Best practices for designing - releasing - maintaining - packaging open fonts

higher when the monarch uh I think it's just great that we have

some of the torques around fonts is interesting to see what that was because of the that we have that had been along the

various objects that have been participating in there so they would seem that the number of font fault and and talks increase so it's I think it's good news so for those who haven't met me for who I am just and involved in both the upstream close to a sale from related projects and have a role in the combination of the of the font used in both that and when products that you might have thought about and then also involved with the open from library so that the torque that I want to do this time round was to them laughter discussion gather some ideas around best practices for the best aspects of of dealing with funds from the design to how you handle the really how you maintain shape once you've passed the 1st public version and also the perspective of the people doing the packaging so this is the use of it with prominent cover much but I think these points will be also touched upon in the next talk this afternoon and there in the books and so on so come talk to to us about that so when you might be familiar with

these very and clever business plan ahead that that the really cool stuff the mysterious step 2 and then profit so how does it look for for to you decide you going to do an open font you gonna release it somewhere thus to still requesters and profit for some values of profit of course it might not be just your own profit but profit for other people that get these integrated extend language support and so on you get the idea and why is it the time for

us to focus on best practices now say took us something like dedicated to be an overnight success in US you you might have heard about the recent Google phone directory announcements that get some more media attraction outside oral hackers circles uh but along the years there have been the the tools uh the the people involved in the in this movement has has grown and think it's time for us to to look at the best practices in terms of of these various aspects of commercial software design has learned from the ways that and free software best practices that have that have evolved and I think as a community we can also perform breast practices that will be useful to introduce tags and communities and as we get bigger of open from projects we have to look at long-term retention issues I think my my perspective of being both upstream and close to upstream and of the universe from projects the and user and packages using some perspective to look at these whose

books will find that what which we care about what what should this be good for but I'm sure you your all using some kind of revision control system when you work on a project while you're doing that because they represent some energy you don't have to remember everything you can work together with others and the helps you create unity in a sense and also makes it easier for downstream all distribution packages to to work on on getting your stuff to the users and when best practices are shared across form projects then you learn pollution have so quick review

of what we really mean when we say open fonts this isn't covered in the previous talks all the stuff that we have online but basically the spectrum for open is on 1 side you have attribution only just that name to it you have in the middle of the nite copyleft with features that are specific to the way from the language and then you have a much stronger copyleft on was stronger requirements for full sources and and and so on and I would say that you know they exist and it falls under the public domain all Creative Commons licensing on that such a good idea because these licensing model had not been designed for that and we really want to make the distinction between the restricted fonts that you can modify or register and that's what most men that majority of people mean when they say free forms so people disagree on the meaning of free obviously but free as an expression of has always meant if you do a search on the on your preferred search engine to see that that that there has always meant the freeware forms that you could possibly a distribute but not modify so but we really talking about here is on and open fonts and in what's to consider my apologies to that famous actor in Vermont idea but you keep using that word I don't think it means what you think it means and so free fonts please please don't add to confusion by referring to that fed little diagrams for

obliterated so what are the forms that you can actually use now as well formed on your own server you get the open source with the licensing models the recommended ones we get some public-domain but they had the Manchester Ship of public domain from has always been a problem so and there is always a repetition problem to you might be able to use high-quality free freeware fonts but you will not be able to modify the law or redistribute them further and then you have a whole range of preparatory the families themselves we've seen a big

rise in the number of what phone services I think we can go up to 10 names that had some oscillation better have that problem yet but basically articulate themselves along these lines just focusing on on restricted files having some amount of open forms in their friends or just focusing on government and so for the

best practice is to be really relevant we have to look at the various angles of the prejudice you might think of the people working on these projects you have to buy divided by drawing lifts script engineers working on the language linguistic aspects packages distribution vendors and so on and the quite often there's this famous STP shield you might recognize that if somebody else's problem is the thing that keeps you actually firms in the other people's perspective they what might work on on the same thing in maybe in the same way repository than you but you don't really care about your spreading on metals so this is something that the the best practice will help with single those perspective of people with you a similar project examples would be you're looking for an artistic variations for a design that you doing it but other designers would the work on the on the orthography would work on you letters instead of doing variations of existing ones would work on you letters in with unique standards and so on this is your imagine doing it you wait for existing font-family all you would be the actual 1st person during the 1st drawing of this writing system you might be looking for a font for your visual identity for the name of the project for your logo or you might be doing it have adjusted prime so at both ends of the spectrum that can be quite far away but somehow the regulations should bring them together

and if you've seen that before and it's a projection of the world map but with the number of languages poorer countries this is a way of feeling what other people's perspective might be so if you look at your font menu see dozens of but from this perspective there might only be wanted to that you actually able to use and what you going to the states that and places in the North suddenly become lot tighter than with the use of predictions another

perspectives on issues that this is the default that Scotty been designed for the winter to project yeah how are we going to write down the names of the project but let illegally for this

so best practices that should help have a better assembly-line them I think the idea of the the the moon designer spending a user alone in his cave drawing and making everything is is we're falling apart even very very expensive designer still go to forums to exchange ideas they might not do everything they make to the drawing and pass it on to somebody else to do the the other bits and pieces so having tools to help will will also help with that transparency and the of our approach each anyway as so this is a

recommendation for us and branch of that template branch that people who would like to start a new project could clone and start from there so would be recommendation for all places that you would put your files and formats that can be used for best cooperation with others so you have the description items of ontologies that is for the intended specific change but certainly of structure already and you'd have a source folder with the various sources that you can use across the focus from the 4 for sources to the unified from object is also read by the proposed theory and found system the front-back database that's not the conditions and special Web folder also there is a regulatory that you can branch already to trade at the foot and fossils is all give more details about that later we

can discuss the bus so between them tweaking them the points directly and having scripts to parametrize we have to find a way also getting them together having QA tools directly in the branch itself and the design guide so the good news is that and then there's a sale

and designers and script engineers have worked on documenting their their tools and this will be released families and don't have it they just yet but the idea is that they've been working for years quite complex project and they want the rest of the community to be able to enjoy the tools that they have especially those with the larger fonts and forms including contexts complex scripts and this is not don't system also that people think that the stock beta and but that in and and do something very low level testing also using the 2nd descriptor and all these bodies and this is

how the structure would look in that system you'd have justified to fill in to create this not Make file and then to go from there and you also create templates for packages to that would make it easier for for this to trickle down into the various distributions and other targets also on other platforms and from the time we have but I

want to to do a quick tour of some the key issues that we face that have been able to observe and the various existing from projects of take little interestingly criticism so I think it's

great that a major companies like Red Hat and and Google have commissioned foundries to do open fonts but if you look at the regulatory there still some metadata but let's think about left over from what they get released from the foundry sometimes you have a circular you have which says that this is released under the license that you receive when you get released or something like that so I know exactly how had that exactly very transparent a sometimes the the the licensing and metadata can be an afterthought with all the work going on in the design and the release uh but it's still is very important for the moment ownership of the of the project sometimes you find forms that have been the readme file all the font log although the the separate licensing files some statements but inside the method that that it's different so the things to resynchronization there and sometimes projects have branched and relicense without actually you're looking at what upstream had such as always and so that the naming is quite important issue for forms it's not a good idea to put variant names at all the name of the licensed in the name of the Father you don't want your from military can to and really it's already quite complicated that new bond font sizes has this feature of reserving folk names so that downstream you don't get collisions of the names word some people have reserves of a whole range of the letters in the alphabet very gaps in its clever but I don't think it's a very good idea I unreasonable half of it right there and that when you find a name you need to be creative you if you're branching from the extremes during the should use the namespace 3 advantage and the Ms. what's already there so this is useful for users as well for the long intention of your printer and some fun sadly and our playing in that time there well with the new could standard you you'd find Foster are high quality but that the legacy encoding is causing problems so if you install the distribution and you get this from the something every text that the parent this is why the private use area should be should be this is what it's designed for so in future data is not normalized in you have problems to that is in the front in we're dropping of many of these legacy fonts because there and maintained and there are causing problem with the standard I call that a bit earlier on but I think form we have seen that with some part of the you and the way you open up your your version control system way you commit to grant access is is changing landownership approach and this is nothing new but for forms it's quite a new idea and I think there's a future has been quite quite exemplary in that's that they they allow a lot of commuters to get a set of course when you when you move to a distributed version system that the question changes but the guy was reverted back to given the designers of quite really familiar this from design is not really the from there without the way of revision system works you should rent commit access more often than the way the font log handles version also is quite important to look at but component later on and some distributor has been made the mistake of tampering with author metadata this is like a crime you could say saying the repetition of economy where you use for about what that people have put into their creation all you hiding that under a a different view that not a good idea

and so basically there's this is due to the tool set to do proprietary from design called for class there are some common open formats pressing open from projects should make the effort to true focus on the open formats so that people who are not using from forged uh on that using it yet can also what is the contribute to the project the source a good idea to say what you're going to work on so you can have furcation Dunmore is the the idea of testing also on other platforms there is a huge the number of elements that impact the rendering of forms uh and that's a lot of of QA lots of things to test that there are ways to help with that um 1 issue is that in the coverage boundary of

the south boundary how do you handle that in the project are you going to make it a you which font with everything in it or you going say we're focusing on these languages these styles and then you branch that make it something different something named differently and this is a key issue to discuss this there's no easy answer for that but you need to be aware of that possible the results have this LCG as you you sorry approach where they have a for Latin and Greek and Cyrillic and the other Paul spot in name the

issue of of handling brands and trademarks this is what you want to project is is leading the and the reflection that does the father on that how so but when you really about font that is close to a brand how do you handle the naming you have to do published trademark guidelines late at dividend for the winter title font uh how do you do that because you you have a dilemma between allowing to branch and uh still maintaining the the distracted you trademark on your or your name some of those still depend on mobile phones someone not yet open the beta cycle of talked about it recently this is what we've done for the anti-terror fonts release of a better that is clearly marked as such and that has a reserve for named that this defined for that and then when you when you do a stable released any of its the the previous 1 problem was bleeding and when we get optimizing targets for us for the Web we need to look at the various directions is gonna be just speed or is it going functionality and coverage they can be the Web at the desktop some people don't really care about fast they went to work in their writing system so this is something to bear in mind and we could imagine having a vicious books also on the uniform data repository to she continuous integration some things that we can talk about boy public judgments a lot of these and other recommendations are in the you confront license if it you know I would recommend you take a look at it there's an update on the way of thinking about these issues and how they impact you open from products will make life easier coming from the packaging perspective obviously but also for for and users for for the visibility of the project for getting it out to the users and your workstation note also that under I encourage it should take a look at the various resources we have different from community around when the planets and the wiki plenty of great stuff in which the uh on an English standard of so if

we go back to our medical steps with a little help from my friends however the this yes enabled approach taking into account the other people are using other toolkits and also the the perspective of others might not be used and some admitted stuff and profits