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Message no. 1
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Scott W)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Mon Feb 5 20:25:01 2001
This is a supremely silly question, but is the Shadowrun font part
of the shadowrun licence? I get antsy about Wizkids totally changing
the layout and design of the SR books.

====-Boondocker

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Message no. 2
From: shadowrn@*********.com (abortion_engine)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Mon Feb 5 22:45:00 2001
From: "Scott W" <see_scott_run@*****.com>
> This is a supremely silly question, but is the Shadowrun font part
> of the shadowrun licence? I get antsy about Wizkids totally changing
> the layout and design of the SR books.

No. Francis isn't something they own; it's originally a copyright of...oh,
hell if I remember. Adobe Type Works or someone. Actually, I think it's
someone more esoteric. Whatever.

Anyway, it's just like Times New Roman; it's just a font that happened to be
on the systems they used to build the books, and it looked suitably
futuristic, so they used it.
Message no. 3
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Alfredo B Alves)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Mon Feb 5 23:40:01 2001
On Mon, 5 Feb 2001 22:42:57 -0500 "abortion_engine"
<abortion_engine@*******.com> writes:
<SNIP>
> Anyway, it's just like Times New Roman; it's just a font that
> happened to be
> on the systems they used to build the books, and it looked suitably
> futuristic, so they used it.

Actually, since it appears that pedantic man is on holiday: It's a
typeface, not a font. Times New Roman is a typeface. Way back when
printers set type by hand, printers worked at a desk. All the small
letters were held in a case below the desk while all the capital letter
were held in a case above the desk. That is the origin of uppercase and
lowercase. Both cases together are called the font.

Thus, on a computer, a font is the file that has the information for
recreating the uppercase and lowercase letters of a given typeface.

Additionally, while a given typeface may be copyright by Adobe, the
logotype would be owned by FASA. (The Ford and maybe FASA logos would be
good examples of what constitutes logotype) The question is not whether
or not FASA owns it, but rather does the Shadowrun title constitute
logotype? I think so and it's most likely being transferred with all
other thing Shadowrun.

Finally, I believe the overall style of a product can be copyrighted,
trademarked, or something similar. If it is not transferred as well,
Shadowrun products would probably get a new look. (I imagine, however,
that they will anyway.)
</pendantic man>

--
D. Ghost
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best
- Troutman's 6th programming postulate.
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Message no. 4
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Scott W)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Tue Feb 6 00:00:01 2001
>> Anyway, it's just like Times New Roman; it's just a font that
happened to be on the systems they used to build the books, and it
looked suitably futuristic, so they used it.

Oh yeah, Francis... I think I knew that, but it's Shadowrun on my
system, so I merrily jumped to conclusions... oh well, that's why I
asked.

> Actually, since it appears that pedantic man is on holiday: It's a
typeface, not a font. Times New Roman is a typeface. Way back when
printers set type by hand, printers worked at a desk. All the small
letters were held in a case below the desk while all the capital
letter were held in a case above the desk. That is the origin of
uppercase and lowercase. Both cases together are called the font.

<snip, dammit, snip!>

> </pendantic man>
> D. Ghost

*Boonie swears and considers getting all Mr. T on pendantic man.*

"Ah pity da nex' foo' try to teach me 'bout typefacin'. Makes muh
damn head hurt."

;)

====-Boondocker

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Message no. 5
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Wordman)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Tue Feb 6 11:30:01 2001
> From: "Scott W" <see_scott_run@*****.com>
>> This is a supremely silly question, but is the Shadowrun
>> font part of the shadowrun licence?

> No. Francis isn't something they own; it's originally a
> copyright of...oh, hell if I remember. Adobe Type Works
> or someone.

Actually, fonts cannot be copyrighted. Font .names. can be copyrighted,
interestingly, and I think you can claim copyright and a specific binary
representation of a font. Change one bit, however, and the copyright does
not apply because fonts are not considered "content" the way, say, an essay
or book is. Rather the copyright applies to the binary pattern itself.

This is how you can buy a single font from Adobe for $40, and then find what
appears to be the exact same font (with a slightly different name) on a $10
"1000 Fonts" CD.

"Francis" is the name used in the Win32 world, but the original font (the
original cast in metal in the printing press era) was called "Fritz
Quadrata". It is sold under this name by Adobe, who acquired rights to
various font names early on. This is how you will find it on the Mac (or,
you could use my Shadowrun font http://pobox.com/~wordman/srun/fonts.html,
which has a number of different high-byte characters).
Message no. 6
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Scott W)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Tue Feb 6 11:55:01 2001
> Actually, fonts cannot be copyrighted. Font .names. can be
copyrighted, interestingly, and I think you can claim copyright and a
specific binary representation of a font. Change one bit, however,
and the copyright does not apply because fonts are not considered
"content" the way, say, an essay or book is. Rather the copyright
applies to the binary pattern itself.

