inc/3rdparty/libraries/mpdf/ttfonts/ocrbinfo.txt

   1 Mostly-free OCR B
   2
   3 This font is used in UPC bar code symbols, including the ISBN symbols on
   4 most published books.
   5
   6 A freely distributable version seems to be sorely needed.  Until now, it's
   7 been very difficult to find the font in computer-usable format except by
   8 paying a high fee to a commercial font vendor.  Even many serious commercial
   9 publishers have so much trouble getting it right that they just go ahead and
  10 use Helvetica instead, or even (shudder) Arial.  Since the OCR B font is
  11 required by an international standard, it seems like it ought to be free.
  12 So here it is.  The font in this package is not a "ripped", pirated, or
  13 shadily reverse engineered version; every effort has been made to ensure
  14 that it genuinely derives from free sources and all the creators involved
  15 have actually intended it for free public use.
  16
  17 Converted by Matthew Skala from Metafont format to Postscript and TrueType
  18 formats, July 28, 2006, using mftrace 1.2.4 by Paul Vojta, which is
  19 available from
  20    http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen/mftrace/
  21 and Autotrace 0.31.1 available from
  22    http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/
  23
  24 The Metafont files (not included - see notes below) were coded by Norbert
  25 Schwarz in the 1980s, based on German standards documents.  He has attached
  26 a notice, notably not actually claiming any copyright - see the file
  27 "ocrbinfo" - saying that the fonts are "given to free non commercial use",
  28 but commenting that he is only free to grant rights to his own work on the
  29 digitization, because he did not design the original letter forms.  He
  30 suggests that there may be other copyright claims attached to the letter
  31 forms themselves, which Schwarz credits as being originally designed by
  32 "Adam Frutiger" [sic], almost certainly a mistake for Adrian Frutiger.  My
  33 (Matthew Skala's) understanding of copyright law, at least in the USA and
  34 Canada, is that in fact typefaces per se cannot be subject to copyright
  35 claims, so the software embodiment is the only thing subject to copyright
  36 and Schwarz's release makes it available for whatever "non commercial use"
  37 means.
  38
  39 To avoid muddying the waters further, any copyright claims by Matthew Skala
  40 on these files are hereby released to the public domain.  I'd like for these
  41 fonts to be freely usable even in marginally commercial applications, such
  42 as to generate UPC labels for books that will be sold for profit, but it may
  43 not be within my power to grant that myself because I didn't write the
  44 Metafont files although I did do considerable, and probably copyrightable,
  45 work on the translation to Postscript and TrueType.  It was *not* a purely
  46 automated process; try using the tools I used and see how far you get
  47 without human editing!  I'd also like for these fonts (the fonts themselves
  48 as opposed to documents made with them) not to be sold, not even indirectly
  49 by those Web sites that advertise "free downloads" but make it difficult to
  50 actually download fonts without paying a fee.
  51
  52 NOTE:  This ZIP archive is a stripped-down version containing just the
  53 essential files for using the main OCR B font on most systems.  If you want
  54 the much larger complete package, which contains Metafont sources and several
  55 variant fonts (reverse-video, outline, and slanted), look for a ZIP archive
  56 called ocrb-complete.zip wherever you found this one.
  57
  58 Matthew Skala
  59 mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca
  60 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/