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<TITLE>The Open Font Library</TITLE>
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<DIV id="in">
<H1 ALIGN=Center>
Open Font Library
</H1>
<P>
The <A HREF="http://openfontlibrary.org/">Open Font Library</A> is a web-site
which allows you to download free/libre/open fonts made by others and to upload your
own.
<P>
FontForge has commands to make it easy to
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="OFLib.html#Browsing">Browse the library, generating font previews,
and downloading fonts.</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="OFLib.html#Uploading">Upload a completed font to the library.</A>
</UL>
<H2>
<A NAME="Browsing"><IMG SRC="OFLibBrowse.png" ALIGN="Right" WIDTH="603" HEIGHT="556">Browsing
the Library</A>
</H2>
<P>
The first time this dialog starts it will download a list of all fonts on
the library. This is an incremental process which can take a while. The
information is cached and subsequent invocations merely check for any additional
fonts.
<P>
The display shows the font's name, designer, license and the set of tags
attached to the font by the designer (and by OFLib itself). If you open an
entry (by clicking on the emboxed-plus sign you will see the separate files
you may download.
<P>
In the example at right the font "NotCourier-Sans" from Open Source Publishing
is selected. This font is released under the
<A HREF="http://scripts.sil.org/OFL">Open Font License </A>designed by SIL with the help of the community.
The package just contains a truetype file (which is 104Kb in size).
<P>
If you click on a font and a preview for that font has already been downloaded
then you will see the preview; otherwise you may press the [Preview] button
to download it (if the package contains no preview then fontforge will download
the font itself and generate a preview from it).
<P>
If you press the [Open Font] button then fontforge will download and open
the selected font file.
<P>
You may chose to sort the list of fonts by date, designer, or font name.
You may also sort it in reverse order. The default is to order fonts in reverse
chronological order -- so the most recent font creations appear first in
the list.
<P>
You may restrict the list so that it only shows fonts by a certain designer,
with a specified license, with certain tags, ...<BR CLEAR="ALL">
<H2>
<IMG SRC="generate-upload.png" WIDTH="444" HEIGHT="871" ALIGN="Left"><A NAME="Uploading">Uploading
Fonts</A>
</H2>
<P>
When you are generating a font you have the option of uploading it to the
open font library. Only do this to a release version of the font -- it isn't
easy to upgrade an entry later.
<P>
Before doing this you must
<A HREF="http://openfontlibrary.org/media/register">register with the Open
Font Library</A> and acquire a username/password combination.
<P>
Checking the [*] Upload to Open Font Library will expand the
<A href="generate.html">Generate Fonts</A> dialog with fields containing
the information needed to upload a font to the library.
<P>
First (obviously) you need the username/password combination you acquired
earlier. FontForge will remember these for you if you want, but the information
is barely encrypted when FF stores it (of course the password goes across
the internet as plain text, so having minimal encryption on your computer
may be the least of your worries).
<P>
You need to identify the font with a name on the OFLibrary site. Generally
the fontname will do, but you could chose something else.
<P>
If you had any collaborators, or if you based this on some earlier work list
these people in "Artists".
<P>
The OFLib identifies fonts by keyword tags. You may list as many comma separated
tags as you wish, and you may use pretty much anything as a tag. It should
be something that will help identify your font of course. So "sans_serif",
"bold", "condensed", "italic", might all be good tags. The server will
automagically add tags containing the font type (otf/ttf/etc.) and the license.
<P>
You also need to specify a description of the font.
<P>
You must specify a license. The OFLib currently accepts only two licenses
(Open Font License and Public Domain). If your font is not licensed with
either of these you should not upload it.
<P>
Linux packagers appreciate it if you also include the license in a separate
text file. If your font contains a license (see
<A HREF="fontinfo.html#TTF-Names">Element->Font Info->TTF
Names->License</A>) then FontForge will extract this information and send
it up as a separate file. (Currently the OFLib does not accept this information.
I hope that will change).
<P>
It your font is released under the Open Font License then you should also
upload a FontLog file. Again FontForge will do that for you if your font
has FONTLOG information (Element->Font Info->FontLog). (Currently the
OFLib does not accept this information either).
<P>
You should also submit a font preview, an image of your font in use. You
may create one yourself and browse for it on the disk (using the [...] button),
or you may ask fontforge to generate a somewhat generic one for you. FontForge
searches the font for all the scripts in it and then displays the alphabets
of those scripts (at least that's what it does for alphabets, for CJK it
will display a small selection of the defined glyphs). You can see an example
of a fontforge generated preview for NotCourier-Sans
<A HREF="OFLib.html#Browsing">above</A>
<P>
Finally you may mark that your font is "Not safe for use in a work environment"
I'm not sure what font would fall into that catagory (I think it is part
of the common interface with the open clip art library), perhaps a font where
the glyph stems were nude figures or some such.
<P>
Pressing [Save] will first save the font on the local disk, and then upload
it to the OFLib -- obviously you must be connected to the internet for this
to work.
<P>
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