The X.org xc/fonts/bdf/ includes only very old and ugly cyrillic fonts (taken from "Cronyx" package). But for years all distributions (at least Linux ones) include another set of fonts, so-called fonts-KOI8-R-*. This set is based on regular X fonts and is 100% visually compatible with them (which is not the case with xc/fonts/bdf/cyrillc/). Additionally, xc/fonts/bdf/cyrillc/ doesn't include ukrainian and byelorussian glyphs, which ARE present in fonts-KOI8-R-*. This absence of up-to-date fonts in X tree leads to various problems for both distribution vendors and users. And placing these fonts directly to X.org xc/fonts/bdf/ seems to be the most natural solution. There was a long discussion on this topic at RedHat's bugzilla (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=68531) which includes much more information. And the conclusion was to "report the bug upstream", which is what I'm doing now. In case of any problems/questions with adding the fonts I'll be glad to give any required help. BTW, adding cyrillics "in a right way", i.e., to U+0400 range of iso10646-1 fonts, will also solve the bug #708.
Just a little comment: since adding glyphs from KOI8-encoded fonts to iso10646-1 ones can be tricky, there are more appropriate fonts, which contain cyrillics already as subset of 10646-1, at http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/cyr-rfx/srctgz/cyr-rfx-iso10646-0400-1.1.bdfs.tgz
I produced all the *-iso10646-1 versions of the old BDF core fonts. Merging in your Cyrillic glyphs into the Adobe BDF fonts is still on my todo list (along with adding in some B&H extensions that I received from Charles Bigelow a while ago, plus various Unicode 4.0 extensions that I received recently). Thanks for the reminder. An open and still unresolved question is the licence issue for these ancient Adobe pixel fonts (Helvetica, etc.): Are we still allowed to call these fonts "Adobe" after we have added lots of glyphs that were not originally designed by either Adobe or B&H? You are trying to add Cyrillic glyphs to Latin-only fonts that never did contain any Cyrillic glyphs. When I did the ISO10646-1 extension, I simple reused and superimposed glyphs that were already in the fonts. I did not add completely new glyphs, which is what you suggest we should do here. In practice, I don't believe that any original suppliers worries any more about licence issues of ancient bitmap fonts, so I suggest that we just do it, unless anyone here seriously objects. What I will do is to merge these fonts properly with the ISO10646-1 fonts, and from there various 8-bit fonts (including KOI-8R) can be automatically extracted using the existing facilities. We should certainly not add these as separately maintained 8-bit fonts.
> What I will do is to merge these fonts properly with the ISO10646-1 fonts, > and from there various 8-bit fonts (including KOI-8R) can be automatically > extracted using the existing facilities. We should certainly not add these > as separately maintained 8-bit fonts. Yes, this is quite clear. I'm sorry for a bit misleading bugreport title. Of course, the intent was/is to add cyrillic glyphs to 10646-1 fonts. Regarding license issues: I fully agree with you that probably original suppliers don't care about these ancient fonts. And all Adobe fonts (Courier, Helvetica, Times) contain a license in COMMENT clause, which in particular states that "Permission to use, copy, MODIFY, distribute and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted..." So, at least those fonts allow any manipulations -- both computer-authored (as are yours) and human-made (as adding cyrillics). And, if there are any doubts -- why can't we implement your 2-years old idea to rename all these fonts to "-XFree86-something" or "-Xorg-something" and create a coherent set of aliases with names "-Adobe-*" and "-B&H-*".
Yes, but the original suppliers may care about the use of their name in the name of the font, unless they have blessed their use. Remember, Adobe, B&H, Bitstream's most important single asset is their reputation.... Changing the primary name while providing aliases from the names with the vendor's name in them is probably prudent, for the antique fonts. In the Bitstream case, we should attempt to work with them when we add glyphs.
