FreeType Project Cheers TrueType Patent Expiration 203
FlorianMueller writes "The FreeType project celebrates the expiration of Apple's TrueType bytecode patents. The open source font rendering engine now has the bytecode technology enabled by default. The relevant code existed for some time, but the project felt forced to disable it and advise everyone not to use it due to patent encumbrance. The 20-year maximum of validity of software patents is long, but sometimes the stuff that becomes available is still useful. The Unisys GIF patent was an example. And anything open-sourced 20 years ago would also be patent-free by now (except for the code that has since been added)."
Does this really matter (Score:2)
Didn't most distributions that shipped FreeType enable usage of TrueType fonts by default already, or am I misunderstanding this?
Re:Does this really matter (Score:4, Informative)
The bytecode in question is about hinting and gridfitting (try Googling those terms): it tells the rendering engine (e.g. FreeType) how to scale fonts at small sizes so they look good. By default, FreeType just scaled text down, which can make it hard to read at small sizes and give blurry edges. Although it did make some efforts to guess what would make good grid alignment decisions, they couldn't used the wealth of information that some fonts' designers painstakingly design into their work by default. It's one of the reasons why fonts on Linux look like crap at small sizes, especially with antialiasing turned off. (Remember that Windows never had problems when fonts were just displayed as black and white!)
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Thanks for the info.
Maybe they'll look even better now, but I actually thought I'd figured out what had my fonts on a stock Linux distribution looking bad: they were just too damned big :). It's one of those simple things, but compared to a Windows or a Mac desktop, I'd open up Ubuntu or the like and things would just look WRONG. After struggling with trying different fonts, anti-aliasing settings, etc, I eventually discovered that the "trick" to making them look right, for me, was just to drop the defaul
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Not using the patented method didn't disable TrueType, it just made TrueType fonts uglier. However, at least last time I checked, Ubuntu shipped with the patented method enabled, though Debian did not.
Anyone have a comparison? (Score:2)
Re:Anyone have a comparison? (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, the sample shows what is wrong with "BCI" (Score:3, Interesting)
"Improvement". Um... no, the details of what makes the font appear distinctive area destroyed by "BCI". The fonts are not the same -- perhaps in terms of set-width, but not at all for typographic detail.
I guess "BCI" simply replaces the actual character forms with something else at lower pixel resolutions.
For example, look at the 13th line in the example - look at the lower case "c" and "d". Notice that the "BCI" version is considerably more open. Indeed, it has become a much more modern font! Note that ker
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I'm having a very hard time trying to figure out any difference between those. What exactly should I be looking at/for?
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Here you can see a comparison with mouseover effect:
http://martin.ankerl.com/2009/01/22/beautiful-font-hinting-in-ubuntu-810/ [ankerl.com]
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That does not look like any hinting change, rather it is some kind of change to the subpixel filtering. As far as I can tell it is just switching from a more blurry version to a sharper (and lighter) version in the "old" one. I don't think either picture is showing correct subpixel filtering.
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So, the bytecode enabled column just looks blurrier. Not exactly a major leap in font technology.
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The right one. It doesn't necessarily look better per se, but rather looks as the font designers intended.
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For the most part, there isn't much of a difference. That is, until you look closely at the descenders and serifs, then you can see the difference between the two. The right column looks better.
Patent time needs to be extended! (Score:2)
This may become the next drive where software patents are concerned. In much the same way that the H1-B programs get extended and increased while unemployment is hitting new highs, software patents stifle business and innovation and keep the courts systems over-burdened... we need more of it!
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I am presently employed in IT. Some might say under-employed... but I've been considering waiting outside of Home Depot on weekends. That tax-free income looks pretty attractive right about now.
I think when our white faces start showing up in news articles instead of the typical brown ones, there might be some additional notice paid. Unfortunately, I don't speak spanish particularly well so that might be a problem with my getting any of that weekend-tax-free-pay.
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I think when our white faces start showing up in news articles instead of the typical brown ones, there might be some additional notice paid. Unfortunately, I don't speak spanish particularly well so that might be a problem with my getting any of that weekend-tax-free-pay.
That's what community college and a holiday in Spain are for.
