Hello

LVargas

Hello, I’m Leroy. Not employed anywhere, but at least I don’t slack since I look to do something to keep myself occupied. I learned Perl on my own and used it on BDF bitmap-font conversion scripts from legacy charsets to Unicode, together with Perl scripts by Paul Hardy (Unifoundry) and FontForge for converting BDF to usable outlined TTF fonts (using HEX as an intermediate “bitmap font” format) that still preserve the bitmap-like (pixelated) look regardless of point size. Trying to find time to derive a Perl script for converting BDF directly into PostScript Type-1 CID-keyed ASCII code that can then be optimized with Adobe’s AFDKO tools (even though most people are switching to Python – even Ken Lunde). My long-term goal is to make an OpenType-savvy CID-based CJK font that resembles bitmap fonts from legacy machines, as long as their bitmap glyphs either are not copyrighted or have their copyrights expired (which doesn’t seem to be the case for NEC PC-9801… although I find Seiko Epson’s PC-series font more appealing than NEC’s font).

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Cool.
Bitmap fonts rule.

Daniel Benjamin Miller

In the US, bitmap fonts are not copyrightable, nor are they in Japan. In some other countries like Germany and the UK they have copyrights but not more than 25 years, with the potential exception of Israel.

LVargas

Daniel Benjamin Miller said:

In the US, bitmap fonts are not copyrightable, nor are they in Japan.

Weird. Someone who used to work at Adobe Systems’ CJKV typography told me the following on August 6, 2019 when I asked him whether NEC held any copyrights on PC-9801’s KANJI-ROM glyphs:

Bitmap fonts are copyright-protected in Japan, so I suspect that NEC holds the copyright.

When did this copyright policy change?