Hi, i finally got response from Larry Snyder (aka wierd_w ), who created Greenville font. (appeared he was on holiday). Below is the mail he sent me, and i talked to him on irc about it. To summarize, he's willing to license this LGPL, but reading his mail it seems to me this won't be a one day fix ;) What he writes further is quite a bit beyond my knowledge of fonts, so i really hope on of the wine developers who know something about fonts could read the mail and tell what could be done, or how things should be done. Thanks in advance,Louis<br> <br><b><i>Wierd_w <wierd_w@yahoo.com></i></b> wrote:<blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> <br>--- "Louis. Lenders" <xerox_xerox2000@yahoo.co.uk><br>wrote:<br><br>> Hi, i got your email address from one of the Reactos<br>> developers. AFAIK you have been working on a Tahoma<br>> compatible
font called Greenville. I was wondering<br>> if you still have it, and if you were willing to<br>> license this LGPL, so that it could be included in<br>> Wine project. <br><br><br>Sure I could. I would be happy to release the glyphset<br>that I have started on, but the reason I never<br>finished the project was because of "Differences"<br>between the rasterizers in FreeType and MS Windows. <br>These differences would have required me to learn<br>native truetype assembler to resolve, because of (in<br>my opinion) "overzealous" freetype developers<br>attempting to take full advantage of the hint system's<br>tolerances.<br><br>(Better explanation: MS Windows' rasterizer only<br>blends to 16 shades of grey, instead of the<br>theoretical maximum of 256 shades. There is a REASON<br>for doing this: Namely, it makes it possible for<br>visual hinting systems, like the software that I used<br>to work on Greenville, to produce a visually<br>high-quality font, without using
exact binary<br>precision with the use of hinting instructions; It<br>allows for a degree of "leniency" in the rasterizer's<br>interperetation of a glyph outline. Because Freetype<br>wants to use the full theoretical maximum to achieve<br>more shades of grey, you must be "Spot on dead on the<br>money" accurate with the use of hinting instructions,<br>or else the font will have 'blurry' edges. Throw into<br>that the fact that the "Delta" instruction is patented<br>by Apple computer corporation, and refuses to sell<br>Freetype a license, it makes it VERY VERY VERY<br>difficult to get Freetype to even render the glyph<br>even kind-of correctly to begin with. It is possible<br>to 'patch' freetype to turn off some of this<br>overzealousness, and even to turn on the native<br>bytecode interpereter-- but even then the test case<br>TTF files I generated (that look just fine in windows)<br>look asthetically gut-wrenching in freetype.)<br><br>After spending 6 months trying (and
failing) to<br>resolve these internal rendering troubles, (and even<br>considering the implementation of Scalar Bitmaps<br>(SBIT)data so that I wouldnt HAVE to mess with<br>Freetype's CRAP, and ending up with a 600kb font<br>file.) I decided that enough was enough.<br><br>Since the software that I used was VERY expensive<br>(over 300$ US for the STUDENT DISCOUNTED version), and<br>uses a proprietary working format, I would instead be<br>happy to send you the glyph metrics and kerning data<br>in Adobe format, and the actual Glyph set in your<br>choice of vector format. (Note, I spent 2 weeks<br>looking for a suitable TTF editing suite from the<br>freesoftware community (You know, one that would<br>*gasp!* Run on windows, where I could quickly test the<br>fonts!), and came up empty handed. this is why I<br>shelled out the big bucks for FontLab. The Free<br>Software community's gestalt predjudices have shot it<br>in the foot this time.)<br><br>The actual HINTING process would
then be up to you,<br>but be prepared to have your hair turn grey, and to<br>develop ulcers. In order to achieve a strong level of<br>clean resemblence to Tahoma, you *WILL* need to use<br>Truetype, OR, a bitmapped font set. Adobe Type-1 fonts<br>(God, so many tools for that in the FOSS community,<br>but not a SINGLE ONE for TTF hints!...) will not be<br>suitable, because they lack the necessary hinting<br>control (Only stem and leaf, instead of Vector Node<br>Deform, like TTF-- Means that round contours, like in<br>the letter O or G, will NEVER be as clean in an adobe<br>type-1, as they will be with TTF.)<br><br>I am currently at the college, and dont have access to<br>my software at the moment, but when I get home this<br>evening I will begin cleaning up my old resources and<br>packaging them.<br><br>Any particular preference on a vector format? I CAN<br>package the raw glyphs into an unhinted Adobe Type-1,<br>but you will have to do a vector conversion to work
on<br>them as a TTF. That shouldnt be a problem though.<br>Likewise, I could also send an unhinted TTF, with the<br>kerning data allready merged. If one of these would be<br>suitable, let me know, and if not-- please specify<br>one.<br><br><br><br><br> <br>____________________________________________________________________________________<br>Want to start your own business?<br>Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.<br>http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index<br></xerox_xerox2000@yahoo.co.uk></blockquote><br><p> 
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