Fontconfig - Nov 2005 - Aliases

First, I agree with Keith that trademark names are an issue, but
it must be considered that there are both registered and unregistered
trademarks.  It would be nearly impossible to protect against using
unregistered trademarks.

In any event, if words like "Monospace" are trademarks, the last thing
one would ever want to do is hardcode them into software; that makes
the author of the software the infringer, not the user.  If the choice
to "infringe or not to infringe" is to be left to the user, the use
of such names must be derived from the processed fonts, not hardcoded
in any way.

But to Keith''s proposal, may I suggest an alternative to the use of
"aliases".  I think semantically, these are not "names", and
thus not
"aliases" at all; they are generic descriptions of style.  Following
from the motivations for the patches I submitted some time ago, these
could be considered "anonymous" patterns (in the fontconfig sense),
where no attempt is made to match on name, but matches are instead
done on style (as rendered by semantically distinguishable keywords).

E.g. what is now referred to as the "Sans alias" could instead be
considered the "sans" style keyword for any matching font name
(i.e., family).  Moreover, it can be derived in many cases from the
underlying font description without having to hardcode it.

I didn''t go quite this far with my patches, though I did begin to
establish the framework for dealing with style as a collection of
keywords (not just in fontconfig, but in pango, freetype, etc.).
I offered them as a workaround, but one with a clear direction towards
Keith''s proposal.

Notably, this direction avoids the "author as infringer" dilemma,
since it avoids hardcoding of keywords which might also be trademarks.

Note that the use of style keywords need not be imagined to, e.g.,
simple case-insensitive string matching.  More general mappings should
be possible as well.  I.e., whatever is now done to map aliases could
be done as well to map style keywords, since after all, the current
aliases _are_ style keywords, though less generally interpreted than
is possible and semantically reasonable.

-John

Keith Packard wrote:
> Around 0 o''clock on Mar 31, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> 
> 
>>I would tend to agree with Adam here.  Preventing the user from
>>infringing on trademarks is not fontconfig''s business;
it''s the
>>business of law enforcing agencies.
> 
> 
> Of course; what we want is to allow people to get their work done without 
> forcing them to infringe on trademarks.  Fontconfig does half of that job 
> already; providing a way to accept trademarked names and match them 
> apprproiately while allowing people to leave those same names out of the 
> application font menus.  
> 
> Now it seems like we''ve figured out that we want the other piece
as well;
> providing a way to get new names to appear in the font list which are then
> mapped to other fonts.  I can imagine this would be really nice for
> presenting localized font names, as well as the existing generic stuff 
> that gnome has kludged into place.
> 
> Let''s try to get some use models and proposed semantics set out so
we can
> start figuring out how this should work.
> 
> -keith
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> fontconfig mailing list
> fontconfig@freedesktop.org
> http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/fontconfig

I meant "limited to", not "imagined to" (where did that come
from?...)

Might I also add, however, that terms used to describe are much less
likely to be interpreted in a legal sense as trademarks, compared to
terms which name.  Indeed, when names begin to become descriptive,
like "Kleenex" and "Xerox", it becomes all the more
difficult to
enforce them as trademarks.

-John

John A. Boyd Jr. wrote:
> First, I agree with Keith that trademark names are an issue, but
> it must be considered that there are both registered and unregistered
> trademarks.  It would be nearly impossible to protect against using
> unregistered trademarks.
> 
> In any event, if words like "Monospace" are trademarks, the last
thing
> one would ever want to do is hardcode them into software; that makes
> the author of the software the infringer, not the user.  If the choice
> to "infringe or not to infringe" is to be left to the user, the
use
> of such names must be derived from the processed fonts, not hardcoded
> in any way.
> 
> But to Keith''s proposal, may I suggest an alternative to the use
of
> "aliases".  I think semantically, these are not
"names", and thus not
> "aliases" at all; they are generic descriptions of style. 
Following
> from the motivations for the patches I submitted some time ago, these
> could be considered "anonymous" patterns (in the fontconfig
sense),
> where no attempt is made to match on name, but matches are instead
> done on style (as rendered by semantically distinguishable keywords).
> 
> E.g. what is now referred to as the "Sans alias" could instead be
> considered the "sans" style keyword for any matching font name
> (i.e., family).  Moreover, it can be derived in many cases from the
> underlying font description without having to hardcode it.
> 
> I didn''t go quite this far with my patches, though I did begin to
> establish the framework for dealing with style as a collection of
> keywords (not just in fontconfig, but in pango, freetype, etc.).
> I offered them as a workaround, but one with a clear direction towards
> Keith''s proposal.
> 
> Notably, this direction avoids the "author as infringer" dilemma,
> since it avoids hardcoding of keywords which might also be trademarks.
> 
> Note that the use of style keywords need not be imagined to, e.g.,
> simple case-insensitive string matching.  More general mappings should
> be possible as well.  I.e., whatever is now done to map aliases could
> be done as well to map style keywords, since after all, the current
> aliases _are_ style keywords, though less generally interpreted than
> is possible and semantically reasonable.
> 
> -John
> 
> Keith Packard wrote:
> 
>> Around 0 o''clock on Mar 31, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I would tend to agree with Adam here.  Preventing the user from
>>> infringing on trademarks is not fontconfig''s business;
it''s the
>>> business of law enforcing agencies.
>>
>>
>>
>> Of course; what we want is to allow people to get their work done 
>> without forcing them to infringe on trademarks.  Fontconfig does half 
>> of that job already; providing a way to accept trademarked names and 
>> match them apprproiately while allowing people to leave those same 
>> names out of the application font menus. 
>> Now it seems like we''ve figured out that we want the other
piece as well;
>> providing a way to get new names to appear in the font list which are 
>> then
>> mapped to other fonts.  I can imagine this would be really nice for
>> presenting localized font names, as well as the existing generic stuff 
>> that gnome has kludged into place.
>>
>> Let''s try to get some use models and proposed semantics set
out so we
>> can start figuring out how this should work.
>>
>> -keith
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> fontconfig mailing list
>> fontconfig@freedesktop.org
>> http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/fontconfig
> 
>

AS> It seems a shame to leave out a useful feature just because it *could*
AS> be used maliciously;

I would tend to agree with Adam here.  Preventing the user from
infringing on trademarks is not fontconfig''s business; it''s
the
business of law enforcing agencies.

