Re: [Freetype] FreeType Rasterizer

[Werner LEMBERG]

[Please don't send emails as HTML to this list.]

> We are start-up developing a new device that will be shipped in many
> different markets around the world.  We are in the process of
> evaluating resources for displaying text on our screens.  We are
> interested in utilizing the FreeType rasterizer but would need to
> support languages outside of the Western European languages.  Do you
> have any suggestions as to how we would go about acquiring or
> licensing type to utilize with the FreeType rasterizer?  In
> particular we would need one font for Western European languages,
> Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese and
> possibly Arabic and Indic.  Please let me know.

Free Western fonts are available from ftp.ctan.org; you may try the
Omega fonts (starting with `omse', e.g. `omsela.pfb') which provide
uniform glyphs for Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek.  These fonts
have a custom encoding; you have to map them (with contextual analysis
for Arabic) to Unicode or your preferred input encoding.  Note that
those fonts are unhinted since they are intended to be used for
printing, not for screen display.  You could use a tool like pfaedit
(a free font editor; see http://pfaedit.sf.net) to autohint your
fonts.

Free Chinese (simplified and traditional) fonts contributed by Arphic
are available from gnu.org/nongnu; look for bkai00mp.ttf and friends.
Also unhinted.

Recently a bunch of fonts for 8 Indic scripts (IIRC) have been
announced on the Unicode email list; they are available from

  http://www.akruti.com/freedom/

Again, you have to map them to Unicode and have to do some extra work
if you don't use ISCII.

Free Korean and Japanese outline fonts do also exist; just have a look
at some language extension packs from Debian GNU/Linux.

Another interesting project is Primož Peterlin's freefont project (at
savannah.gnu.org).


    Werner