Lack of explicit approval/license does not give an implied approval/license to make changes. While I absolutely agree that this stuff is old enough that most of these companies probably do not care, it is a legal landmind to /assume/ that that will be the case. Not only X.Org/XFree86.org take the risks, but all vendors shipping the codebases from either project. Please get the appropriate legally binding approval from Adobe, B&H, or whoever before committing any changes to the fonts, in order to ensure that we do not have fonts in the source tree which have legal ambiguity. This may be considered by some people to be annoying red tape to have to jump through, but in today's legal atmosphere, I consider it to be a very important legal requirement. Note: I am not speaking authoritatively for X.Org, just offering a personal opinion as a community member who is strongly concerned about open source intellectual property issues in general. Hopefully someone at X.Org can offer an authoritative response though. Thanks for investigating these issues!
Okay, so, the consensus is that changing the -FOUNDRY-FAMILY part and making appropriate aliases is enough to escape any legal problems. The following scheme looks sufficient: -Adobe-Times -> -Xorg-Dutch -Adobe-Helvetica -> -Xorg-Swiss -Adobe-Courier -> -Xorg-Courier -Adobe-New Century Schoolbook -> -Xorg-Nuovo Secolo Libro -B&H-Lucida* -> -Xorg-Serene* RATIONALE: "Dutch" and "Swiss" (without numbers 8NN and 7NN) are copyright-free equivalents of "Times" and "Helvetica". "Courier" name, if memory serves me right, is in public domain. I couldn't find an appropriate analog for "New Century Schoolbook", so gave it a voluntary italian translation. Regarding "Lucida": in 2000, when I've just finished cyrillization of X fonts and was ready to release them, I had a brief correspondence with Chuck Bigelow. He confirmed that distributing modified versiona under "B&H" or "Lucida" names is NOT appropriate, but upon changing these names everything IS OK. So, in CYR-RFX/fonts-KOI8-R these fonts are called "Serene" and "SereneTypewriter".
Assigning this bug to myself.
If we rename the fonts into -Xorg-*, we would still have to provide -Adobe-* aliases for them, simply for backwards compatibility. Is an XLFD alias a legally sufficient distinction? Calling them -Xorg-Times-* -Xorg-Helvetica-* -Xorg-Courier-* ... would certainly be far less obscure for most users. Where exactly did you hear about the legal status of these font names? The only legal possibility of protecting such names that I am aware of is to register them as a trademark in lots and lots of countries. Has this been done for these fonts names, and if so by whom, in which countries, and when? While I like sound of the Dutch/Swiss/etc. names, they are a bit obscure. And who guarantees us that they have not been trademarked for some other font already? How about the aliases that the ISO chose in the CGM standard for Times, Helvetica and Courier fonts (the metrics of which are defined in the CGM standard), namely -- if I recall correctly -- Serif, Sans and Mono? It seems SuSE has used these same names for some outline fonts in their distribution.
> If we rename the fonts into -Xorg-*, we would still have to provide > -Adobe-* aliases for them, simply for backwards compatibility. Of course. That's what was done in CYR-RFX for B&H fonts. > Is an XLFD alias a legally sufficient distinction? Yes. The alias is like saying "the font X is similar to font Y" -- that's not a subject to copyright and trademarking. And that's exactly the situation which lasts for 4 years with Serene fonts in CYR-RFX, which are aliased via Lucida names. > Calling them -Xorg-Times-*, -Xorg-Helvetica-*, -Xorg-Courier-*, ... > would certainly be far less obscure for most users. Agreed. But if there are "Times", "Helvetica", etc. provided (nobody cares that these are just aliases), 99% of users will be satisfied. > Where exactly did you hear about the legal status of these font names? Well, IANAL, but I got the feeling that these names are more or less trademarked, when skimmed through various fonts suppliers' sites. BTW, the helv*.bdf and tim*.bdf fonts contain the following phrases: Helvetica is a trademark of Linotype-Hell AG and/or its subsidiaries. Times is a trademark of Linotype-Hell AG and/or its subsidiaries. As I understand, that's why "Swiss" and "Dutch" names are used by companies other than Linotype/Monotype. Well, "Times" is more questionable than "Helvetica", since it wass derived from the name of newspaper (in 1930s, AFAIR), and there are many diffirent variations by various companies (Times Roman, Times New Roman, TimesMT, etc.). IMHO, selecting names different from original ones will give us 100% protection from copyright problems.