                                        Juliusz

Hello all,

As far as I understood this issue, it started out with a request to be
able to list the font names that an application can "ask for" without
being turned down. (Yes, I know fontconfig does not turn programs down,
but considering the bad match it would be to use the last-resort default
font for a requested one that only contains antique Egyptian hieroglyphs
in some non-standard encoding, this is as good as turning one down.)

I don''t quite see how it would infringe trademarks if this piece of
factual information is made available. I believe not all cases of naming
a trademark constitute an infringement. I am no lawyer and I would
appreciate any clarification from any competent person, but until so
happens I think infringement happens primarily when another product is
offered to the public under the protected name. There are a number of
twists to this issue, like using a protected name in ways that
subconsciously transfers the positive conotations associated with the
protected name to the product being offered, or to the offerer. I doubt
"someone might misunderstand the intent" is a sufficient reason for
considering a quote of a name an infringement.

If I receive a document in some foreign format, that specifies it was
prepared with a particular Adobe font in mind, but fails to characterize
this font in any way, I find it far-fetched to consider the specified
font''s name a "generic description of style". The
substitution of a
suitable available font for the named one will have to rely on
information about that font (i.e., a description of it) residing
somewhere else than in the document, in casu, in one of the
configuration files of fontconfig. The information in this configuration
file would be saying something like "Font X(possibly a tm) is
reasonably, or even best, approximated with font Y(possibly a tm), of
all fonts available on this system".

The question the OP wants to ask fontconfig could be rephrased "about
which fonts is sufficient information available on this system so that a
suitable substitution can be chosen?". Again, I believe providing an
answer to this question is a right under free speech, not a trademark
infringement. I further believe this and similar information could
legally be given in a printed (and publicly sold) book, hardcoded into a
program, etc.

Surely, trademark issues are important, but it would be unfortunate to
limit the scope of free software because of a poor understanding of the
legal issues.

Regards,
Enrique

On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 19:57, John A. Boyd Jr. wrote:
> I meant "limited to", not "imagined to" (where did that
come from?...)
> 
> Might I also add, however, that terms used to describe are much less
> likely to be interpreted in a legal sense as trademarks, compared to
> terms which name.  Indeed, when names begin to become descriptive,
> like "Kleenex" and "Xerox", it becomes all the more
difficult to
> enforce them as trademarks.
> 
> -John
> 
> John A. Boyd Jr. wrote:
> > First, I agree with Keith that trademark names are an issue, but
> > it must be considered that there are both registered and unregistered
> > trademarks.  It would be nearly impossible to protect against using
> > unregistered trademarks.
> > 
> > In any event, if words like "Monospace" are trademarks, the
last thing
> > one would ever want to do is hardcode them into software; that makes
> > the author of the software the infringer, not the user.  If the choice
> > to "infringe or not to infringe" is to be left to the user,
the use
> > of such names must be derived from the processed fonts, not hardcoded
> > in any way.
> > 
> > But to Keith''s proposal, may I suggest an alternative to the
use of
> > "aliases".  I think semantically, these are not
"names", and thus not
> > "aliases" at all; they are generic descriptions of style. 
Following
> > from the motivations for the patches I submitted some time ago, these
> > could be considered "anonymous" patterns (in the fontconfig
sense),
> > where no attempt is made to match on name, but matches are instead
> > done on style (as rendered by semantically distinguishable keywords).
> > 
> > E.g. what is now referred to as the "Sans alias" could
instead be
> > considered the "sans" style keyword for any matching font
name
> > (i.e., family).  Moreover, it can be derived in many cases from the
> > underlying font description without having to hardcode it.
> > 
> > I didn''t go quite this far with my patches, though I did
begin to
> > establish the framework for dealing with style as a collection of
> > keywords (not just in fontconfig, but in pango, freetype, etc.).
> > I offered them as a workaround, but one with a clear direction towards
> > Keith''s proposal.
> > 
> > Notably, this direction avoids the "author as infringer"
dilemma,
> > since it avoids hardcoding of keywords which might also be trademarks.
> > 
> > Note that the use of style keywords need not be imagined to, e.g.,
> > simple case-insensitive string matching.  More general mappings should
> > be possible as well.  I.e., whatever is now done to map aliases could
> > be done as well to map style keywords, since after all, the current
> > aliases _are_ style keywords, though less generally interpreted than
> > is possible and semantically reasonable.
> > 
> > -John
> > 
> > Keith Packard wrote:
> > 
> >> Around 0 o''clock on Mar 31, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> I would tend to agree with Adam here.  Preventing the user
from
> >>> infringing on trademarks is not fontconfig''s
business; it''s the
> >>> business of law enforcing agencies.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Of course; what we want is to allow people to get their work done 
> >> without forcing them to infringe on trademarks.  Fontconfig does
half
> >> of that job already; providing a way to accept trademarked names
and
> >> match them apprproiately while allowing people to leave those same
> >> names out of the application font menus. 
> >> Now it seems like we''ve figured out that we want the
other piece as well;
> >> providing a way to get new names to appear in the font list which
are
> >> then
> >> mapped to other fonts.  I can imagine this would be really nice
for
> >> presenting localized font names, as well as the existing generic
stuff
> >> that gnome has kludged into place.
> >>
> >> Let''s try to get some use models and proposed semantics
set out so we
> >> can start figuring out how this should work.
> >>
> >> -keith
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> fontconfig mailing list
> >> fontconfig@freedesktop.org
> >> http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/fontconfig
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> fontconfig mailing list
> fontconfig@freedesktop.org
> http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/fontconfig
> 
>

Hi Enrigue,

I''m not a lawyer either; you may know as much about IP law as I do,
but I have to tell you that I wasn''t commenting so generally as you
are.

