[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Thread Index]

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

Charles Moir wrote:

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.


May be I am not being clear. Without doing a full substitution,
any documents created using the default template by a user
without Arial on their machine (a large % of Linux users)
will:
1. Warn on load (when the warning is there, which it isn't
   at the moment)
2. Look different when loaded by a user /with/ Arial on
   their machine.

This seems undesirable for an application in its default
installed state. It will be the default installed state
unless we make a code change as I cannot imagine for
instance Ubuntu shipping what will hopefully be their
default graphics program in a manner where installing
the package also installs a font under an MS Eula. So
in the default installed state, the above will happen
unless we change things. We can't change things by
shipping the fonts ourselves (see above).


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


I'm sure you are right. However, it will be the font their
word processor etc. uses unless they have Arial. I hear
a lot of Vera bugs have been worked our recently.


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.


That doesn't fix it. The font will still look different on a reload
onto a machine /with/ Arial, and they will lose "real" font substitution
warnings. It will also still prompt on any other similar machine it
is loaded on.

> Or we provide a preference to substitute permanently. Or

provide an easy way to replace the default font


Does my idea of a preference in the DOCUMENT (which is set on
the saved templates) saying "permanently substitute these fonts
on next load - and then destroy this preference" work for you?
This would seem to let those who want to use Arial continue
to use it, and will keep it as the default for such people.

> (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).


It's not just about avoiding the prompts. It's about documents that
are saved looking like they were when they are designed. Font
substitution is a pretty subtle matter and beyond most users.
But I bet if you find a user who knows what it means and you say
to him "if you install Xara LX would you like it to ensure the
font in your default document is one you have installed" I am
betting the answer will be "yes". They shouldn't *need* to
do two clicks (don't they also have to go find their templates
directory, and do it for every template we supply, anyway?).


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.


Oh absolutely. I am not in the slightest bit opposed to people using
them - they should have the choice. And of course normal paid-for
fonts. My beef is merely with the default document using a "missing"
font on a standard Linux system.

Alex