonts on the right sizes. When I say SIZE=2 in HTML code I mean it.
I really have to wonder, did anyone ask Microsoft for their fonts? Or did they expect Microsoft to take the first move? Sorry, but I have just got to ask. Anyway, Microsoft’s fonts is free to use, as long you don’t redistribute it with your commercial product. That’s good enough for me.
Even on WinXP, alternate browser still has something to imporve
http://tty.netfirms.com/cjk.htm
Opera 7 tries to do font switching between western and CJK fonts, but they messed up some basic rules in the process
Why is the supposedly self-sufficient GNU community always dependent on outside donations to get things done?
OpenOffice, Mozilla, and now Bitstream fonts.
Why do you expect M$ to give you fonts for free? They’ve paid for them, so why should you get them gratis?
Real GNU Linux users will ignore this offer and aid the noble GNU FreeFonts project instead.
We could go about it like with GNU development in general.
IOW, someone decides to have a go at the F, gives up after a while and uploads the remains to the CVS. Then someone else decides to do some work on kerning in the lower regions of the upper-case B. Come autumn, we’ll have a production-ready set of fonts, both with and sans serifs and a monospaced variation as well. It will of course be just as tightly integrated and polished as other noble products such as The X Windowing System Release Eleven (hope I got it right this time) and available in as many variations as there are Linux and The X Windowing System Release Eleven desktop distros, but that’s freedom of choice.
This is another challenge for the GNU community to prove what they’re worth!
Anyone who likes ClearType on a CRT must either have really bad eyesight or use a really crappy CRT…
I am using LCDs – two LCDs driven by XP and a notebook
CRT is not pixel synced, so its not good for clear type AA
When they say 10 fonts, does that mean 10 fonts or 3 fonts ?
I mean, a font has to be distributed in normal, italic, bold and bold-italic forms. So, if each font is, in reality, 4 fonts, then 10 fonts should approximatively represent 3 different fonts.
That seems confirmed by Abiword’s screenshot where we only see 3 fonts (Sans, Serif and Fixed).
3 fonts would be cool but 10 would be even better !
Personally, I would only 2 more fonts: a fantasy (like Comic) one, and a cursive (like Chancery) one.
>> Anyone who likes ClearType on a CRT must either have really bad eyesight or use a really crappy CRT…
Thanks for calling my Iiyama a crappy CRT…
> When they say 10 fonts, does that mean 10 fonts or 3 fonts ?
Technically, they are 10 different fonts, belonging to 3 different font families. The Prima Serif family doesn’t have italic variations; the Xft2/Fontconfig system can do artificial obliquing of the Normal and Bold variations if needed.
Bold, Italic, and Oblique variants (and the combinations thereof) really are different fonts, because the rules for rendering (hinting and kerning) change as the glyphs themselves change.
> Why is the supposedly self-sufficient GNU community always
> dependent on outside donations to get things done?
> OpenOffice, Mozilla, and now Bitstream fonts.
Ahem… *dons another hat*
OpenOffice.org is hardly the only office suite out there. Take a look at AbiWord, KOffice, Gnumeric, blah blah blah.
Mozilla was based on Netscape code, but the Mozilla coders found it to be so convoluted and hackish that they re-did the renderer from scratch. It proved to be so good, Netscape back-ported parts of it into their own browser.
Bitstream. Ah, $DEITY bless them. Typeface design is one of those fields where, if you know what you’re doing, you’re already working for a huge foundry. That kind of talent and dedication is very difficult to find “on the street”, and the work that goes into true professional font design requires equipment that not many people have available for casual use.
Thank you, Bitstream.