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Indeed. I'm slated to start taking Spanish classes at the local technical school myself this fall. The beginners class is only $150. Despite being very anti-illegal immigrant I'm actually very interested in Mexican culture and the like, hence my desire to learn Spanish. One of my best friends is half-Mexican, and the most anti-illegal immigrant person I actually know is his father who immigrated from Mexico over 30 years ago. HE actually did it the right way, went through all the paperwork, etc, and ge
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The illegal immigrants aren't taking anyone's job, because hardly anyone else here will do it. Their claim: take our jobs, please. It's hard work, and we're stealing nobody's job.
Only to those who don't know any better. I have family members in drywall, and several friends in the masonry business. Most of them are currently unemployed - not for lack of wanting to work, but for the fact that the companies that employed them went under due to not being able to competitively bid against companies using off the books/illegal labor. Other companies are literally bidding less than the break even cost of legit companies because they're paying their labor under the table for less than mi
Funny Enough... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple apparently uses FreeType in the iPhone. Go to settings->General->Legal and you get the long list of projects uses in the iPhone; the Freetype project is mentioned about a third of the way down (right below the copyright notice for ncurses).
I suppose Apple had no issue recompiling with the flag turned on.
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I guess they felt they could violate their own patent?!
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Funny me laughs at this.
Pedantic me says that since they own the patents, it's just like if one of us was licensing the patent. Ergo, turning that option on at build-time would have been legally hunky-dory.
Funny me laughs at it again though.
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Wouldn't the GPL3 give them trouble with that, if someone called them on it?
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I think the resulting irony would destroy the universe. Lets hope no one else ever thinks of it (or takes it seriously).
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I believe Freetype is only available under the GPL2 or the Freetype license (basically the 4-clause BSD license).
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They are patent holders for that particular patents :)
Re:Funny Enough... (Score:5, Funny)
I suppose Apple had no issue recompiling with the flag turned on.
IIRC, the Freetype FAQ suggested that for commercial use, you could talk to Apple and get a license so that you can legally recompile with the flags on. I assume Apple sent an email to 127.0.0.1 to request such permission.
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summary not precise (Score:2, Informative)
Screenshot with and without BCI (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh no. I find the shot without BCI easier to read.
Am I getting old? Do I like old things better than new things?
I don't wanna grow up! I'm too young to own a lawn!
Re:Screenshot with and without BCI (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, anti-aliasing is useful in 2 situations only: if you are rendering fonts in big sizes (bigger than 13px)
And guess what: LCD subpixel rendering stretches the font outline horizontally by a factor of three as its first step. So if you're rendering a font at 9px, it's as if you were rendering it at 27px across.
or if you have bad, non-hinted fonts (as Bitstream Vera)
Case in point: I had to switch a client's web site from Helvetica to Arial (sorry, smug typophile weenies) because Helvetica's hints handle this stretching poorly, causing the upper bowls of letters like m, n, and r to overshoot the x-height by a whole pixel. When FreeType's autohinter performs better than Microsoft ClearType with BCI on Helvetica, something is up.
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Well, Microsoft ClearType was designed with the assumption that "better" = "readable on screen", not "faithful to the typeface design".
I thought it was 17 but 20 isn't bad.. but 100+? (Score:2)
Copyright needs to be lowered. I find it amazing that huge industries were unable to extend the patent duration while the entertainment industries were able to extend this to over 100 years from the original 14+14 years.
Work around (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents used to last 17 years after issue. But certain patent owners would employ dirty tricks to keep a patent in the "pending" state (filed but not issued). Now they last 20 years after filing, with an available 5-year extension for certain health care products to compensate for delays in getting the FDA's marketing approval. This greatly reduced the available techniques to keep a patent below water, though nonpracticing entities have discovered a few that still work.
U.S. copyright is longer because a copyright is far easier to work around than a patent is to invent around. The methods used in a computer program cannot be copyrighted (17 USC 102(b)). Only the expression can, and the key case for that was CA v. Altai. Names of commands were ruled uncopyrightable in Lotus v. Borland, allowing look-alikes and work-alikes of office applications such as OpenOffice.org. But two disturbing copyright interpretations remain: the uncertainty in the scope of copyright in video game scenarios (Atari v. Philips ruled for wide copyright; Capcom v. Data East ruled for narrow), and the possibility of accidentally infringing the copyright in a sequence of musical notes that someone else happened to claim first (Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs).