Enrique Perez-Terron wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> As far as I understood this issue, it started out with a request to be
> able to list the font names that an application can "ask for"
without
> being turned down. (Yes, I know fontconfig does not turn programs down,
> but considering the bad match it would be to use the last-resort default
> font for a requested one that only contains antique Egyptian hieroglyphs
> in some non-standard encoding, this is as good as turning one down.)
> 
Sounds like a reasonable request to me; I wasn''t commenting on it.
> I don''t quite see how it would infringe trademarks if this piece
of
> factual information is made available. I believe not all cases of naming
> a trademark constitute an infringement. I am no lawyer and I would
> appreciate any clarification from any competent person, but until so
> happens I think infringement happens primarily when another product is
> offered to the public under the protected name. There are a number of
> twists to this issue, like using a protected name in ways that
> subconsciously transfers the positive conotations associated with the
> protected name to the product being offered, or to the offerer. I doubt
> "someone might misunderstand the intent" is a sufficient reason
for
> considering a quote of a name an infringement.
> 
I do see how it could infringe.  And specifically, if you are "naming"
something, and the "name" you use or provide is a trademark for which
you do not have appropriate permission, I believe you could be
infringing on the trademark, even if the thing you are naming has
nothing otherwise to do with the association the trademark intends to
convey.

If you''re just recounting names you''re not providing, I think
what
you''re saying makes some sense.  The difficulty I am imagining is with
whether or not you''re just recounting names, or assigning some as well.
When you''re dealing with built-in aliases, I think a line is being
crossed.

When you begin to talk about products, though, you must then also
deal with copyright issues (and possibly patent), not just trademark
issues (and maybe not trademark issues at all).
> If I receive a document in some foreign format, that specifies it was
> prepared with a particular Adobe font in mind, but fails to characterize
> this font in any way, I find it far-fetched to consider the specified
> font''s name a "generic description of style". The
substitution of a
> suitable available font for the named one will have to rely on
> information about that font (i.e., a description of it) residing
> somewhere else than in the document, in casu, in one of the
> configuration files of fontconfig. The information in this configuration
> file would be saying something like "Font X(possibly a tm) is
> reasonably, or even best, approximated with font Y(possibly a tm), of
> all fonts available on this system".
> 
I can''t tell if you''re agreeing or disagreeing with me.  I
wasn''t
suggesting the general case of using style instead of family names; I
was thinking of the built-in aliases.

Here''s my more basic point: names aren''t generally
descriptive.  So to
do semantically meaningful matching, you''d better have semantically
meaning descriptions available.  Build them yourself if you have to,
but if you are just matching on name (names are effectively symbolic
and thus not guaranteed to convey semantic information), you are not
doing semantic matching.

E.g., if I just tell you my name is John, you don''t know much about
me.  If I describe myself, however, you know not only something about
me, but have a better idea about how even to assign a meaningful
alias to me, if you need or want to do that.
> The question the OP wants to ask fontconfig could be rephrased "about
> which fonts is sufficient information available on this system so that a
> suitable substitution can be chosen?". Again, I believe providing an
> answer to this question is a right under free speech, not a trademark
> infringement. I further believe this and similar information could
> legally be given in a printed (and publicly sold) book, hardcoded into a
> program, etc.
> 
"Available on this system" implies "legally permissible to
provide",
not just where trademarks are concerned, but also where copyrights
and patents are concerned.  They are different kinds of intellectual
property with different kinds of protection afforded under law, but
trademark protection specifically is indeed a kind of limitation of
free speech, if you want to see it that way.

Speaking a bit more generally, the notion of free speech in the US
flows from the 1st Amendment, i.e., it was not an original clause of
the Constitution.  Intellectual property protections, however, flow
from Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8 (I believe; this is off the top of
my head, so you should check the reference), which is in the original
body of the document.  I am not, by the way, agreeing with how this
clause has been interpreted (it mandates a responsbility to Congress,
but serves only to guide them in that mandate); I am only observing
that it is not trumped by the 1st Amendment''s free speech clause,
which, by the way, the courts have ruled is a limited right.
> Surely, trademark issues are important, but it would be unfortunate to
> limit the scope of free software because of a poor understanding of the
> legal issues.
> 
I wholeheartedly agree how important it is for both developers and users
alike, and especially users, of open software, to understand at least
the basics of intellectual property law.  No question.  But that means
understanding that open software is still, generally, licensed software,
and that its scope is limited, if only to a small degree, by that fact.

Of the body of software that might make up a Linux system, for example,
I''d guess that well less than 10% is "free" in the sense of
being in the
public domain (PD) and not subject to copyright and offered under the
terms of a license.  Trademarks, copyrights, and patents are all owned
property under law, and the owners have established rights, even if they
exercise those rights by choosing to allow others to use that property
without compensation.

