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

[Frans Grotepass]

On Thursday 24 November 2005 10:01, you wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 08:43:15 +0100
>
> Frans Grotepass <address@hidden> wrote:
> >I am looking for a font to use in our embedded application. I would prefer
> > it if the font was as complete as possible for multiligual purposes.
>
> You should state the conditions more clearly:
>
> 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.

> 2. multilingual
>    you want to use single language at the same time?
>    or you want to use multi language at the same time?
>    which languages you want to cover?
>    some people define "multilingual" as the coverage of iso-8859-X.
>    some people define it as that of iso-2022-X.
>    some people define it as that of iso-10646-1.
>    some people define it as that of iso-10646-1, 2 and later.
>    nothing to say, you cannot support arabic, indic, and
>    some CJK scripts without OpenType/TrueType GX text layout
>    functionalities. you're looking for "free font" with such
>    text layout infos?
>

Our device is a calibrated measurement instrument. It will be used in over 60 
countries, including the far east (CJK, Taiwan and possibly Thailand) and 
middle east (arabic). Internally the text processing is fully set for full 
Unicode support (Capable of using the extended multiligual planes).

Since it is a calibrated unit, the software must be sealed. Afterall, changing 
the fontfile could generate garbage and compromise the measurement result. I 
would prefer to offer ideally 1 and possibly a limited set of fonts that 
should offer a full coverage of the Unicode (3.0) characterset. Obviously 
this might be a little far fetched and more than what is required, so a 
decent coverage of the Basic multilingual plane should be sufficient for 
almost all of the applications.

Obviously I want to do my work only once and the result must handle as many 
possibilities as possible.

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.


Best regards,

Frans Grotepass