laser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/27/85)
From: Sylvan Ruud <sylvan%boulder.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa> [[Editor's note---Another message from sylvan@boulder, not forwarded to the entire list, indicated that the "Helvetica" mentioned in an earlier message was a locally developed font that resembled Helvetica in appearance and that it had been renamed to avoid any confusion.]] After discussions with our legal eagles here at the university, we have had to make the decision to NOT allow our fonts to go to private parties outside of the university. This is a little hazy - the Helvetica looking font that we have is locally developed, but the university does not want to get into any legal battles with anyone about "similarities". As such, please forget you ever heard my name.... On the brighter side, I talked with Imagen this morning. Jan Stoeckenius (pronounced "yawn", no implications on the personality...:-)) there let me know that they have announced a properly licensed Helvetica font. This is true Helvetica, and none of us have to hassle the legalities of the font. You can contact Jan at 408-986-9400. I don't have an address immediately available, sorry. We may be passing our font developments on to Imagen, having them decide as to whether or not they want to handle them. Should they decide to handle a particular font, an announcement will probably be made here. Sylvan Ruud [[Editor's note: I've long thought that it would be quite appropriate and interesting if Imagen could describe their font development work to the list (such as the Helvetica, indicated above). Consider this an invitation. --Rick ]]
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/27/85)
From: mrose@udel-dewey.arpa I talked with Imagen as well, and was told while they did have Helvetica fonts for their printers, the fonts were printer resident and, if you wanted to use 'em with TeX, at the moment you could do so only on VMS systems and not UNIX systems. I couldn't quite follow why this was so, but the key phrase was that the people who Imagen purchased the fonts from had done them for VMS and there were significant differences between the way TeX on VMS could access them and the way TeX on UNIX could access them. Now to my way of thinking a TFM file is a TFM file and that's ALL TeX has to know. But then again, I haven't had much luck in the TFM area lately... /mtr