The details and implications of this point are far beyond the scope of
this list, however, as interesting a discussion it might be.
> Regards,
> Enrique
> 
> On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 19:57, John A. Boyd Jr. wrote:
> 
>>I meant "limited to", not "imagined to" (where did
that come from?...)
>>
>>Might I also add, however, that terms used to describe are much less
>>likely to be interpreted in a legal sense as trademarks, compared to
>>terms which name.  Indeed, when names begin to become descriptive,
>>like "Kleenex" and "Xerox", it becomes all the more
difficult to
>>enforce them as trademarks.
>>
>>-John
>>

Hello Ambrose,

Ambrose Li wrote:
> <rant>
> 
Dare I suggest, Ambrose, that you are experiencing a "failure
of imagination?"  Please forgive me for the suggestion; I
offer it only to hypothesize that more may be possible, indeed,
easily possible, than you might have imagined.
> How do you convey semantic information for fonts? For Times,
> for example, it is not correct to say an "upright serifed Latin
> font" for many reasons. First, Times is not just an ordinary
> upright serifed font, it, among other things, has a particular
> "business feel" and is very space economical, and in some
> applications it would be very wrong to substitute a different-
> looking serifed font.  Secondly, it is not just a Latin font;
> e.g., Microsoft''s "Times New Romans" covers WGL4 with
non-Latin
> characters; and there are non-Latin Type 1 versions of Times,
> e.g., for Cyrillic.
> 
I''m not proposing selecting fonts only by description.  I''m
proposing separating the two kinds of selection: by name and
by (semantic) description, at two levels: user and "system".

Fontconfig supports system-level description comprehensively.
It''s problem is at the user level.

I''m not a font expert (and don''t want to be), but I would
suggest to you that there are lots of good "semantic descriptions"
of font attributes in use.  But let me try to stick to and
elucidate the basic point I''m trying to make.

- "Times", "Timmons" - symbolic, not semantic/descriptive
- "Serif", "Sans", "Monospace" -
semantic/descriptive

Then, let me use your own words:

- "Times" => "business-feel", "economical"

Your terms are semantic descriptions.  Now, wasn''t that easy?

Semantic descriptions of this sort are the way the intelligent
human mind works (more about that below).  It''s like the nose
on your face: that important, that useful, and that easy to
look past and never see, never imagining it even exists.
> And how practical is it so catalogue the semantic descriptions
> of fonts? Just the Adobe Type Library has > 1000 type families,
> most of them having more than 1 font.
> 
Again, it''s already being done.  My concern with fontconfig
is that it is avoiding an opportunity, by using what it calls
"aliases", as if names instead of as if semantics descriptions
at the user level, without paying enough attention either to
the need or to the opportunity to use semantic descriptions
at the user level.
> What about non-Latin fonts? It seems that non-Latin fonts (at
> least CJK fonts) are usually put into incorrect categories.
> 
How about "non-Latin" for starters?  Then, say, "Hebrew",
"Greek", ... (These are character set descriptions, I''m
imagining, from my limited knowledge of fonts.)

Let''s try another example.  Let''s say we want to describe
font width - I like that example...  How about "condensed,
expanded," and the like.  I''ll bet you can find these in
existing fonts as well.
> We cannot even start to populate our catalogue with the existing
> panose information in TrueType fonts; a lot of fonts, including
> (or perhaps especially) commercial ones, often have incorrect or
> outright junk panose data. We''ll have to recatalogue everything
> from scratch or at least manually verify all the panose data.
> And should we trust our own expertise, if even (supposed)
> professionals do it wrong for panose?
> 
Is "PANOSE" a trademark?  No matter, it''s not the point.

I would suggest, Ambrose, that you''re thinking less like a
user than like a system developer.

In that regsrd, let me just ask: how does (or might) a _user_
discriminate fonts at the level of panose information?
> Even if we can come up with a 100% semantic cataloguing scheme
> (which is hopefully better than any existence system), we will
> have to catalogue trademarked fonts in any case; if simply
> referring to the names would be infringement, how can any scheme
> work at all? And wouldn''t the average person commit trademark
> infringement even during normal use?
> 
The proposal I''m making doesn''t have to be "100%". 
I''ve started
it already, just for font width (e.g., condensed .. expanded).
Doesn''t break anything.  If you want to support panose information,
try "panose=".  In fact, in general, use something like

	"<attribute class> <relop> <attribute value(s)>"

In fact, fontconfig already does this - for _names_.  And that''s
my point.  This isn''t about _naming_, it''s about _describing_.
The
mechanisms for selection and matching are not about naming
fonts, but about describing them for purposes of selection.  And
the observation I''m passing along is that selection doesn''t
require names, and when used, names are just symbolic representations
of one or more descriptive attributes, i.e., a special case.

So, do this matching on a more robust style element, not just on
the family name element and a few hardcoded style keywords.

I''m not saying don''t use names.  I''m saying
don''t confuse descriptions
with names, as if names are the more general case.
> Graphic designers (or even knowledgeable amateurs) know that
> certain type families are interchangeable. If just saying
> "I have a font that looks just like Times available" could
> be infringement, then college professors will be infringing
> trademarks just for teaching typography during class.
> 
To your first point - yes; they know they are interchangable
because they have observed that the attributes that are
relevant are identical.  But the name associations must be
_learned_, and I can tell you that this is cognitively
burdensome.

What''s the difference between an "alias" and what I call an
"abstraction", in this regard?  Plenty, it turns out.  Aliases,
as a kind of symbolic representation, must be memorized,
and used via cognitive recall and not much else.  Abstractions,
or more descriptively, concise semantic representations which
are neither ambiguous nor redundant at the level of relevant
cognitive use, are the stuff of cognition, in my view, being a
foundation (if not the foundation) for understanding, analysis,
and other essential cognitive capabilities.

Aliases have the properties of abstractions if they are also
abstractions, but again, they are then only a special case.
But in general, aliases are not also abstractions.  In general,
an abstraction can be used wherever an alias can, but the
opposite is not true at all.

"Sans," "Serif," and "Monospace," for example, are
abstractions,
albeit being used in this context as aliases.

People will not find aliases to be as usable, nor as useful,
as are abstractions.  Indeed, human short-term memory has been
studied and can be characterized, in my view, as "7+/-2
abstractions," using the term "abstraction" as I usually do.

Now, if you could "prompt" a user to describe those attributes
that make fonts "interchangeable", then I would submit to you
that the names become entirely superfluous.  And indeed,
if the user learns a "working vocabulary" for such descriptions,
the need for prompting is mitigated as well.  Moreover, the
utility of that working vocabulary will far exceed the utility
of a likely smaller vocabulary of learned names and aliases
which are largely only symbolic.

To your second point - no; there''s a legal principle called the
doctrine of fair use that applies to certain classes of use of
intellectual property.  Teaching, journalism, and research are among
those uses exempted under the fair use doctrine, as I understand it.
> Why is allowing the user (who could just know what he/she
> is doing) to make the mapping so bad?  If a new font comes
> out before it is catalogued --- or if a user uses an older
> fontconfig package, which is not a wrong thing in any sense of
> wrong --- why is it so bad that the user is not allowed to tell
> the system what to do?
> 
It''s not bad at all - I never suggested it was.  Indeed, I want
to make it all the more possible, all the more useful, and easier
to do.  And all that takes it applying it to descriptions (which
in this context means the style element) instead of just to the
special case of the font family name, (here''s the important point)
at the user level in all usage contexts, not just in the fonts.conf
file.
>>From the discussion, I''d have to say that the true goal of
> trademark lawyers is just to make it hard to make things
> interoperable, or perhaps they just want needless enmity between
> people. If what you say is right, I find trademark lawyers
> despicable.
> 
You''re on the right track, in my opinion. Again, I''m not a
lawyer,
but the historical purpose of trademarks had to do with competitiveness
in trade (e.g., anti-trust law and such) from what I''ve read, and like
patent law, I think history has turned the original purpose on its head.

So I''m not advocating any legal position here; I haven''t
revealed
my personal legal positions before the above paragraph.  I''m trying
to advocate a position that more concerns software usability and
utility, and thus software design from a user-oriented perspective.

I am not trying to foment needless enmity either.  But I would not
even have joined this mailing list if I did not consider this an
important issue, beyond just me and beyond just fontconfig.  This
particular package has become situated in a position where its use
is all but mandated for the typical user not just of fontconfig,
but of XFree86 and much of the environment and application
software that builds on it (e.g., GNOME).  I didn''t ask for it to
be there.  And if I could just as easily get rid of it as patch it,
believe me, I would do just that, in a heartbeat.
> </rant>
> 
>

Let me get to the point here.  I used to be able to do the
following:

	> gnome-terminal -font "<font>"

This usage is no longer generally available, as of version
2.4.2.

And why not?

Because fontconfig and related packages don''t support this
kind of user-level specification of font (without the kind
of patches I developed), so, I''d imagine, the gnome-terminal
developers decided it was pointless to continue to provide a
capability they couldn''t reasonably support.

Now, I must tell you all, before the gnome-terminal developers
gave up on this usage because they couldn''t support it, I was able
to do the following (with no changes to gnome-terminal):

	> gnome-terminal -font "fixed semicondensed 10"

Indeed, _I_ can still do this, but I''d guess I''m the only
person
using gnome-terminal-2.4.2 who can (with my patch to undo the
omission), and that shouldn''t be the case.

No fonts.conf changes here either.  That''s configuration, not
usage. I hope the difference is not lost on any of you, but
hope may be all I can do.

Note that "fixed semicondensed 10" is not a name - it''s a
semantic description (except for the "10", which should be
something like "10pt").  Whether Ambrose and others can
imagine this usage is not interesting to me - I''ve already
made the necessary changes, it all works, and I"m using it now.

I would hope that readers of this list could understand the
general point I''m making, but if not, that''s OK; I''ll
just keep
maintaining my own patches for my own use, and the rest of you
can keep posting about the same issues that aren''t getting
resolved, because someone or other can''t imagine solutions and
doesn''t want to respond constructively to anyone who can.

As for me, I think I should unsubscribe from this list.  I
don''t want to be the cause of any more rants..

-John

John A. Boyd Jr. wrote:
> 
> I am not trying to foment needless enmity either.  But I would not
> even have joined this mailing list if I did not consider this an
> important issue, beyond just me and beyond just fontconfig.  This
> particular package has become situated in a position where its use
> is all but mandated for the typical user not just of fontconfig,
> but of XFree86 and much of the environment and application
> software that builds on it (e.g., GNOME).  I didn''t ask for it to
> be there.  And if I could just as easily get rid of it as patch it,
> believe me, I would do just that, in a heartbeat.
>

Around 22 o''clock on Mar 30, Adam Sampson wrote:
> It seems a shame to leave out a useful feature just because it *could*
> be used maliciously; obviously fontconfig shouldn''t be allowed to
look
> at ~/.fonts for fonts because it makes it easier for the user to
> install unlicensed fonts without the sysadmin''s permission. ;)
The goal wasn''t to leave out visible aliases, the goal was to provide
match-only aliases so that you *could* map trademarked names to existing
fonts without causing problems.  This means we can ship things that map
''Times'' to ''Timmons'' or ''Times New
Roman'' to ''Nimbus Roman No9 L'' while
avoiding having ''Times'' appear in the font list and causing
confusion. This
has been helpful when trying to present documents made in other
environments by ensuring that things layout (and look) the same.

However, perhaps we should think about how we might create a mechanism 
for ''visible aliases'' which would be returned by the listing
functions.

-keith


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Around 0 o''clock on Mar 31, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> I would tend to agree with Adam here.  Preventing the user from
> infringing on trademarks is not fontconfig''s business;
it''s the
> business of law enforcing agencies.
Of course; what we want is to allow people to get their work done without 
forcing them to infringe on trademarks.  Fontconfig does half of that job 
already; providing a way to accept trademarked names and match them 
apprproiately while allowing people to leave those same names out of the 
application font menus.  