God, you guys must be devils at Trivial Pursuit :)

> (or, you could use my Shadowrun font
http://pobox.com/~wordman/srun/fonts.html, which has a number of
different high-byte characters).

And that's what I have, along with Decker. Thanks for making those
available, Wordman.

====-Boondocker

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Message no. 7
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Wordman)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Tue Feb 6 13:30:01 2001
> God, you guys must be devils at Trivial Pursuit :)

My uncle once won a Trivial Pursuit (the original edition) game in one turn.
A few lucky rolls to land on wedge questions, but it was still pretty
impressive.

>> (or, you could use my Shadowrun font
>> http://pobox.com/~wordman/srun/fonts.html, which has a number of
>> different high-byte characters).
>
> And that's what I have, along with Decker. Thanks for making those
> available, Wordman.

I need to update these guys with the Euro symbol and clean up the Win32
versions. They are pretty bad on screen.
Message no. 8
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Scott W)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Tue Feb 6 14:45:01 2001
> I need to update these guys with the Euro symbol and clean up the
Win32 versions. They are pretty bad on screen.

Yup. They look hella bad in Word, though WordPerfect doesn't
mangle them so awfully.

====-Boondocker

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Message no. 9
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Wordman)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Mon Feb 12 10:35:01 2001
I have updated my Shadowrun and Decker fonts. They know both include the
Euro symbol (in place of the old "currency" symbol that no one ever used).
The Decker font also now includes the newer "quote" symbol.

You can download these fonts from the fonts page, off my main SR page:

http://pobox.com/~wordman/srun/

Wordman
Message no. 10
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Kevin Harrison)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Mon Feb 12 18:05:01 2001
On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 10:34:05 -0500, Wordman wrote:

>I have updated my Shadowrun and Decker fonts. They know both include the
>Euro symbol (in place of the old "currency" symbol that no one ever used).
>The Decker font also now includes the newer "quote" symbol.

Woo! Thanks Wordman. Now I've just got to write something using them. :)
I wonder if Shadowrun Supplemental accepts things in those fonts...

--
Kevin Harrison <kevin.harrison@***.net>
Message no. 11
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Adam J)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Mon Feb 12 18:40:02 2001
At 16:00 12/02/2001, Kevin Harrison wrote:

>Woo! Thanks Wordman. Now I've just got to write something using them. :)
>I wonder if Shadowrun Supplemental accepts things in those fonts...

I don't mind what font you use to submit stuff, but I'm not sure if I'll be
using these new fonts or not - the setup I have right now seems to work
fine, and I'm hesitant to change. But since Type1 fonts are so easy under
2K, I might give it a go..

Adam
--
< http://tss.dumpshock.com : http://www.jillted.org >
< adamj@*********.com | ICQ# 2350330 | TSS Productions >
Message no. 12
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Wordman)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Mon Feb 12 19:05:01 2001
> I don't mind what font you use to submit stuff, but I'm not sure
> if I'll be
> using these new fonts or not - the setup I have right now seems to work
> fine, and I'm hesitant to change. But since Type1 fonts are so easy under
> 2K, I might give it a go..

Let me know if you have problems. I do most of my stuff on a Mac, so I
haven't stressed these under Win32. The spot check I did on my laptop,
however, did work much better than the previous versions.
Message no. 13
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Stuart Purdie)
Subject: Letters!
Date: Tue Feb 13 15:10:05 2001
On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Wordman wrote:

> Actually, fonts cannot be copyrighted. Font .names. can be copyrighted,
> interestingly, and I think you can claim copyright and a specific binary
> representation of a font. Change one bit, however, and the copyright
> does not apply because fonts are not considered "content" the way, say,
> an essay or book is. Rather the copyright applies to the binary pattern
> itself.

More subtle than that I'm afraid. In order to do a clone'd font, you
aught to be able to show that it was properly reversed engineered - i.e.
you show a font designer the printout of a font, and he designs one to
give that output.

Font's today are held as a set of vector instructions, so that you don't
need one for each screen or printer resolution. Issues like kerning are
expensive (in terms of skilled designers time), and subject to copyright
in exactly the same way as a computer program is.

However, writing a program to take the output from a font, and
re-vectorise _that_ to produce a new font definition is legal.

With respect to the example you gave, the expensive font will have
special, resolution dependant shapes in it, to give the best quality of
output, without antialiasing. Cheap fonts don't, because such fine
detail is very time consuming, but look almost the same. Of course, if
you antialias the font, both look just the same, but you don't actually
want to do that.

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Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!