Am I the only one who thinks this looks terrible? (Score:2)
Just because the patent expired doesn't make it great. Some of the stuff rendered with BCI almost makes me want to go back to bitmapped fonts. Or maybe it works well, but only with non-free fonts. If that's the case, here's hoping that free operating systems that use FreeType do NOT make this the default immediately.
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Well, it's simple: It gives good results if the designer of the font put considerable work into it (and the software correctly interprets it, but I assume that's the case). It gives terrible results if the font designer didn't. Now if it looks bad for free fonts, then I can imagine several possible causes:
Apple style rendering? (Score:2)
Does anyone know how to enable with Freetype, the same kind of font appearance as apple does on OS X?
Some say apples font rendering is a bit more blurry, but I find it easier on the eyes than stock font rendering under linux.
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Apple has a different philosophy comparted to how almost everyone else renders fonts on the screen. Apple wants it to be perfectly shaped, but that's not possible even on today's high-res screens (including the so-called 'retina' display on the iPhone 4), so not only do they anti-alias it, but they also use subpixel rendering, and they do it even where it doesn't make sense (like dead-center between scanlines). The result is not pleasing to me due to annoying, fuzzy artifacts on its fonts but it's pleasin
Cleartype (Score:2)
Well, Truetype BCI is useful but today most computer screens are LCD it isn't enough anymore, we also need a good subpixel rendering method, the one included in Freetype isn't so bad but isn't as good as Cleartype either. And the Cleartype code in freetype had been removed, unlike the BCI, which is only disabled, so we who don't live in the US can't use it either. (there are still a way to patch freetype though). I wonder how long will we have to wait until we can have nice looking fonts on Linux desktop.
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Cleartype is awful. If we had that on Linux, I'd turn it off, just as I do on ever LCD XP machine I use.
Enable Byte Code (Fedora) (Score:5, Informative)
http://linuxtweaking.blogspot.com/2010/03/fedora-12-improving-awful-font.html [blogspot.com]
I've just enabled byte code support on my laptop - makes a big difference.
Re:This makes me worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that makes this a worthy patent, like the RSA patent. All those other patents that can be easily worked around, those are the bad patents.
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If it's obvious, it's not supposed to be patentable. Unfortunately, the examiners seem to let a lot of obvious things slip through, but that covers your scenario.
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I think the problem is that the wrong examiners handle some obvious patents. Something that may be obvious to a software developer may not be obvious to someone with only a degree in chemistry and a single undergrad programming course (and vice versa) and once a patent has been granted it's a pain in the ass to get rid of it even if there is prior art so everyone just kind of seems to hope that those who get such patents granted realize that they'd be useless in a serious legal battle (against someone with
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I think the problem is that the wrong examiners handle some obvious patents. Something that may be obvious to a software developer may not be obvious to someone with only a degree in chemistry and a single undergrad programming course (and vice versa) ...
You may think that, but you'd be wrong. The USPTO has lots of different art groups, and people reviewing software patents are software developers with CS or CE degrees, and people reviewing chemical patents are chemists or chem engineers.
Re:This makes me worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now add the fact the groups like MPEG-LA have 1000s of patents, even small costs become massive.
The current system is self serving. Its serving lawyers under the pretense of protecting inventors.
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Laws are written in a way where we are told we can't understand them, and must seek "legal advice" at every turn. Unlike real professionals, there is nothing wrong --legally-- with bad legal advice or incompetence, you get to stay a lawyer. Just see how long an engineer stays an engineer when they get things wrong, like a bridge wasn't strong enough.
I have known too many lawyers. All they car
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If it's obvious, it's not supposed to be patentable. Unfortunately, the examiners seem to let a lot of obvious things slip through, but that covers your scenario.
Why don't you go tell the meso-american civilizations that the wheel is obvious?...
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A big problem is it's very difficult to judge obviousness, something that would be obvious to someone who has spent some time working on the same problem won't nessacerlly be obvious to a patent examiner. After the fact it's even harder.
Another big problem is those soloutions which aren't particularlly obvious but where there is only a very small number (sometimes only one) of good soloutions which are likely to be found eventually by multiple parties. Lightbulbs are a good example of this, both edison and
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Ridiculous example: If someone had gotten a patent for "circular apparatus that facilitates low friction locomotion" there might not have been much to do but wait out the 20 years.
How about a real, ridiculous example instead of a made up one? Putting medication into popsicles and feeding the popsicles to children. Until it expires on Dec 20 2013 we can't do this.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5431915/description.html [patentstorm.us]
This is the second time I've posted this patent today...
When I was a little kid (let just say, back when OJ was famous for an entirely different reason than now) my mom had one of those tupperware sets to "make your own popsicles" and I occasionally took medication t
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>> Now a days I would like a tupperware popsicle maker kit so as to add ethanol.
You need some hard-core freezing equipment to make ethanol popsicles though.
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You need some hard-core freezing equipment to make ethanol popsicles though.
I can't be the only slashdotter who's frozen mixed drinks into icecubes. You know, so your jack -n- coke doesn't water down as the ice cubes melt. "Everyone knows" that fifty:fifty jack and coke will freeze in a residential deep freeze and possibly in a plain residential freezer, and fifty:fifty jack and coke is pretty strong, thats like jack with a slight coke flavoring. No liquor 80 proof and above can possibly freeze in a residential freezer. I believe the freezing point for diet coke is far higher t
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How about a real, ridiculous example instead of a made up one? Putting medication into popsicles and feeding the popsicles to children. Until it expires on Dec 20 2013 we can't do this.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5431915/description.html [patentstorm.us]
That's odd... I don't see "putting medication into popsicles and feeding the popsicles to children" in the claims. Are you sure you're not attempting to refute a patent based on stuff with no legal weight, like the title, abstract, or pictures?
This is the second time I've posted this patent today...
When I was a little kid (let just say, back when OJ was famous for an entirely different reason than now) my mom had one of those tupperware sets to "make your own popsicles" and I occasionally took medication that way per pediatrician advice. Instead of putting plain kool-aid in and freezing them, you put something kids don't like, such as cough medicine, in, fill the balance with kool-aid, stir to mix, freeze... best made onesie-twosie to prevent accidental overdose. Now a days I would like a tupperware popsicle maker kit so as to add ethanol. Oh that patent-violating mother of mine...
And yet, nothing like the system claimed in the patent existed commercially... Do you have any proof that you did that, or are we to simply take your word for it? I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty pissed off if, as an inventor, someone was to say "oh, your inv
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Your local target, kmart and all other big box stores have said devices for $5 or so. Adding ethanol is easy and fun. Lots of recipes out there. Sadly, you can't add much or they will not freeze.
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Sure, drug companies are going to have trouble marketing medi-pops, but if you are actually worried about the legal risks you would take by making your own, you have gone off the deep end.
But thats the whole point. I'm not worried about the legal risks of making my own, but the medical risks of DIY. Obviously aspirin coated in a buffering compound would be a dumb idea to grind and mix. And there are probably medications out there that oxidize so fast, or are insoluble outside of an acidic stomach acid solution that you shouldn't do this. Most liquids, I would guess, should be fine. But what about liq amoxicillin? Who knows? The whole point is the legal risks of drug companies marketin
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Thanks to the free market, there would be no incentive for someone with such a patent to just sit on it for a number of years, unless they also held (and licensed) a patent for "mammalian apparatus of equine variety that facilitates locomotion"...
Patents are only there to prevent the sort of "clandestine creativity" that surrounds an expensive project that is faced with the very real threat that it will be stolen right out from under the inventors. Look at China for a very real example of why a working (if
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To be fair, a lot of things are obvious in retrospect. It's obvious now that a round object with a shaft down the middle might be used to easily carry weight, but the wheel wasn't discovered by all cultures and has no parallel in nature. One-click... that's obvious.