Now it seems like we''ve figured out that we want the other piece as
well;
providing a way to get new names to appear in the font list which are then
mapped to other fonts.  I can imagine this would be really nice for
presenting localized font names, as well as the existing generic stuff 
that gnome has kludged into place.

Let''s try to get some use models and proposed semantics set out so we
can
start figuring out how this should work.

-keith


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Sorry for the tone of my previous mail.  I hope my tone this time
is better and what I write below makes sense.

On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 12:52:10AM -0500, John A. Boyd Jr.
wrote:
> 
> - "Times", "Timmons" - symbolic, not
semantic/descriptive
> - "Serif", "Sans", "Monospace" -
semantic/descriptive
How about names like "Baskerville" or "Caslon", etc. which
are
in the public domain and somewhat cross the boundary between
symbolic and semantic?  I agree with you that they ultimately
are shorthands for lots of descriptive attributes; however,
I would say that it should not be entirely dismissed that
certain names can legitimately / usefully serve as abstractions
themselves.
 
> How about "non-Latin" for starters?  Then, say,
"Hebrew",
> "Greek", ... (These are character set descriptions, I''m
> imagining, from my limited knowledge of fonts.)
I think fontconfig already knows something about this.

What I was trying to say was, e.g., the Kai (CJK) style being
classed by default as "sans serif" by stock fontconfig and as
"Kai" in Debian. According to limited understanding of how
Latin fonts are categorized, both classifications are wrong; it
should properly be classed as italic even though it would not
match well with Latin italic types (because of different italic
angles).  (And naturally, the panose data are wrong about the
correct classification.)  Continuing with this particular case,
what do we do with existing classification schemes, and how
far do we go in making sure something is correctly classified
using existing criteria (in this case the correct definition
of "italic"); and how do we handle unexpected cases where two
different styles *ought* to be classed identically but are
incompatible?

Or perhaps let us consider the "Kai" style from a more realistic
point of view: In a normal fontconfig installation, when the
user asks for a "sans serif" Chinese font, the system is likely
to deliver a Kai font because of the simple reason that there is
no free Chinese sans serif type in existence.  But in this case
a typical user -- provided that he/she knows what "sans serif"
means -- would be able to tell that this is wrong, if not only
for the reason that Kai types have (round, sometimes subtle)
serifs.
> Let''s try another example.  Let''s say we want to describe
> font width - I like that example...  How about "condensed,
> expanded," and the like.  I''ll bet you can find these in
> existing fonts as well.
Yes. But let us pause for a moment and say the same thing
about "normal", "medium", and "regular".  These
certainly sound
identical, mean the same thing to most people, and might even
mean the same thing for lots of fonts.  But there are also lots
of commercial fonts where they represent different weights.

And there are commercial fonts who describe themselves as
"normal" or "regular" (say) even though they are bold (say).
We should be aware of such irregularities.
> I would suggest, Ambrose, that you''re thinking less like a
> user than like a system developer.
> 
> In that regsrd, let me just ask: how does (or might) a _user_
> discriminate fonts at the level of panose information?
I''d say there are different kinds of users.

There are users who don''t know what sans serif is (or what
a serif is), the same users literally would call all any old
sans serif font "Arial" (and not know what "Helvetica" is)
and
all serif fonts "Times New Roman"; and I personally do know a
number of such users.  To these users, even serif and sans serif
are meaningless descriptions.

At the other extreme, there are users who know what "FF Meta"
and "Myriad MM" are, and some who can tell the difference
between Helvetica and Arial.  These users (those who have
studied typography and/or do typographic work day to day) would
at least have a handle on what the panose data mean.

Of course, the two kinds of users would discriminate fonts at
the level of panose information differently.  The "clueless
users" might be able to only distinguish between panose "family"
and weight, the "professional users" will be able to distinguish
most of the panose attributes, and the "academic" might be able
to distinguish all.  The "professionals" and the "academics"
certainly would discriminate fonts based on more than what the
panose data would describe (e.g., by the "feel" of the font, the
"historical period", etc.), especially for some of the panose
attributes which are not helpfully descriptive (e.g., when
Family is Script or Decorative); however, their ability to
distinguish might be subconcious.

Under normal use, I might speculate that perhaps a quarter to a
half of the panose data are useful, and perhaps several
additional, non-panose descriptions will be required to
sufficiently describe a font.  Certainly, to the user, the
panose data are not sufficient to meaningfully describe fonts.

I would assume that the typical user you have in mind is
somewhere between the two extremes.  However, at least one
extreme cases is not negligible; "clueless users" do exist, and
GNU/Linux becomes more and more generally usable as a desktop
system it could attract more and more "professional users". We
can reasonably ignore the "clueless" ones, but what I call the
"professional" users might describe type in a way you would call
"like a system developer".

If what we are going to do is to improve on the way fontconfig
is to do matching, by using more descriptive attributes, I have
no objections; this can only benefit typical and professional
users alike.
> Aliases have the properties of abstractions if they are also
> abstractions, but again, they are then only a special case.
> But in general, aliases are not also abstractions.  In general,
> an abstraction can be used wherever an alias can, but the
> opposite is not true at all.
I would tend to be a bit reserved about this statement. Unicode
(at least the CJK unification part) is supposed to be based on
the same principle, but in practice it does not deliver even
though this principle should be theoretically sound.

I might speculate that this property would break down for script
and decorative types, esp. the latter.

