Processing 1.0 - Processing Discourse

penguin42 YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 4	Font copyrights? May 28^th, 2008, 10:19pm Hi, In the processing.org sketch environment there is a 'create font' option; where do these fonts come from? Are they distributed with processing.org or do they come from the host? What's the copyright on them if they get included in a processing.org program I created?

REAS

Re: Font copyrights?
Reply #1 - May 29^th, 2008, 6:10pm

If you download the Processing software, you'll see that no fonts are included with it. The "create font" tool works with fonts installed on your machine. "Create font" makes images of the individual letters at a size that you specify, it doesn't include the actual font data. As a result, you can distribute programs that use these letter representations.

Casey

penguin42

Re: Font copyrights?
Reply #2 - May 30^th, 2008, 3:20am

Are you saying that for any font even commercial ones that someone may have loaded onto their machine that it's acceptable to distribute the images of the letters as long as it isn't the full font data? Even if it's all the letters?

Doesn't it include any widths data as well?

It's just I know that some commercial Linux distros include some commercial fonts by default - and it's not obvious to a user which are commercial and which are free; and what the licenses of those are?

Dave

fry

Re: Font copyrights?
Reply #3 - May 30^th, 2008, 5:24am

Our general understanding is that bitmaps (the smaller sort of sizes included with Processing apps) are OK. But we're not copyright lawyers, or lawyers period. We're not responsible for what's done with the software, or for you running afoul of the license on any font that you've purchased.

If it concerns you, use the createFont() function in your code instead of including a font itself. Of course then you run the risk of the font you want not being installed, but it means you won't have to ask for copyright advice from two people who give their software away for free. Wink

PhiLho YaBB Moderator Offline Posts: 4190 Near Paris (France)	Re: Font copyrights? Reply #4 - May 30^th, 2008, 7:30am Usually, the rules (license) about usage of a font (embedding and such) are in the font file itself (for TTF at least). There are some font tools to read them in clear, at worst you can see the info with an hex editor. I can even see it by opening in Notepad! (Bitstream Vera Sans Mono).

penguin42

Re: Font copyrights?
Reply #5 - May 30^th, 2008, 1:39pm

fry wrote on May 30^th, 2008, 5:24am:

Our general understanding is that bitmaps (the smaller sort of sizes included with Processing apps) are OK. But we're not copyright lawyers, or lawyers period. We're not responsible for what's done with the software, or for you running afoul of the license on any font that you've purchased.

If it concerns you, use the createFont() function in your code instead of including a font itself. Of course then you run the risk of the font you want not being installed, but it means you won't have to ask for copyright advice from two people who give their software away for free. Wink

It doesn't particularly worry me from my point of view; I was just thinking in terms of if it's the suggested way of doing things by having a menu item then it should make normal users of the software are doing something safe.

IANAL either; but I'm guessing there are people for advising free software projects who could answer the question safely.

Dave