Thanks - sounds like we need something like a BEST APPS TO HAVE list plus download links I will do some testing as soon as I have my setup complete.

I work for Monotype, which is one of the larger font companies - I would be super-excited to look at the OpenType implementation on MorphOS - and help wherever I can. Maybe a special font? Or something like a font package that comes especially with this OS? Ideas.....

@ Quote:
Well, there is essentially zero budget for font licensing. Also, even if there was the option to include a selection of commercial fonts free of cost, the license would have to be both permissive and perpetual to be of any interest as anything else would risk the distribution of the OS due to lapsing font licenses or might cause other issues (punitive damages due to non-compliance or unlicensed distribution, etc).

For developers of alternative operating systems (and other niche software), the high quality and open source fonts offered by services like Google Fonts are hard to beat.

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Not all of them, but many.

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True, the Google Fonts are really nice - we made most of them, and had a blast. Working with Google is awesome!

Anyway, no worries, I quite expected there to be no budget for such a thing, and that such a license would need to be perpetual. However, I do believe I might be able to convince my superiors that giving a little charity to something like MorphOS would be a nice gesture - and would please me. Also you can never have enough good-looking fonts.

Let me talk to a few people. I will get back to you about this.

Cheers




Pike

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At first glance, that is certainly a nice sentiment.

However, considering that the full Google Noto font set is 1.1 GB in size and the MorphOS 3.x ISO image is currently around 400 MB in size, I may have to disagree a tiny bit

But if distributed through MorphOS Storage for users and 3rd party MorphOS developers, that would still be awesome and there can never be enough good-looking free to use fonts :)

Or if you come up with a special case that they'd suit exceptionally well for MorphOS ISO too, why not count that option out either ;) Like fonts that work in tiny sizes for drive size information or fixed width ones for name mode listers, or narrow ones to save space with certain apps, etc...

@ pikewerfer - that does seem like a nice gesture, and I'll keep a watch out for the reply to your chat with others that might bring about a really nice result for MorphOS.

It always amazes me that there are so many fonts out there but so little printed material (PDFs) that can be browsed through for inspiration for documents to utilise them to their best advantage.

So, if you manage to resource for MorphOS a number of fonts, would it be possible to catalogue all the fonts that you can earmark for use legitimately for MorphOS into a suitable document (PDF) with a profile (display) of what each font's name is, and alongside that (adjacent column) a reasonable representation (10-20 characters - or more) of what it looks like when it is printed out?

OK, started a few conversations concerning the fonts.

Installed MorphOS from my USB stick - no issues. Am currently playing around with it - and having SO. MUCH. FUN.

This is so neat. So nice. So crisp. So .... Amiga I really love it. Mac mini is behaving beautifully.

Next step - read the tutorial:
https://library.morph.zone/Getting_Started#A_Beginner.27s_Guide_to_MorphOS

Cannot tell you how assume it was to find one. Soooo many startups/companies do this wrong - they have an amazing product but are just unable to pull in the newbie. Not so here. This will be an interesting journey, no doubt.

Next step will most probably be installing the Wayfarer browser. Looking forward to getting online.

@ASiegel - I do agree, the iso should remain as small as possible. Maybe we could offer a font package free of charge for download to every MorphOS user? Will see what I can do here.

@JVP - getting a nice package to install and use is rather easy. Getting special fonts that work in a special environment is harder - I would need to know more of the acceptance criteria and requirements. And naturally, these fonts are more expensive to design, so harder to get sponsored.

@NewSense - you are talking about a Font Catalog, i.e. a PDF that lists all fonts that are part of the specific package? Yes, I can do that. Provided I get an ok from my boss for such a package

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We already have a font download script. No reason why it couldn't be extended to download more.

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Ah, so we could simply add to the existing repository. Sounds good. Give me until mid-August. I need to talk to a few people here

Concerning my journey: the system is up and running, and I have installed Wayfarer and Grunch. Currently wrestling with Wayfarer, as it does not want to do YT and FB (yes, I did install the additional lib) . Most other standard websites work fine.

Thinking about overclocking the Mac mini (from 1.25 to 1.5). Unfortunately, my hands are too shaky to do it myself Need to find someone in the neighborhood.

