mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (der Mouse) (02/28/90)
Long, long ago (Date: 6 Feb 90 15:35:22 GMT), in a posting far, far away (@auto-trol.com).... [as part of a discussion about X servers that do/don't support DECnet] >> I think a more important question than whether the server supports >> DECnet or not is whether the server has the fonts that DEC uses for >> its DECwindows applications. What are the rules about copying those >> fonts to foreign servers? > On the "private" font issue. Since it does not seem likely that > vendors will provide their "private" fonts in the .bdf format, did > ANYONE try to write a "reverse-engineering" program ? > I mean an X utility that loads a font, displays it > character-by-character into a bitmap, and generates the .bdf > definition. I have. It's not hard; the major problem is determining the types of the font's properties. There seem to be three possibilities: INT32, CARD32, and ATOM, and there's no way to tell which one it's supposed to be except by a priori knowledge of the property in question. (To be sure, the difference between INT32 and CARD32 is slight, from the point of view of the program in question.) > What about legal issues - would anyone consider using such a utility > illegal ??? I'm sure it would depend on what you use it for. However, it's a pretty gray area. Some fonts are in the public domain; it's hard to see how using such a utility on them could possibly be illegal. But many are not, and therein lies the gray area. der Mouse old: mcgill-vision!mouse new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu