I am considering electronically tracing characters, or more precisely non-calligraphic glyphs, from a manuscript book in order to make a font. These books are in a script which make up at least 30% of the book, which is a textbook teaching how to use the script. I appreciate that I may have to touch up both the originals and the extracted outlines to get a good result.
Is there appreciable risk of my activities being unlawful? The book was published in the kingdom of Laos and I will be working in the UK. Would my activity be unethical? Does it matter whether the manuscript was written by the author or by someone hired for his good handwriting?
I do not expect to gain financially by creating this font, and will probably release it under the SIL OFL, though at present I would prefer to release the GSUB table into the public domain.
Comments
What could be more virtuous?