There are many moments of "Oh yeah, why didn't anyone think of that?" It's not a solution to a math problem, it's a stroke of creative intuition. In retrospect, those strokes seem obvious. But without seeing someone else do it first, however
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The RSA patent was not a worthy patent. It failed the obvious to someone skilled in the arts test due to the fact that it had been previously discovered at GCHQ some years previous. Clearly someone with the right mathematical skills and into cryptography could work it out without problem. The whole concepty had been previously publicaly published by someone who lacked the mathematical skills to provide a working solution.
It really bugs me when people claim that the RSA patent was worthy as it shows a lack o
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Yes, in a business where most things are considered obsolete after 5 years, and ancient at 10, a 20 year patent life time is extremely excessive.
It is sad to see that countries and regions (EU) who do not (officially) allow software patents, are working on legislation to enable them.
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Well at least New Zealand seems to be moving in the right direction on that topic.
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Yes, in a business where most things are considered obsolete after 5 years, and ancient at 10, a 20 year patent life time is extremely excessive.
That statement is ironic when you consider this exact case - TrueType, still in primary use today, still valid, still relevant, not obsolete or ancient and still sought after.
Re:This makes me worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
The statement above makes me worried because it suggests that the Open Source Community could not find their way around these patents for two decades! Think about it....20 years!
That is not what the article says. What it says is that the patent was filed 20 years ago, and that the freetype library included the code that infringed on that patent "for some time".
What would "find a way around these patents" be? With software patents, that patent a "method" of doing something, it's quite hard to be able to find a way around them. Say Microsoft decided to enforce their double-click patent, how would you find a way around it? Basically, no other software would be able to use the double click input method without paying Microsoft for a patent license.
The EFF fights against many of the enforced software patents, trying to prove that there was prior art and that the patent was actually invalid when it was granted. If the patent was actually valid, there's not much you could do.
That's how it is, that's why we hate software patents.
You cannot patent an idea, can you? (Score:3, Interesting)
Say Microsoft decided to enforce their double-click patent, how would you find a way around it?
Microsoft cannot be granted a patent on such a thing. What they could patent is the implementation of how events are handled by the system. So double clicking wouldn't be patentable. Under the patent regime today, what they could patent includes the method of effecting a [desired] change after double clicking.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Re:You cannot patent an idea, can you? (Score:5, Informative)
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Okay - consider this [slashdot.org] your correction.
While what you say is true in the theory of how patents should work - it is not how it is applied today. People abstract a lot of the methodology to claim that their idea IS the methodology.
Re:You cannot patent an idea, can you? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can patent anything you can get a patent clerk to sign off on. At which point the only recourse the public has is to take you to court. That's well beyond the resources of a project like FreeType. Just because the patent is technically invalid doesn't mean they can't make your life hell for infringing on it.
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That would be how it should work if patents were allowed for software.
But that is not how it does currently work.
Few software patents are on "this method" of doing something, but rather on "a method" (any method).
Personally, I consider that software is the only area where both copyright and patents cover the same material.
It should be one or the other, and I favor copyright.
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Personally, I consider that software is the only area where both copyright and patents cover the same material.
They don't, however. That you personally consider it to be true doesn't make it true.
Triple-click? (Score:2)
Easy, use a triple-click with an "accessibility" tolerance of +/- one click.
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Say Microsoft decided to enforce their double-click patent, how would you find a way around it?
Actually I believe MS copied the double click from Apple and its one button mouse, but I for one wish it HAD been patented. It's a dumb convention, IMO. What would be wrong with having one click highlight, and a second click not dependant on time execute? I mean, single click an icon the second time and nothing happens, why does the second click have to be 1/n long to do anything? The double click really frustrate
Re:This makes me worried... (Score:4, Informative)
could not find their way around these patents for two decades
Sure, there was a way around the patents: be incompatible with TrueType.
That's how PNG was invented to work around the patents on GIF.
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Sure, there was a way around the patents: be incompatible with TrueType.
But then how would you get the major foundries on board without being compatible with the two major desktop PC operating systems?
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Considering that the crucial patents for TrueType have expired, the point is moot. Because open formats and standardization is popular right now (due to the many companies competing over the same area, and their recognition that fragmentation is a bad thing for all except one player involved), it's highly unlikely for new de-facto standards to arise from proprietary, closed, or otherwise patent-encumbered systems.