Descriptive attributes may change in time too.  Helvetica at one
time was perceived as "authoritative"; today perhaps
"default"
or "plain" might describe it more appropriately.
> To your second point - no; there''s a legal principle called
> the doctrine of fair use that applies to certain classes of
> use of intellectual property.  Teaching, journalism, and
> research are among those uses exempted under the fair use
> doctrine, as I understand it.
I am not as optimistic.  Judging from how the recording, movie,
and commercial software industries, and our legal system are
acting, I would say that fair use will disappear in the future,
perhaps the near future, or perhaps it already disappeared
behind our backs.

I certainly hope that I am just being overly pessimistic.

Keith Packard wrote:
> Around 3 o''clock on Apr 1, Enrique Perez-Terron wrote:
> 
> 
>>As far as I understood this issue, it started out with a request to be
>>able to list the font names that an application can "ask for"
without
>>being turned down.
> 
> 
> No.  That capability is already very well supported.  That let''s
people
> say "if an application asks for ''Times'', please use
''Timmons''", it does
> this in a way which doesn''t expose ''Times'' in
the list of fonts that
> applications place in menus, which allows people to avoid trademark 
> problems.
> 
> If an application says "I have the Times font available" when it
really
> means "I have a font that looks just like Times available", that
represents
> a clear trademark infrigement.
> 
I don''t think it necessarily avoids trademark problems; to the
contrary,
it might invite them.

Both statements ("I have the Times font available" and "I have a
font
that looks just like the Times available") could be trademark
infringements, the second possibly moreso because it compares solely
on the basis of the owned identification and not on any more explicitly 
descriptive association (e.g., "I have an upright serifed Latin font
available.").  Both could thus be seen to be trading on and/or diluting
the owned identification.  "Timmons" as a substitute for
"Times" might
have the same problem, if it is used as "advertisement" which relies
on
its similarity to "Times" in a non-functional, non-descriptive way.

Again, I believe it is prudent to base substitute identification on
descriptive semantic keywords (or, what I would call "abstractions"
instead of "aliases", inasmuch as they convey semantically descriptive
content and are not just symbolicallly associative) instead of just
other identifications, which may be owned intellectual property in the
usage context at hand.

One other point of response...

Ambrose Li wrote:
> ... if simply
> referring to the names would be infringement, how can any scheme
> work at all? And wouldn''t the average person commit trademark
> infringement even during normal use?
> 
I sent Enrique a private response to a private message on this
thread - the following is an excerpt:

Let''s imagine that fontconfig will allow you to:

. give a name as input to a request to "describe" what is named, for
   which it returns a collection of "abstract" style keywords and
   possibly also some detailed metric information

	(Call this "name_to_style(name) => style [,details]")

. give a collection of abstract style keywords, possibly as a logical
   expression (e.g., "monospace not serif"), for which it returns a
   list of names.

	(Call this "style_to_names(style) => names")

. give either a name or a collection of abstract style keywords,
   possibly as an expression which expresses preference in some
   way, and possible also some detailed metric information that
   also expresses preference, for which it returns a single specific
   font (not a name only, but a font).

	(Call this "specific_font(name|style[,details]) => font")

And you will be able to do what you desire to do.  Moreover,
fontconfig will not be ever be substituting names for names,
but only associating names to descriptions and/or descriptions
to names, thus avoiding the trademark issue quite well.

I.e.

	style_to_names(name_to_style(name)) => names

without even having a mechanism that directly maps a name to other
names.

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:01:08 +0200 Radu Maurer <radu@gmx.info>
wrote:
>         <alias>
>                 <family>Times</family>
>                 <accept><family>Nimbus Roman No9
L</family></accept>
>         </alias>
It could be any number of things:
* make sure you use /etc/fonts/fonts.conf, not fonts.config
* make sure that "Nimbus Roman No9 L" appears in the output from
`fc-list`
* make sure that the cumulated fonts.conf, local.conf and ~/.fonts.conf, in
this order, don''t mess up your aliases
* refresh the cache with `fc-cache -fv`

-- 
Ciprian Popovici

Around 16 o''clock on Mar 29, Radu Maurer wrote:
> I''d like these aliases to appear in the list of available fonts, 
> in order to be selectable in KDE, OpenOffice etc.
Fontconfig doesn''t support that because those names are likely to be 
registered trademarks, and having OpenOffice.org present them in a font 
dialog while not actually having them backed by licensed versions of those 
fonts would be trademark violation.

Yes, this was an explicit design goal for fontconfig -- permit substitution 
of those fonts but not present the alias names to the user.

The only way to get the names that you want is to either license the real
fonts ($$$) or use pfaedit to create ''fake'' versions of them
from the
Nimbus versions.  I believe you would be violating the trademarks if you 
distributed the modified files.

-keith


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>>>>> "Radu" == Radu Maurer <radu@gmx.info>
writes:
Radu> I would like to write aliases for all the Adobe standard fonts
Radu> (Helvetica, Times, Courier ...) which I don''t have on my
system
Radu> to their URW counterparts (Nimbus* ).

This is the pattern I use for such re-naming:

        <match target="pattern">
                <test name="family">
                        <string>Helvetica</string>
                </test>
                <edit name="family" mode="prepend"
binding="same">
                        <string>Arial</string>
                </edit>
        </match>

(Based on someone else''s post here....)

Do be sure you use the exact family names.

Try:

:; FC_DEBUG=4 fc-list Helvetica

to see the patterns; FC_DEBUG=8 may also be useful, if a bit verbose.

-JimC
-- 
James H. Cloos, Jr. <cloos@jhcloos.com> <http://jhcloos.com>

Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com> writes:
> Fontconfig doesn''t support that because those names are likely to
be
> registered trademarks,
I''ve wanted that feature in the past so that I can create an
"Interface" alias to use as the UI font in everything I use;
that way I can change fonts everywhere just by editing the
aliases. I''m pretty sure that''s unlikely to infringe any
trademarks.

