Bitmap fonts

DOS

I've used cv_fonted. Can be found here:

It produces a c file with an array of bitmaps. 8 x 8 and 16 x 16

Meindert

The linux kbd utility comes with a bunch of bitmapped fonts.

Unpack the tar file, and look in data/consolefonts

They're binary files, but the format is fairly simple. I'm not sure how the GPL applies to the bitmaps, though.

Many thanks for the replies. I've managed to find a 8x8 and a 8x14.fnt files from the good old DOS days and modded a program to put them into a large array. It's probably not as efficient in memory as Meindert's solution, but the odd K of Flash won't be a problem.

I was able to get the 8x8 and 8x16 character fonts from my Radeon

9600XT's BIOS.

I'm not sure about the legality os using it though. I used a Win32 program to get it.

I can send you my fonts (I made them first in the early 80-s),

8x12, you can see what they are like from the screenshots at my website. If the community would be interested, I can put them somewhere on the site. The format is straight forward, 12 bytes per character. If I get a reasonable number of requests I'll take the time to put the file somewere and anounce it to the group. (Obviously I mean sending /making available etc. for free, I do not consider drawing a font "real work" :-) .

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

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This article discusses this issue, and a routine to convert fonts to a C data file.

--

John Devereux

Since one man's font is another man's inky blob, I highly recommend Metagraphics FontBuilder:

It allows you to convert a TrueType font to a bitmap, at any dot pitch, and preserves the character widths. The output is a C header file. You will need to write a rendering routine that understands the (well documented) Metagraphics font format, but it's not hard. And, it understands unicode.

--Gene

Please understand that the resulting machine-generated font inherits the copyright of the source typeface and should not be distributed in a product without proper licensing.

http:///

has some explanations and discussions on what's legally permitted.

The digital type foundries are generally happy to license bitmaps and even to create specialty products (that's their business, after all). See

for an example.

--
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

The articles on the site above appear to mix facts and desires. There's even a petition which says: "... Unfortunately, [copying digital fonts] is perpetuated by current U.S. copyright laws, which do little to protect the original designers.."

offers a more balanced opinion, and it says that pure bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. Creating bitmaps from scalable fonts, may be copyright infringement depending on the exact interpretation of the law, and the way it was done. If you ignore the artistic hinting features in the font definition, and rely on automatically generated bitmaps (perhaps manually cleaned up by yourself), you may very well be safe.

• Typeface designs. Individual designs, whatever art or genius they may embody, or however elaborate or decorative or removed from ordinary text-printing, are not registrable or protectible, except in some cases as design patents.

• Bitmapped fonts. Pictorial or digital representations of typeface designs, or any kind of more-or-less mechanical reproduction of them, such as bitmapped printer or screen fonts, are likewise not subject to copyright.

• Scalable fonts. Some scalable fonts, at least, are accepted for registration and copyright protection. It is safest to assume that all fonts in the standard outline formats (T1, T3, TT, etc.) are protected. Nevertheless, the language of the 1992 ruling would seem to exclude scalable fonts generated without the opportunity for extensive artistic intervention, and this might well serve to exclude all non-professional scalable fonts, typically generated automatically by the "auto-hinting" feature of a font editor.

The problem with "original designer" is that the designer of any Latin fonts are actually "stealing" from Guthenberg :-).

Paul

I don't think that's supportable (I'm a typographer). The Roman alphabet predated Gutenberg by many centuries, and a lot of its transformation into what we think of as "print" faces occurred independently of his press. In fact Gutenberg's most famous works simply faithfully duplicated the textura hands of human scribes and copyists; they have a good case to argue against him! A modern reader would not recognise his type as similar to today's book types.

The history of printed type is very complex and involves players in many countries, sometimes working independently, sometimes working together and building on each other's work. (Pretty much analogous to the sciences, mathematics, and computer software, actually :) If today's 'intellectual property' police had been involved, we'd be paying royalties to Microsoft every time we wrote a grocery list.

I posted this ages and ages ago in comp.fonts and the comments still apply. Summary: One *may* independently draw a typeface that bears an arbitrarily close resemblance to an existing typeface. One *may not* input a digital font description into one end of a chain of digital manipulation and then claim ownership/sell/give away the output of that chain.

----

Part of the answer goes back to how, in the U.S., the *name* of a type family could be protected but the *shape* of any individual letterform could not be. I think this was based on the (perhaps mistaken) idea that "there are only so many ways to draw an 'a'" and was more-or-less workable back in the days of metal type. If type foundry B wanted to produce a version of a typeface owned by foundry A, B would have to collect type samples, draw the faces (with slight differences for each point size), and cut new metal punches. Not an easy job even with tools like pantographs.

The end result was a newly created typeface that may have been quite similar to the copied face but one that required some measure of skill and thought along the way to production, and one that would necessarily have some differences in the details of the implementation.

Fast forward to the era of digital type. Some of the rules haven't changed. Type foundries (and individuals) can still start with a printed copy of any typeface and draw/scan/digitize it, add hinting and kerning information, and sell it (or give it away) under a new name. Even given the shapes of the various letter forms to start with there is quite a lot of skill required to turn those shapes into a quality digital font, especially a text face.

