Fonts for distribution

[Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au>]

Hi guys :)

Simos suggested I write to Jim Gettys, who very kindly wrote back  
with helpful info:

On 22/02/2006, at 8:06 AM, Jim Gettys wrote:
> Vera will be having some wider coverage, but still be far from a  
> unicode
> font.  You might look at the fonts that SIL just released, but I  
> suspect
> they are not hinted for screen use.
>
> http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_software.asp?id=112
> http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_software.asp?id=91
> http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_software.asp?id=83
>
> They've also made gentium available.

Gentium with the Open Font Licence is very good news indeed. It is a  
true Unicode font. I also think Doulos (the second link) is well  
worth testing.
> > Would you please tell me where we're up to with [the Bistream  
> > Vera] negotiation? Can
> > we reopen it with a reasonable chance of success, do you think?
>
> Not from Bitstream.  I will be poking at other font vendors.  I  
> recently
> poked at Adobe, but it isn't the part of Adobe that deals with  
> fonts, so
> I have no idea if I'll get anywhere from that attempt.

I have wished him luck with that (May the poke be with you), and  
hopefully we'll hear about it if there is any progress. I personally  
think that Adobe's assumption that ordinary people can afford to pay  
$2000 for a program, doesn't indicate much understanding of life in  
general, much less life in third world countries.
> We also make clear to governments getting involved in OLPC ($100  
> laptop)
> that they need to invest in making fonts available somehow.  For
> example, Thailand is working with Bitstream to bring Thai into the  
> fold.

Also an encouraging move.

What do you guys think? If we could release Gentium and maybe Doulos  
with distros, our users have effective, true Unicode fonts which will  
display all localizations.

Everson Mono turns out to be shareware (I don't remember that when I  
was first pointed to it :( ):

http://www.evertype.com/emono/emshareware.html

so we are going to need an effective monospaced Unicode font from  
somewhere. I find Monaco is OK in the terminal, but I suspect it's  
not free to distribute.

Ideas? :)

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhÃm  
Viát hÃa phán mám tá do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN