RE: [XaraXtreme-dev] Substituted fonts and Bug 1057

["Charles Moir" <CharlesM@xxxxxxxx>]

> That implies to me that Xara cannot distribute them:

I'm not and have never suggested we distribute them. We provide user
access to the fonts that they are allowed to download and use, FOC, as
per the MS EULA.

So we're not relying on any MS EULA for any aspect. Nor are we
distributing the fonts with the free or commercial versions of Xara.

> I find it a bit surprising you, of all people, who normally 
> suggests things should run from a single binary, or a 
> cross-platform installer are now suggesting people should 
> have to go to a separate site to get fonts to allow the 
> default document to work.

They don't have to go. It's their choice to download these fonts if they
wish to do so.

> This is quite apart from how badly relying on an MS EULA in a 
> supposedly open-source project would go down. OpenOffice does 
> not require them to load these fonts, so why should Xara?
> (that will be the perception).

We do not require them to download the fonts. The documents work fine
without using Arial font, (as it does right now, but substituting
another similar font). But if they want cross-platform compatibility
with industry standard fonts (and that will be a lot of users) we should
be encouraging the use of the only true cross-platform industry standard
fonts in order to achieve this. Hence why I suggest we make their lives
as easy as possible.

> I take the point that it would be a pity to use a default doc 
> with Nimbus in if there were a better font there (I hear good 
> things about Vera Sans which is TT and the Ubuntu default - 
> Nimbus is ATM). 

I'm afraid Vera was one of the fonts that I was rather disappointed by
the quality of. Can't remember specifically why now.

> Perhaps we should do something a bit simpler:
> just use a default document with Arial in if it's there at 
> install time (or possibly at document creation time), else 
> use a substitute (Nimbus, Vera, or whatever "ft-match Arial"
> gives). We could do this by having an option on save that 
> says "permanently substitute fonts on load". This would only 
> be set in the distributed templates and be off by default 
> (and clearly would not persist after the next load). So if 
> you do a "new document" without Arial installed using the 
> default template, you get Nimbus (or whatever). If you have 
> Arial installed, or use a user-created template, you get 
> Arial or (in the latter case) an Arial attribute which is 
> temporarily substituted. Then people who want to run without 
> MS EULAs (or run distro without them) can.

Yes, and I did suggest we could and perhaps should offer users ways to
avoid the font prompts. Another simple answer is to have a 'Don't prompt
me again' check box on the warning, which is a common answer to an
annoying alert. Or we provide a preference to substitute permanently. Or
provide an easy way to replace the default font (to be honest I think
this only requires two clicks now anyway. Open new document, select
required font, click 'save template' and now the new font is the default
font. Doesn't get much easier than that).

Charles

PS And this method of providing access to other third party licensed
content is something we can't avoid and will be using quite a lot. E.g.
the clipart galleries, font galleries, fill galleries. These all contain
images that we are quite happy to provide for free, but which are not
GPL and each have different EULAs.

So we are planning that they can click the 'get ....' button in the
gallery at which point we'll remind the user of the terms, before we
download and install the items.

And I'm sure most people would prefer to have access to our free files
(even though they can't be GPL) than for us to not provide them at all.
Give the user the freedom to choose I say.