In general, it would be nice to have a mechanism in fontconfig that
could be used to make the
"Sans"/"Serif"/"Monospace" standard aliases
visible, along with others that the user or admin might like to
define; currently fontconfig users such as pango have these aliases
hardcoded into them. Given that "Sans" and "Serif"
don''t have any
sensible meaning in some of the world''s writing systems, there are
probably users out there already for whom this is a problem.

It seems a shame to leave out a useful feature just because it *could*
be used maliciously; obviously fontconfig shouldn''t be allowed to look
at ~/.fonts for fonts because it makes it easier for the user to
install unlicensed fonts without the sysadmin''s permission. ;)

-- 
Adam Sampson <azz@us-lot.org>                       
<http://offog.org/>

Around 3 o''clock on Apr 1, Enrique Perez-Terron wrote:
> As far as I understood this issue, it started out with a request to be
> able to list the font names that an application can "ask for"
without
> being turned down.
No.  That capability is already very well supported.  That let''s people
say "if an application asks for ''Times'', please use
''Timmons''", it does
this in a way which doesn''t expose ''Times'' in the
list of fonts that
applications place in menus, which allows people to avoid trademark 
problems.

If an application says "I have the Times font available" when it
really
means "I have a font that looks just like Times available", that
represents
a clear trademark infrigement.

So, it''s nice that we have this ability to do sensible font
substitution
without forcing people to violate trademarks like the XLFD mechanism does.

However, it would *also* be nice to allow people to add names to 
application font menus and have those names directed at sensible 
substitutions.  Then we could add things like ''Sans-Serif'' and
have it
displayed in application menus without having special application kludges 
everywhere.  Of course, this capability would let people add
''Times'' to
their application menus without really having the ''Times''
font, but that''s
not something we should even try to prevent.

This mechanism could be as easy as a list of family names which would get 
returned whenever an application requested the available families; 
figuring out how that semantic would work will be a bit tricky as the 
listing semantics really only deals with "real" fonts that have files
and
character sets and the like.

-keith


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On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 03:11:52PM -0500, John A. Boyd Jr.
wrote:
> I don''t think it necessarily avoids trademark problems; to the
> contrary, it might invite them.
>
> Both statements ("I have the Times font available" and "I
have
> a font that looks just like the Times available") could be
> trademark infringements, the second possibly moreso because it
> compares solely on the basis of the owned identification and
> not on any more explicitly descriptive association (e.g., "I
> have an upright serifed Latin font available.").  Both could
> thus be seen to be trading on and/or diluting the owned
> identification.  "Timmons" as a substitute for "Times"
might
> have the same problem, if it is used as "advertisement" which
> relies on its similarity to "Times" in a non-functional,
> non-descriptive way.
>
> Again, I believe it is prudent to base substitute
> identification on descriptive semantic keywords (or, what
> I would call "abstractions" instead of "aliases",
inasmuch
> as they convey semantically descriptive content and are
> not just symbolicallly associative) instead of just other
> identifications, which may be owned intellectual property in
> the usage context at hand.
<rant>

How do you convey semantic information for fonts? For Times,
for example, it is not correct to say an "upright serifed Latin
font" for many reasons. First, Times is not just an ordinary
upright serifed font, it, among other things, has a particular
"business feel" and is very space economical, and in some
applications it would be very wrong to substitute a different-
looking serifed font.  Secondly, it is not just a Latin font;
e.g., Microsoft''s "Times New Romans" covers WGL4 with
non-Latin
characters; and there are non-Latin Type 1 versions of Times,
e.g., for Cyrillic.

And how practical is it so catalogue the semantic descriptions
of fonts? Just the Adobe Type Library has > 1000 type families,
most of them having more than 1 font.

What about non-Latin fonts? It seems that non-Latin fonts (at
least CJK fonts) are usually put into incorrect categories.

We cannot even start to populate our catalogue with the existing
panose information in TrueType fonts; a lot of fonts, including
(or perhaps especially) commercial ones, often have incorrect or
outright junk panose data. We''ll have to recatalogue everything
from scratch or at least manually verify all the panose data.
And should we trust our own expertise, if even (supposed)
professionals do it wrong for panose?

Even if we can come up with a 100% semantic cataloguing scheme
(which is hopefully better than any existence system), we will
have to catalogue trademarked fonts in any case; if simply
referring to the names would be infringement, how can any scheme
work at all? And wouldn''t the average person commit trademark
infringement even during normal use?

Graphic designers (or even knowledgeable amateurs) know that
certain type families are interchangeable. If just saying
"I have a font that looks just like Times available" could
be infringement, then college professors will be infringing
trademarks just for teaching typography during class.

Why is allowing the user (who could just know what he/she
is doing) to make the mapping so bad?  If a new font comes
out before it is catalogued --- or if a user uses an older
fontconfig package, which is not a wrong thing in any sense of
wrong --- why is it so bad that the user is not allowed to tell
the system what to do?
>From the discussion, I''d have to say that the true goal of
trademark lawyers is just to make it hard to make things
interoperable, or perhaps they just want needless enmity between
people. If what you say is right, I find trademark lawyers
despicable.

</rant>

I would like to write aliases for all the Adobe standard fonts 
(Helvetica, Times, Courier ...) which I don''t have on my system to
their URW counterparts (Nimbus* ).
I''d like these aliases to appear in the list of available fonts, 
in order to be selectable in KDE, OpenOffice etc.

I added this to /etc/fonts/fonts.config but with no effect:

        <alias>
                <family>Times</family>
                <accept><family>Nimbus Roman No9
L</family></accept>
        </alias>
        <alias>
                <family>Helvetica</family>
                <accept><family>Nimbus Sans
L</family></accept>
        </alias>
        <alias>
                <family>Courier</family>
                <accept><family>Nimbus Mono
L</family></accept>
        </alias>

Am I missing something?

thanks
Radu