However, U.S. courts have decided that what can not be done is to start with the digital form of the font e.g. the .ttf file, just "change a few things," and declare it to be a new font. That is not to say that you can't modify a font file for your own use so that, for example, the upper case I and lower case l are distinguishable or adding a slash to the zero character. However, just moving a few anchor points or even converting the font through a font editor and stretching it a few percent still leaves the font as substantially somebody else's work.

No different, really, than using a hex editor to change all instances of "Microsoft Word" to "AcmeInc Editor" in the executable and then reselling it. However, creating a new word processor from scratch, even one that looks like and acts like MS Word, is a lot more defendable. It's not a perfect analogy (cf. Lotus v Borland) but you can get the idea.

-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

Then I think it comes down to the "expression" of the font. If I have a TT font (especially one supplied by the manufacturer of my computer OS and/or word processor), and I print a newpaper using that typeface, I certainly do not owe the author of that typeface one thin dime more.

If it so happens that my newspaper is displayed on an LCD, rather than committed to paper, it is still within my rights to use it thusly.

Using software such as FontBuilder to convert that TT font to a bitmap representation, which I then use to display my newspaper, in no way infringes any more than the OS GUI does when it renders that same font on my monitor as I type this.

If, however, I wholesale convert every TT font provided to me, and then sell or distribute those to other LCD newspaper publishers, I am likely infringing, as that is product, not expression.

--Gene

[snip...snip...]

Correct.

Correct.

Correct.

Also correct.

You would also be infringing if you took that single font that you had rendered as a bitmap and sold or distributed it, even bundled as part of a larger embedded product.

A typeface is every bit (no pun intended) as much somebody's hard work as is, say, the embedded RTOS that you may have written. If somebody was to take the source of the RTOS and run it through a filter that strips comments and changes all of the variable names to A0001, A0002, ... That's still a derivative work and is your copyrighted work.

--
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

Just because it's hard work doesn't automatically mean it is copyrightable. The law does not treat every product of intellectual work equivalently, so you need to be careful with analogies.

If you can find a more recent policy decision, than the one I found below in a comp.fonts FAQ, please go ahead and post it.

``The [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision [published at 53 FR 38110] based on the [October 10,] 1986 Notice of Inquiry [published at 51 FR

36410] reiterated a number of previous registration decisions made by the [Copyright] Office. First, under existing law, typeface as such is not registerable. The Policy Decision then went on to state the Office's position that 'data that merely represents an electronic depiction of a particular typeface or individual letterform' [that is, a bitmapped font] is also not registerable.'' 57 FR 6201.

However, scalable fonts are, in the opinion of the Copyright Office, computer programs, and as such are copyrightable:

``... the Copyright Office is persuaded that creating scalable typefonts using already-digitized typeface represents a significant change in the industry since our previous [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision. We are also persuaded that computer programs designed for generating typeface in conjunction with low resolution and other printing devices may involve original computer instructions entitled protection under the Copyright Act. For example, the creation of scalable font output programs to produce harmonious fonts consisting of hundreds of characters typically involves many decisions in drafting the instructions that drive the printer. The expression of these decisions is neither limited by the unprotectable shape of the letters nor functionally mandated. This expression, assuming it meets the usual standard of authorship, is thus registerable as a computer program.''

57 FR 6202.''

I wrote a windows app to allow me to design my own 8x8 font and generate a C header file from it. You can try it here

Note: In the absence of a manual... The File_Save & File_Load saves binary font data and is only used to save data not to create the header file. Use the Generate Header button to create the header file which will appear in the generated output window. The rest is quite self explanitory. Comes with a pre-built font too.

Hope it's useful !

Well, there's this case from 1998:

Which is consistent with what I've been attempting to explain.

Also consistent.

The Adobe decision cited above plainly (and reasonably) places restrictions on the creation of derivative works. A type designer would not expect, nor claim, royalties for each page of a book printed with a particular font (one example of a bitmap) nor for the text as a bitmap in, say, a Powerpoint presentation.

One could also independently create a bitmap font that looks arbitrarily close to, say Univers, and use it in any embedded product without infringing.

However, it would be infringement to start with univers.ttf, create a bitmap instance of a particular height and weight from it as my_universal.c, and then to use my_universal.c as the system font to display new text in, say, an embedded PDA app.

--
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

The Adobe decision does not appear to mention the copyrightable status of bitmaps generated from scalable font definitions. The defendant in the case had copied the glyph instructions and glyph coordinates from the original files, and distributed those as its own scalable fonts by making minimal mechanical changes. This is a different procedure, and does not involve generating and distributing pure bitmaps.

According to Adobe arguments, Adobe obtained digitized third party font definitions, and added a certain amount of creativity in determining the best glyph reference points in their own definition. The case depends on this added creativity element they feel is protected by copyright law (and to which the court agrees).

By using any kind of software to turn the glyph definitions into bitmaps, none of the original glyph reference points remain, so their argument would no longer hold water.

I have some difficulty making the leap from a font being treated as a computer program for copyright purposes to it being an infringement to make use of the output of such a "program". The scaled or otherwise massaged output would seem to be the bit-mapped font that the ruling says isn't protected.

Aside: If one has a properly-obtained font that is copyrighted, how is the copyright notice attached to it so that others know not to use it illegally? Do you attach a copyright notice to the case of your embedded product (which may become separated from the font)?