Karl Berry wrote:

May I suggest a modification: whenever a *proprietary* font (that is, one with the restrictive licensing) is included.

It would be quite a lot of noise to generate a warning for every fully-included font, as most commonly-used fonts in the TeX world are free. Seems like any "real" warning regarding problematic fonts would quickly be lost in the swamp of resulting messages.

if that kind of crappy messages are really needed, then please only to the log file and optional

The only thing I can think of is some kind of additional map file option (ugggh) to generate the warning. Then when people (like Walter) generate TeX support for proprietary fonts, the pregenerated map files can specify the new option.

that will become a never ending story then; there are all kind of thinsg going on: - you may mess up the design, metrics, glyph programs all under the same name [no fonts] - you may mess up the design, metrics, glyph programs all under a different name [cmr] - you may use the font, make virtual instances, change metrics, but need to keep the design intact (may not create clones) [like utopia] - you may use the font, but not distribute file that contain all glyphs at the same time [lucida] i'm not even sure what category the palatino falls in: since there is an official one -from linotype- i even wonder if we may call all those variants on tex live palatino at all; it's funny that we're discussing them as being 'programs' i.e. some gpl being applied to them while part of the copyright [at least on the type 1's] not concerns the 'implementation' but the design, which deserves its own kind of licence [artistic ownership and such];

Further: any changes to map file syntax should be coordinated with pdftex and dvipdf[m][x], as another long-term goal should be to re-unify map files so that the same syntax can be used for all programs. It is a hassle for TeX Live and other distributions to have maintain the same information in three formats with only tiny differences.

hm, not change, dvipdfmx and dvips should just use the pdftex one (i need to check it, but some time ago the dvipdfmx people were working along those lines, including runtime mapfile/line definitions)

Also, I'm not sure if this is already included in the discussion, but any such warning should presumably apply when the font is fully downloaded at all, independent of whether that happens due to an .eps inclusion or simply using the font in the document.

At this time he was thinking about changing /FontName in the free URW fonts on CTAN

I sincerely hope Walter does not do that. Seems like it would have major backward-compatibility implications.

normally the copyright lines that are part of a font are copied into the pdf file along with the shape definitions, metric info, etc etc; so .. that part should be correct. [i think that as soon as users start seeing funny font copyright messages at runtime, they will stop using the fonts, and in the end we will end up with cmr only files] Hans btw i have no problem with copyrighted font designs, as long as we may mess around with the metrics, which is normally no problem since all dtp programs mess around with them when typesetting text, so messing around is part of the game; actually, messing around with the shapes is also permitted since that can be done in most vector drawing programs, as long as one does not produce and distribute a new font; so ... i do't really see the problem; ever since pdf was around, the only problems has been: - some font vendors don't permits any font to be part of a posted pdf; solution: i simply refuse to use such fonts - some font vendors don't permits a complete instance to be part of a posted pdf, since usa law than seems to imply that the font is kind of public since someone with a twisted mind can copy the font from the file and use it; solution: always embed subsets, which is kind of default behaviour for pdftex ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

The message is just an example. It should be understood by people who do not know what subsetting is. But English is not my native language, feel free to provide better suggestions.

Hans, is this ok for you? Or is it still too crappy?

i can live with one line (but don't expect the average user to understand what subsetting is -)

Usually there is no need to download an entire font. The map files provided by TeX distributions are set up to do subsetting by default. My only concern is that people rely on this and do not notice that they violate against licenses because something happens in the background they are not aware of.

my guess is that no font ever gets embedded completely, since (1) tex does not use the space and (2) no tex encoding uses all slots; maybe pdftex should always subset

Sounds quite straightforward: An asterisk for each font which is included entirely, independent of the map file entry.

indeed Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------