Consider it a lesson learned (not that the people in charge really do learn, but that's what th
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That's enough time for an infant born at the time of patent filing to [legally] be a parent at its expiry...and that's a long time folks.
Giving new meaning to the term "generations" of technology.
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I'm not sure it's possible to work around the patent in this case. It seems that TrueType fonts (invented by Apple) include some sort of "program" that once it gets interpreted by the font renderized it makes fonts look better, but the TrueType format is not patent-free. The options are to invent a new font format or to use the ttf format and avoid the features that are patented.
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The statement above makes me worried because it suggests that the Open Source Community could not find their way around these patents for two decades! Think about it....20 years!
They "found their way around" the patents long ago, using what is actually a more advanced automatic hinting method than the patented method. Early on it sucked, but over time the differences seemed to become almost unnoticeable in many cases.
At any rate, top font designers go to a lot of effort to hint the fonts by hand. That's the bit that was patented. Freetype might as well go ahead and fully utilize the efforts of the font designers now that they can.
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Patents cover methods, as they were designed to do, but in the software world that means they by necessity cover interfaces too.
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It could be worse. It could be the inventor's lifetime plus seventy years. And yes, twenty years is a long time if you're twenty five, not so long if you're my age.
When does Viagra's patent expire? That shit's WAY too expensive! When Paxil's patent expired it went from a hundred dollars a bottle to ten.
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The original post never even hinted at 20 years being any sort of a minimum for parenthood - just that it was long enough for it to happen.
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born at the time of patent filing to [legally] be a parent at its expiry.
I don't know how to parse this except as a direct refutation of your post.
As with GP, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Nor do I understand its relevance.
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BTW, what is the offense that is committed if a 12 year old becomes a parent? (I'm not arguing the law, I'm just curious.)
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You could become a parent by having sex with another 12 year old. Or by somehow impregnating yourself with semen legally obtained outside of sex (unlikely, but possible). The point is, as far as I know there is no law against becoming a parent (in itself) at any age in the vast majority o
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what is the offense that is committed if a 12 year old becomes a parent?
barring immaculate conception, statutory rape if you're in the US or sexual assault of a minor up here (Canada) if the other parent is more than 2 years older.
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There is no necessary connection that anyone has yet shown between one's age and the legality of one's parenthood.
It is quite possible, maybe even probable, that some illegal act was committed by someone if a 12yo is a parent, but it doesn't result in:
Forevery(x): if (IsAParent(x) & IsUnderSomeAge(x)) then isIllegalParent(x)
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In any case, I would argue that the intercourse is the legally problematic bit, not the "becoming a parent" part.
Hence my careful phrasing.
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Either way, this doesn't seem to be what GP was saying.
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It's a clumsy reference but I think the GGP (or is it GGGP? I've lost track...) makes a valid point.
He's saying that a child could be born and grow to an age where s/he could procreate before a patent runs out. It's like saying "Once in a blue moon" to indicate that something happens rarely or only after a long time.
Then the thought occurred to him that a person could be a parent at some ridiculously young age that's far shorter than the amount of time for a patent to run out. Thus, he threw in that "leg
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You can only refute my post by ADDING a word that wasn't there in the original post and by my reading wasn't even remotely implied by the original post (as legality typically has nothing to do with having a baby - I knew girls from aged 14 and up who had baby's when we were in school - none ever had "the law" knocking at their door).
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You're right. I concede defeat on this issue.
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Yep. If she's 18, and you're 38, you're a hero. However, if she's 17, and you're 37, you're a pedophile. American society makes so much sense.
Re:Can now embed into X11? (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot really needs a moderation score of "-1 Incoherent"
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No... then no one would be able to read what I wrote. I do the majority of my commenting between 2am and 4am. I know it shows when I later re-read them over the course of my waking hours. Reminds me of a horrible typing mistake when I was ...it didn't cum out well.
TRYING to discuss a "Seagate" "hard diSk" getting inserted into a live RAID.
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Though you might think so, this is incorrect. In modern fonts far less information is sent by transmitting the bitmap than the font description and this is how all modern font rendering works including on X with XRender.