[ILUG] OpenOffice font oddity

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Caolan McNamara (caolan at csn.ul.ie):

> More than likely looking too thick is
> http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2613 , theres some poxy
> potential patent thing. OOo has freetype statically linked to it, and
> that ver of freetype was compiled without bytehinting. The other fonts
> look ok probably because of their embedded bitmaps for extra nifty
> quality at certain fixed sizes. 

Patent issues here:
http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html

In short, in order to avoid infringing three recently-disclosed Apple
patents (granted in the USA) on TrueType byte-hinting, OpenOffice.org
binaries are statically compiled to include a copy of the FreeType
library libvcl that has been set to ignore byte-hinting.  Thus, while
other applications may use an infringing local version of the same
library (making some fonts, such as Microsoft Arial, look better), the
OpenOffice.org-compiled binaries do not.

The Apple patents will expire on May 18, 2009 (US patents 5,155,805 and 
5,159,668) and May 28, 2012 (US patent 5,325,479) -- but other
techniques for optimising fonts are being phased in that are not known 
to infringe patents.  Unfortunately, many popular fonts use the
Apple-patented technique to optimise screen bitmaps at small point
sizes.

-- 
Cheers,     "Learning Java has been a slow and tortuous process for me.  Every 
Rick Moen   few minutes, I start screaming 'No, you fools!' and have to go
rick at linuxmafia.com       read something from _Structure and Interpretation of
            Computer Programs_ to de-stress."   -- The Cube, www.forum3000.org