Next step on my journey: email client! Stay tuned.

Oh, one more question concerning the fonts: Taking a look at FTManager, it seems MorphOS prefers OT TTF (or old TrueTypes). Do OT CFF work, too? Or will those not install/work?

No expert on font formats here, but the underlying freetype library should be fairly recent. If you have a font that doesn't want to install, feel free to send us a link.

@ pikewerfer - If I understand the differences, it seems that CFF (Compact Font Format) fonts are Open Type based, but have some nuances in their design, as they use Cubic Bézier design, whereas TT (TrueType) fonts use quadratic Bézier design, which is a slightly more complex/laborious way of representing the glyphs. Additional to that rasterization of OT/CFF fonts seems to reduce the size of the font data, thus saving from about 20% to 50% in data size for each font. Which is even more apparent, I'm told, with Chinese, Japanese and Korean glyphs as they use more complex font glyph design which enlarges the font data compared to US/European font types.

As MorphOS uses mainly TT Fonts I have not really been aware of CFF types, even though it seems they have been around since the late 1990s, but they do not seem to be particularly popular even on Windows or Macintosh Operating Systems as a general rule, as TT and OT fonts are more prevalent on those OSs, like MorphOS, but CFF seem to get incorporated into PDF documents on a more prevalent basis, if I've got that correct?

However, there seem to be a few converters online that can convert such fonts from CFF to TTF/OTF so we should be able to make use of CFF, but possibly only if converted to TTF, unless you are able to have them supplied/available for download as TTF by default?

That's unless the MorphOS TT font engine/library can utilise them as-is, which is still, as far as I am aware, an unknown. As it seems you'll have some CFFs to hand, then maybe you'd like to try some of them on MorphOS and see how that goes and let us know, as I would like to know if CFF do get recognised correctly and can be used "out-of-the-box".

@NewSense:

not quite - but close.

OT CFFs are OpenType fonts using PostScript outlines (Cubic Bézier) while OT TTFs are OpenType fonts using TrueType outlines (Quadratic Bézier). OT CFFs have the ending .otf. OT TTFs have the ending .ttf. Both fonts are OpenTypes.

Most professional font foundries prefer OT CFF because their old fonts were all created with PostScript outlines (which was the preferred outline type for printers, desktop publishing (Macintosh!), graphic design, etc.). It was, therefore, a lot easier for them to convert their data into OpenTypes. Adobe is a good example here. They ONLY offer OT CFF.

Microsoft, however, insisted on OT TTF - because all of their system fonts were TrueType. They also insisted on the ending .ttf. Otherwise, their older applications would not have been able to read the new fonts.

Free fonts are usually OT TTF since it is a lot easier to create those.

However, OT CFF is fast becoming the industry standard. Most operating systems and applications can nowadays do both, so foundries no longer take the extra work to create an additional OT TTF (Monotype is actually one of the few foundries that still does this for the majority of their fonts). Also, more and more free font tools allow you to create OT CFFs. The quality in high-res of those fonts is usually a little better, which is why the design industry prefers them.

Concerning Converting tools: most foundries/licenses actually completely prohibit converting their fonts. Even free fonts usually do not allow this - only true OpenSource fonts under the Gnu Public License usually allow converting fonts. So I would strongly advise against converting fonts unless you have 100% permission from the owner/creator.

If MorphOS is using the FreeType library, then there is a good chance it can actually use OT CFFs. They work fine on Linux.

What would be the easiest way to install and test a font? I found the fonts folder, but it seems to be empty... How do I install, and what app should I use to test?








[ Edited by pikewerfer 22.07.2021 - 13:13 ]

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I imagine you have the folder option only visible to show Icons. You need to change the view to show "all files", or "thumbnail" by using the right mouse button context menu.

These options can also be set as a default for your system, to any of the options available - from Ambient Settings > Window > and then look towards the bottom of that page to find [option] "Default View" - Icon/List. With a further [option] "Default View Mode" Icons/All files/Thumbnails, with the [option] to inherit view mode from one directory to sub-directories which is active if the button has a checkmark/tick visible on it).

