American Indian / Native American language fonts

[charles_e]

It's fine for the party who's licensed the font to commission someone else to make the modifications. That person should have a legitimate copy of the font as well. (Why? it is expertise that's being solicited, not a license.) And that's the situation Hrant was in. But those modifications should be restricted to the original licensee, not distributed to others.

Is that a bit clearer?

Not really. Let's take a situation that is very, very close to factual. There are about 100 AAUP presses. I'd guess that at least 50 of them use InDesign, and have more or less stayed current with the various releases. Therefore, in spite of the human tendency to improve the facts, I can be pretty certain all those presses have at least one licensed copy of Minion. Moreover, many of them know we've "modified" Minion's character complement over the years, in order to set to set transliterated Arabic, Indic Scripts, Navaho, Lakota, etc.

They have licenses, we have a license. In response to requests for our fonts, I've always said, "I'm sorry, the Adobe license prohibits it."

This on the basis of anther part of the FAQ:

A consultant may solicit their services to companies who have legitimately licensed copies of Adobe font software. The work product of the consultant must remain with the company. The consultant cannot (i) take or keep a copy of the company’s original, localized, or customized version of the font software, or (ii) distribute any original, localized or customized versions of the font software.

It gets down to what "distribute" means. I could furnish the those 50 AAUP presses with the modified Minion if I physically go to their place of business, take nothing with me (strip searched at the door? MRI to make sure I hadn't swallowed a flash drive?), do the work, then take nothing with me as I leave (more searches & radiation from another MRI?) But to send them a copy as an email attachment is prohibited.

That about right?

Does it make sense to your lawyers?

[Christopher Slye]

Charles, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Think of it this way:

Adobe allows one to modify their Adobe-licensed font, but not distribute it. The modified font is for private use. Adobe, however, recognizes that this private use is often what we call "internal business use." Furthermore, any individual person or business might need to hire an expert to do these modifications, but that is work for hire.

The problem with the scenario you describe above is that you essentially have the font and are distributing it. Place A needs the font, so you go give it to them; Place B needs the font, so you go give it to them. Places A and B might have their own licenses, but the modified font needs to originate and stay with a single person or business. It can't originate with you and then be distributed to multiple people or businesses.

Here's the bottom line. Most foundries do not allow font modifications, but Adobe has tried to distinguish itself by allowing it, with restrictions. We don't want modified fonts to be distributed or become new "products" so we've chosen to draw the line here.

(Disclaimers: I Am Not A Lawyer. Your own font EULA is the sole determinant of what is and isn't allowed.)

[charles_e]

Thanks Christopher,

It seems to me I'm looking at it exactly the right way. The font software cannot be distributed, but the work (through a hired consultant) can be be distributed -- done at any location on a properly licensed font. So, taking no software, I could flit about the country, modifying Minion for people. Hopefully the strip searches would not be needed -- I'm an old man, it would be ugly.

Suppose we take the airplane out of it. I, as a hired consultant, from my console, can log onto the client's computer and open up their copy of Minion in my font editing program. I make the needed modifications, then save the files only on their hard drive.

But I cannot (and BTW, I have not) been sending people a copy. Forgive me, but does no one else find this ludicrous?

[Khaled Hosny]

@Charles:
Which answers a very recently asked question:

"... an open source typeface can be redistributed and modified."

and what is the value of that?

:)

[hrant]

I've said this before: bravo Adobe.

hhp

[charles_e]

Khaled,

Yes.

BTW, several other foundries allow modification, you just have to receive permission first. But all of them like Adobe, prohibit distributing the modified fonts.

And while I laud Adobe's policy on letting people modify fonts for their own use, between the peculiarities of *publishing* font software, and the differences between digital and print editions facing book publishers, open source fonts are becoming more and more attractive to me. Not to "me" as a typesetter -- we get a competitive advantage from having fonts other people don't/can't have -- but as I think about the industry I'm in, and its future.

[Thomas Phinney]

I think one key point of the discussion about modifying Adobe fonts hinges on the meaning of the word "distribute." In this case it's a legal sense of the word, and might be subject to debate.

One might argue that overall it would be in Adobe's interest to allow the kind of distribution that Charles is doing. But then again, if Adobe were to add such characters themselves in the future, they might not like such pre-modified versions being too widespread. :/

Cheers,

T

[charles_e]

Hi Thomas -- I'd say yes, and no. To take a somewhat longer view, I think we an assume Unicode will be around for a while. Longer than OpenType, and certainly longer than InDesign. Those of us with thining, graying hair remember the rush to archive jobs in Quark -- this after the rush to archive jobs in "Compugraphic." Etc.

Now, making up the characters is usually trivial. Most are a Latin character plus one or more combining diacriticals. (Of course, it would help if Adobe & other font publishers would include the Unicode combining diacriticals in their font, but as the barman in Irma La Duce said, "That's another story.")

The problem is how perfectly correct Unicode can occur in a manuscript. A character can be formed in any number of ways. We have a few manuscripts come in where even "aacute" is formed (typed) by the string "a" plus the "acute combining" diacritical. We get around such issues by having a "manuscript cleanup stage," and our rule is that all constructions that have a Unicode number assigned are converted to that, and all that don't are broken down into their components. We don't allow, for example, eacute with a macron below, we ensure the string is e, plus macron below, plus acute. (& remember that while the ordering of accents within a plane is specified by Unicode, the order of the planes is not. Yet one more issue). For such with no single Unicode point, I make them up & write (usually, add to) a ccmp feature.

Now think of the problem a font publisher faces. They usually feel they can't make such assumptions, and have to support any of the several ways such characters can occur. Anybody unconvinced take a look at SIL's ccmp & mark/mkmk features for a font like Charis. It is no wonder that this kind of support is lacking.

It is part of a larger issue, font publishers don't view book publishers as a significant market, so they don't address the workflows book publishers need. Take a look, for example, at Biblovault or codeMantra. People who archive books, and make other products from the "print" book file, for the original publisher. Even a site license for fonts -- expensive -- makes the use of such companies technically illegal. Best I can tell, you can't get a site license that covers multiple businesses. Not from Adobe, anyway.

So we're left with "don't ask, don't tell," except there is no way to make the products without telling. I guess it is "don't ask," and since we have to tell, don't even look.

[John Hudson]

It seems to me that there is a real difference between

a) modifying an Adobe font and advertising the fact that you have done so and offering to make the modified font available -- whether for free or for a price -- to other licensees of the original Adobe font;

and

b) modifying an Adobe font for your own purposes or the purposes of a client and also providing that font to other clients who seek the same modifications.

That is, there seems to be a difference between being in the business of distributing modified fonts and being in the business of providing modified fonts to people who commission them. One way in which I always seek to conform with Adobe's license terms in this respect is to personalise the modified fonts for the individual client, even if the same set of modifications to character set, etc. apply (although, off hand, I'm having trouble thinking of a situation in which more than one client wanted exactly the same set of modifications).

[charles_e]

(although, off hand, I'm having trouble thinking of a situation in which more than one client wanted exactly the same set of modifications).

Which takes us back to the topic and fonts that support Native American languages. I've had a number of clients who want the same thing, as long as they're setting Navajo, or Lakota, or Kiowa, etc.

[JosephErb]

https://sites.google.com/site/cherokeefont/home

[JosephErb]

here are some cherokee fonts that i just made..

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B1PjC...

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B1PjC...

http://speakcherokee2me.blogspot.com/2011/12/many-ways-to-say.html

[hrant]

Joseph, nice!
The Old English is pretty gutsy, in more ways than one. :-)

hhp

[chungdehtien]

can someone please tell me the origin of Plantagenet Cherokee. who created it and why a few of the syllables differ from the original Sequoyah design. syllable like "quo" "wi" "do". Thank you- chung deh tien

[hrant]

Because Sequoyah's design needs a lot of work?

hhp

[quadibloc]

After encountering this thread, I saw the following news item:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/19/cherokee_version_windows/

[Si_Daniels]

Also... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2012/12/19/10379263.aspx

:-)

>can someone please tell me

Apparently a decade or so after the metal type was introduced the design of a few of the characters changed. Plantagenet originally contained the original forms, but was later revised to reflect the revised character shapes. I believe the windows 8 version of Plantagenet contains the older forms as stylistic alternates.

Cheers, Si

[hrant]

Joseph Erb in the news!
http://www.mail.com/news/us/2024960-to-save-endangered-languages-tribes-...

hhp