Markus, do you need any help with integrating cyrillics? If so -- please, don't hesitate to ask either me or Leonid -- we'll be glad to provide any support required. (This absence of cyrillics among regular fonts has been a big PITA for years, and still feeds us with lots of problems :-)
A KOI8-R repertoire extension of the ancient Adobe and B&H proportional BDF pixel fonts seems no longer really necessary. This feature request has now become a rather low priority, because progress with the use of client-side TrueType font technology has rendered proportional BDF fonts mostly obsolete, especially for the KOI8-R repertoire, which is now covered well by much better available WGL4 TrueType fonts. Most modern X11 applications that use proportional fonts (Firefox 1.0 and all the other Mozilla suit tools, all the KDE and GNOME tools and anything else built on top of Qt of GTK+, Open Office, many other older programs, even the good old fvwm2 window manager!) are now by default using client-side FreeType rendering of TrueType fonts. In addition, many modern OS distributions make it extremely easy for an installer to load the "TrueType core fonts for the Web" that Microsoft has licensed for free redistribution (as long as they are not modified or sold as part of a product). So X11 users now have easy access to high-quality fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman that cover the full WGL4 repertoire, which is a superset of a KOI8-R and ISO 8859-{1,2,3,4,5,7,9,10,13,15}. These are very easy to install, for example under SuSE Linux using the "fetchmsttfonts.sh" script that is offered by the YaST Online Update tool, and equivalent tools in other modern operating-system distributions. Fact is that on a typical 2004 Linux distribution, KOI8-R characters work already out of the box today from TrueType fonts. http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ http://volker.dnsalias.net/linux/msttcorefonts.html
Markus, there still IS a need for cyrillics in bitmapped 10646-1 fonts. There are at least two reasons. First, at small sizes (less than 16-20) the legibility of hand-tuned bitmapped fonts is higher. Second, the vector fonts which are available with cyrillics, are simply not adequate. Yes, there are "free" Micro$oft fonts, but they a) have uncertainties with their licence, and b) are not-so-good -- for example, "arial italic" is just neither italic, nor oblique -- it is an awful mixture. And those cyrillic-enabled fonts which come with X11 (or are bundled with distros) are not on par with "good old adobe fonts": it seems that they just have a different "font repertoire". The best of X11 vector fonts (e.g. Luxi) don't have cyrillics at all (and it is unlikely to change). And those "vector cyrillics" which are present, are TOO FAT. I'm in Japan now, far away from my office and my computer, so I can't provide screenshots right now. But beleive me -- currently readily-available-from- distro fonts are NOT adequate.
I second that. CYR-RFX is the main cyrillic font on my systems. Please find out a way to keep Adobe Helvetica, Times and Courier, they are still indispensable.
Markus, Probably you believe, that eventually this problem will become outdated (as users go to FreeType rendering) and it will not be necessary to solve it. Unfortunately, it is not true. As you see, time goes, but users still require this issue to be resolved. And I'm another one who vote for it.
Sorry about the phenomenal bug spam, guys. Adding xorg-team@ to the QA contact so bugs don't get lost in future.
> there still IS a need for cyrillics in bitmapped 10646-1 fonts > at small sizes (less than 16-20) the legibility of hand-tuned bitmapped > fonts is higher This days the issue yet not gone. Hence ping... :) I still have to complete the ordinary fonts by the ones from ftp://ftp.asplinux.org/pub/sources/SRPMS.11.2/fonts-ISO10646-1-0.4-0.3asp.src.rpm at least to see the good Helvetica on my favourite 1024x768 monitor...
Can this please get a status update
Seems nothing changed yet.
Mass closure: This bug has been untouched for more than six years, and is not obviously still valid. Please reopen this bug or file a new report if you continue to experience issues with current releases.
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