Re: Miso fonts - need some font expert help

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Le Mer 3 février 2010 03:05, Máirín Duffy a écrit :
> Hi folks!

Hi Máirín,

Thank you for your font evangelizing efforts! They're really appreciated, and
not only Fedora-side.

> I've been having a conversation with Mårten Nettelbladt over email
> lately. He is the creator of the freeware font Miso:
>
> http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Miso
>
> We've been discussing the possibility of Mårten relicensing Miso under a
> Fedora-compatible font license. Mårten is amenable to such a license,
> but he very rightly has a concern about some issues with the font he'd
> like to correct before spreading the font far and wide with such a
> license.

We accept many font licenses but we really prefer OFL and GPL + font
exception. That makes it easier to share material between fonts.

> Here are the issues Mårten raised that he'd like help addressing - does
> anyone have ideas on how to do any of these? (Some of these are
> suggestions he's gotten from users - are they the right way to do it?
> E.g., the otf file naming suggestion?)
>
> - The OTF file to all lower case and use the same base name
> for the regular as in the TTF files. This would result in miso-reg.otf,
> miso-bol.otf and mis-lig.otf.

Linux and fontconfig does not care about file naming at all. It's better to
have a clear base latin file name without spaces that tells people what's in
the font, but for us it is a purely cosmetic issue.

> - For fontconfig (which is used on Linux) it would be better the family
> and style for the light font would be slightly altered. This would
> result in "family=Miso Light" and "style=Regular", in stead of
> "family=Miso" and "style=Light" because most of the software only
> recognizes Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic and does not know how
> to make a Light available. Unless, it would be available as "Miso Light
> ~ Regular".

This is very bad advice. We'll complain during package review if this change
is made. We want fonts to respect strictly the naming standardised by
Microsoft in its WWS whitepaper (for the same reasons Microsoft did it, have
font names that apps can use to apply advanced style decisions). It is true
all apps do not support the new naming style completely. They will be fixed
faster than the font can be changed in the future (they need to be fixed
anyway because of the new proprietary fonts that only use the new standard).
In the meanwhile fonts can and should declare two sets of names, with the
new-style one first. Old apps will only see the second one. This is what
DejaVu does and what our default font does is good enough for other fonts. You
can open DejaVu in fontforge or any other font editor and copy its naming
logic.

See also :
A. the naming parts of
http://nim.fedorapeople.org/Understanding%20fonts%20and%20fontconfig.tar.gz
(I need to finish this someday).
B. fix-font-naming in fontpackages-tools
C. http://blogs.msdn.com/text/attachment/2249036.ashx
   http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/typotechnica2007/Font%20names.pdf
   http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/atypi2006/CSS%20&%20OT%2015.pdf

> - Provide URL Vendor in the OTF and TTF metadata for all fonts.

Moderately useful, especially if the URL is not stable long-term

> - Provide PANOSE metadata, see
> http://panose.com/ProductsServices/pan1.aspx . Especially Family Kind
> (2) Serif Style (15) would greatly improve selection of this font via
> tools like fontmatrix.

Completely optional. Too many fonts have bad panose info for apps to use it
anymore.

URL and Panose are almost completely useless in practice. Focus on the fields
which are shown in the GNOME font viewer (description and licensing). Please
also make sure :

A. the font version is properly incremented each time the font is changed, and
all the font files in the font family use the same versions

B. licensing is properly documented in the font metadata and as a plain text
file distributed with the font in the same zip or tarball (the exact license
text not a fuzzy reference that can mean anything legally)

> - Offer an Italic and Bold Italic for Miso and an Italic for Miso Light.
> Probably for such a type, these will be simply slanted. However, when
> you do it (instead of a fake italic which is slanted with a default
> value of the software using your type) you are able to control the angle
> of the italic versions.

This is a great long-term goal but should not block initial publication. We'll
pick up additions later when they are published. Font authors tend to be
perfectionists (which is good) but if they follow their instincts they never
deem anything ready for publication.

> - Also, the TTF-files are the originals and they were converted to OTF
> by someone. Some people have reported trouble with the spacing of "c"
> "John" said: (http://www.omkrets.se/miso-spotted/#comment-117)
> using true type resolve problem also in xpress - So,  that would have to
> be fixed as well, perhaps just a new conversion, or create OTF files
> directly from the font software. I used TypeTool and it didn't have that
> option.

Nowadays TTF and OTF are 100% similar feature-wise (even Adobe people say it).
However they have slight technical differences, so converting between TTF and
OTF can have side effects and is not recommended in general. Stick with the
format the font used at first and do not try to change it.

Please also ask upstream to:

A. complete almost-complete language coverages (fontconfig will ignore a font
if it is missing just one glyph in a language). You can identify those with
FC=DEBUG=256 fc-query <font-file.ttf> | filter-langcover
ttfcoverage <font-file.ttf> | filter-unicover
(from fontpackages-tools, the second one is not as useful as the first one)

B. as many font format errors as reported by fontlint are fixed as possible
(fontlint can be excessive so the font author need not follow fontlint
blindly. But looking at fontlint messages is a good idea).

Best regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot


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