[luatex] the hz algorithm (was:Re: LuaTeX file almost 2.5x bigger)

[Pablo Rodríguez]

On 08/08/2010 02:21 AM, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> On 7 August 2010 Martin Schröder wrote:
>
>   >  2010/8/7 Pablo Rodríguez<oinos at web.de>:
>   >  >  I guess there is no way to avoid it (since there is no easy way
>   >  >  to avoid the patent itself).
>   >
>   >  Well, the patent is EP0466953, which should have expired on
>   >  2010-07-18 (1990-07-17 plus 20 years), but IANAL... :-)
>
> There are also severe technical problems.  I assume that Zapf's idea
> is based on multiple-master fonts.  But since such fonts are not
> available, there is no easy way to implement Zapf's algorithm.
> Hence it's not only a legal problem.

Thanks for your reply, Reinhard.

I'm not a lawyer, but even in the legal side of this issue (when the the 
European doesn't expire until 1/1/2011), there might be a related patent 
for a line-breaking algorithm granted to Adobe 
(http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6510441.pdf) that might involve the 
hz-algorithm (http://typophile.com/node/16525).

> The difference between Thanh's and Zapf's algorithms is that Thanh
> scales the glyphs horizontally while Zapf proposes to create dedicated
> instances of a font where the stroke width is preserved.
>
> Quite strange: There is no easy way to implement Zapf's algorithm
> anymore since we have/prefer Type1 fonts, TTF, and OTF.  With
> Metafont, I believe, it's not a big deal. :)

If I don't get you point wrong, the original hz-algorithm is not 
suitable for other fonts than Multiple Master, is it?

I wounder whether US Patent 6510441 
(http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6510441.pdf) solves this.

> The subject of this thread is "LuaTeX file almost 2.5x bigger".
> [...]
> I think that a lot of space can be saved if these operators are used
> instead of the TextMatrix.

This is all my fault, since I didn't change the subject of this thread.

Robert Schlicht solved this in a previous message 
(http://tug.org/pipermail/luatex/2010-July/001854.html). It was an issue 
of better tuning, since the default font expansion in LuaTeX isn't 
typographycally recommended.

Thanks for your help,


Pablo