Re: [ft] Font for multiligual applications with non GPL free license

[mpsuzuki]

Hi,

On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 10:57:20 +0100
Frans Grotepass <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 1. license
>>    you want more permissive than GPL? like MIT, BSD, public domain etc?
>>
>
>Sorry, I mentioned this in the title, but not in the body. 
>
>Does GPL fonts specifically also require me to open the source of my whole 
>application? If so, then I am definitely looking for a BSD/MIT style 
>licensing.

I expected so. I'm not sure if including (unmodified) GPL
fonts into rom forces you to publish other parts of rom
under GPL, nor if displaying something by GPL fonts forces
you to publish it under GPL. I don't want to think so,
in fact, we can find many Linux-based cellarphones including
GPL-incompatible fonts. However, it should be clarified by
the GPLed font producers.

For the font licensed under more permissive than GPL, check:
        http://wiki.x.org/wiki/FreeFonts
as you can see, if excluding GPLed fonts, the supported
languages are very restricted. I'm afraid most of OpenType
fonts for Indic languages are licensed under GPL. In addition,
you will have to install separated fonts for each languages.
It's a bit troublesome works. For each language fonts, check:
        http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html
It is not free font portal, but useful links.

I suppose there should be arabic and hebrew free fonts
licensed under more permissive than GPL. I searched fonts
for Omega TeX but I could not find good portal. Sorry.

>> 2. multilingual

>I do believe that the text layout functionality would be handy in the future, 
>but at this stage, the application can't do vertically alligned text. This is 
>mainly due to an FPGA/hardware limitation. This could be solved in the 
>future, but for now, it will remain horisontally alligned text.

>For debugging purposes, a GPL Vertically alligned font would be handy, just to 
>see what my rendering does with the text. It will, however be phase two.

I'm very very happy to hear that you mentioned about vertical
text layout :-)

Regards,
mpsuzuki