If you've managed that step then any new/additional fonts should be placed in the SYS:Fonts directory in a sub-directory you may have to create, and name it "_ttf" (so that's the default partition with all the MorphOS system folders (C, Devs, *Fonts*, Libs, Locale, etc.)/applications/games, etc. in it) in that Fonts directory, NOT the MorphOS (MOSSYS:) directory that resides in the SYS: directory.

If you swap to that "All Files" option and you may see that the folder now seemingly contains some more files/folders. Though if this is a new installation you may only have the Fontconfig directory in there as the MorphOS -> MOSSYS directory installs some truetype fonts into its own fonts directory - which you are strongly advised not to change in any way.

The MorphOS (MOSSYS:) directory should never be changed/added to/deleted from - apart from when instructed to do so, by a MorphOS Development Team Member, like the Wayfarer installation that requires the new "cgxvideo.library" added to the Libs directory to enable the new functionality for Wayfarer.

If in doubt then please read the MorphOS Library instructions on installing TrueType Fonts and consider using the FTManager which resides in the SYS:Tools directory if you think that is necessary.

As to applications to try out the new fonts, then I suppose I'd suggest Folio Beta version for use with OWB web-browser, but you cannot use it with Wayfarer currently as the Wayfarer engine does not fully interpret the application into a tab. So, you'd have to launch OWB v1.26 and then go back to Ambient, if you are running OWB/Odyssey on a separate screen, and launch Folio by double-clicking on its icon and it should open a new tab in OWB/Odyssey that you can write/edit in. Though you could choose any of the other Office > Wordprocessor applications on MorphOS Storage that offer such font choices/options.

I take it you don't have any legacy Amiga software that uses ttf fonts, such as PageStream ?

I googled an example CFF font yesterday, and at least with a quick try these font install/config tools didn't accept it...

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Or just try with MorphOS Preferences -> Font, or with some Ambient or MUI settings... it might be even enough to just open the font requester with any of those and see if the fonts are available there and if the preview is rendered.

@NewSense - thank you so much for the detailed reply, this was VERY helpful!

So I put an OT TTF (Helvetica Now MT TEXT TTF) and an OT CFF font (SYNTAX PRO ROMAN OTF) into SYS:FONTS:_ttf

Here I noticed the first strange incident. After copying the two files:

HelveticaNowMTText.ttf
SyntaxLTPro-Roman.otf

to SYS:FONTS:_ttf, I received

._HelveticaNowMTText.ttf
SyntaxLTPro-Roman.otf

So for some reason, the system renamed the ttf but not the otf.

I then went to MORPHOS STORAGE and downloaded MORPHEUS. It seems to be a Unicode-able Wordprocessor.

And low and behold - it showed SyntaxLTPro-Roman in its list of fonts. I selected it - and it worked just fine! Success (the app as such is pretty clunky, though). However, I could not find the font in any other font list (which only seems to load the system fonts).

I also could not get the TTF to work. It did not show up anywhere, not even MORPHEUS was able to see it. I renamed it, removing the ._ but that did not help either. Will continue to look into this. Fascinating.

BTW - I tried to make screenshots for this thread, therefore installed Screenshot 1.4. However, I am using a Mac keyboard. And every time I try to adjust the keys to trigger Screenshot in the Screen Settings, the whole system freezes on me. If anyone can recommend a better way of making screenshots, I would be happy.

BTW. should anyone wish to accompany me in terms of font testing, let me know, and I will send you those two fonts. For testing purposes, this is ok.

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You don't need to install anything for taking screenshots, because OS provides functionality for this. Press right mouse button over the right top corner (the Screen Depth Gadget), and enable Modules -> Grabber. Now left click over the new icon that appeared on the top bar. Either grab screen/window/etc with it directly, or select the "Grabber..." option to open a screen grab utility (which is also found from the Utilities directory).

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This isn't a valid path in MorphOS (or in AmigaOS for that matter), so if you really used this from a shell, for example, who knows what's happened :)

Only partition (or actually volume/device/assign) name should end with the colon (:) character, that means that you only should have one colon in any path you enter. Directories in the path are separated with the slash (/) character. So it should be SYS:FONTS/_ttf/

If you look at the filesize of the broken font, does it match with the original?

