Reserved Font Names for OFL-licensed fonts

Bob Tennent rdtennent at gmail.com
Fri Jul 24 16:12:02 CEST 2020


It has recently come to my attention that the Reserved Font
Name provision in the OFL license precludes distributing
different formats under the same user-visible font name. To
comply, I am currently in the process of removing [pdf]latex
support and type1 (pfb) fonts from several of the font
packages I maintain:

almendra
bitter
forum
librebaskerville
librecaslon
lobster2
marcellus
merriweather
quattrocento
playfair

If you have been using any of these packages using
[pdf]latex, you have the following options:

  + switch to xelatex or lualatex; my font packages have always
    been designed to allow easy migration to modern processors.

  + request on my behalf permission from the copyright
    owners of the font family to allow distribution of type1
    versions of their fonts without a name change. If you
    succeed, let me know and I will restore the old version
    of the package.

  + create a new OFL-licensed package based on the original
    with a suitable "new" name.  You will have to follow
    the guidelines at

https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL
https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=OFL-FAQ_web

    and use, for example, fontforge to change the internal
    Fontnames of the otf or ttf fonts. I could assist by
    passing on to you the relevant autoinst commands to
    generate suitable support files but I have no interest
    in pursuing this option myself.

I regret this unfortunate situation.

Bob Tennent


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