Greek (graphis) Fonts and Patents + UTF8 Greek Fonts

[Steve Stavropoulos]

 Όπως όλοι θα ξέρετε, το RedHat μέχρι και την έκδοση 7.3 συμπεριλάμβανε
και τα iso-8859-7 από το project graphis. Στην έκδοση 8.0 και στην νέα
beta (phoebe) αυτά λείπουν. Πριν 1-2 μέρες έφερα το θέμα για συζήτηση
στο #redhat @ irc.freenode.org όπου παρόν ήταν αρκέτοι υπάλληλοι της
RedHat (ένας από αυτούς είναι ο mharris), οπότε ακολουθεί το σχετικό
log. (το έχω κόψει ώστε να μείνουν μόνο τα σημαντικά στοιχεία)

 (NotHere) fonts included in 7.3 are missing from 8.0 and phoebe
 <mendel> NotHere: Well, raise bug reports.
  (NotHere) mendel: I have. The "answer" is "Oh, we forgot to put those
in" and now after many months I see phoebe with the fonts missing
 <mharris> NotHere: What fonts?
 (NotHere) mharris: iso8859-7 fonts 
 <mharris> NotHere: Those were remoted intentionally at the request of
the owner of Trademarks that were present in them. 
 (NotHere) mharris: eh?? Are you sure?
 <mharris> NotHere: I am a Red Hat employee, so yes.  I am sure.
 <mharris> Greek fonts you're referring to, correct?
 (NotHere) mharris: yes
 <mharris> Exactly.
 === NotHere very very confused 
 <mharris> NotHere: Also removed were the "ulT1mo" fonts.
 (NotHere) mharris: have you got more info on the iso8859-7 fonts case?
 (NotHere) who asked for the removal? 
 (NotHere) mharris: If I gather the fonts that aren't copyrighted, or I
have the owner permission is there a chance that they will be included
in 8.1? 
 <mharris> NotHere: The fonts will not return ever.  I will /msg you
with the official Red Hat statement on this.


 The "official" RedHat statement is:

=== [mharris] "Red Hat has been contacted by Agfa Monotype Corp. about
certain font modules distributed in Red Hat Linux, among other Linux
distributions, which Monotype believes infringe their copyrights.  These
font modules were prepared and initially made available as freely
distributable software by parties other than Red Hat.  Without
addressing the merits of the Monotype claims, but in deference to those
claims and in cooperation with Monotype's e
=== [mharris]  to protect their copyrighted materials, Red Hat has
agreed to remove the font modules in question from its distribution. 
This has been done with the distributions of Red Hat Linux available
from www.redhat.com."
(NotHere) thanks
=== [mharris] (I had to hunt it down internally, hence the delay)
=== NotHere depreced
=== [mharris] Here's also a publically posted version: 
http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/redhat-mirror/2002-June/003178.html


 Kai twra as poume ligo kai greek support se UTF-8 fonts.

(NotHere) are there any public domain unicode fonts with greek letters
included? 
<mharris> NotHere: you can probably find tonnes of free TTF Greek fonts
on google
(NotHere) mharris: I would be interested if they were included in the
next redhat release :)
<mharris> NotHere: I said "free", not "freely redistributable without
royalty" 
(NotHere) mharris: that's why I asked for "public domain" fonts :) 
<mharris> There are none to the best of my knowledge.  However... free
fonts alone are not what is needed.
<mharris> In order for fonts to be included in Red Hat Linux, they must:
<mharris> 1) Be complete for the languages they claim to support.
<mharris> 2) Look decent.  Crappy looking fonts are considered worse
than no fonts at all.
=== NotHere couldn't aggree more with 2 :)
<mharris> 3) Be licensed under a license which permits unlimited royalty
free redistribution in a commercial product sold for profit.
<mharris> 4) Preferably allow modification, and preferably be GPL or
other DFSG license 
<mharris> 5) Preferably Type1, TrueType, or OpenType scalable fonts. 
(NotHere) how hard is it to add greek support in the already included
with RH unicode fonts?
<streeter> 6) buy us all Ice Cream.
<mharris> 6) Bitmapped fonts are considered horribly ugly in general,
and most likely will not be included. 
<mharris> NotHere: You'd have to design Greek glyphs, in other words -
create your own font. 
(NotHere) mharris: do you know any good tool for the job?
<mharris> Note that a given font doesn't necessarily allow modification 
<mharris> pfaedit is one 


 Synopsizontas, exoume dyo 8emata:
 1) Copyright sta iso8859-7 fonts pou exoume hdh
 2) Greek support se FREE UTF8 fonts (pou den 3erw an exoume)
 8a h8ela tis apopseis sas.

 Gia to 2 pisteyw oti mia kalh idea 8a htan na paroume ta utf8 fonts pou
dinei h Redhat sto 8.0 ta opoia einai POLY omorfa kai na pros8esoume
tous ellhnikous xarakthres.