If Morpheus could load the font, it must be have custom routines to check and load it. For installing a font system wide, you should do it according the guide.

[ Edited by jPV 23.07.2021 - 17:48 ]

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The way jPV has instructed should work OK, but Grabber only saves PNG files, so I usually use SnapIt v1.5 (MorphOS Storage) as I find that easier and it saves as PNG or Progressive JPG, and isn't so fiddly with the default hotkeys (lshift lalt q / w / s), as sometimes you need to grab an image there and then, and SnapIt once you used the 2 keystroke hotkey (Ctrl+w - WINDOW) (Ctrl+s - SCREEN) (Ctrl +f - FREE GRAB) holds the screen at that moment and then mark just a graphical section of the screen (not video) that you want to save, so you can choose accurately what size you want to save until the grabbing has completed.

Also, I use an Apple A1016 Bluetooth keyboard and it works fine for me - you choose whichever method you prefer as both should do what you want and be fine., but with SnapIt v1.5 I am happier using it , this is obviously also possible with Grabber, but I just feel more comfortable with SnapIt - it's maybe a personal thing - you decide.
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OK, I'll test them for you if you like, just send me a PM and I'll let you have my contact for sending the fonts, or you can let me have yours and I'll get in touch that way, either way is fine with me.

Hi guys,

new week, more info.

So I followed up JVP's suggestion and compared file size - and lo and behold, the file size of the "strangely renamed" OT TTF was not identical to the file size of the actual font. I once more copied the font file to SYS:FONTS/_ttf/ (hope I got it right this time) - and now MORPHEUS can see both the OT TTF as well as the OT CFF.

Unfortunately, MORPHEUS is extremely buggy and has a lot of issues with actually loading the fonts. They are both in the fonts dropdown - but actually selecting them to start writing is a nightmare. BUT - I managed to select them in the end, and was able to WRITE with them. So this WORKS.

So to summarize: SYS:FONTS/_ttf/ seems to be a drawer that "some" applications tap into in order to get their fonts. And should the app be able to read OpenTypes, then these will be read. However, these fonts will NOT become part of the system fonts list.

However, the "official" way to install those fonts seems to be using a tool called FTManager. From what I understand, this tool analyzes the font file (which has to be a TTF?) and then creates two additional files (.font and .otag files). Unfortunately, I am not 100% sure if this is legal when using commercial fonts. I will need to check with our legal department. Most font foundries do not allow extracting font information from their fonts in order to create a new file.

The next question would be: does this actually work? OT TTF might look like TrueType fonts. But they are not. OpenType is a container format, and it includes a lot of possible options, like alternates or even contextual writing. I strongly assume this will either not work at all, or reduce the OpenType to its TrueType characters (and maybe not even all of them - OT TTF can hold up to 56 000 chars. But old TrueTypes usually only held 256 chars).

Will test this asap. Stay tuned.

[ Edited by pikewerfer 26.07.2021 - 16:39 ]

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I think it's more like a wrapper to the font (to be compatible to Amiga font API or something like that) and doesn't actually extract much/any information from the actual font data. Generated .font files are only 4 bytes long, so they must only contain some binary file type identification bytes or such. And .otag file sizes are only couple hundred bytes and they mainly contain paths pointing to the actual font (in _ttf dir).

So, my guess is that there probably isn't any copyrighted data extracted/converted, but maybe some MorphOS developer would know better :)

> my guess is that there probably isn't any copyrighted data extracted/converted

Yes, that's what I get from reading the sources linked from this Google search.

Good! I will simply assume this is no violation - and continue.

To my surprise, FTManager lists both the OT TTF as well as the OT CFF. I can install both.

After rebooting the OS... I ACTUALLY HAVE BOTH FONTS LISTED IN THE MORPHOS PREFS - IN FONTS!

WHOOOOOOT!!

So looks like installing it using FTManager gets these fonts installed for real! Now let's find some apps to test these fonts with. Any suggestions?

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Oh, that's cool! :)


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Open a picture in ShowCase and select "Process -> Insert Text" from the rmb pull-down menu (or press command-t key combination), select font, type something in the "text" field and adjust the position sliders if needed :)