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Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:58:24 +0100
From: Herbert Duerr <hdu@apache.org>
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To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: Font related questions
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On 14.11.2011 16:45, Pedro Giffuni wrote:
>
>
> --- On Mon, 11/14/11, Herbert Duerr<hdu_ooo@alice.de>  wrote:
> ...
>>>
>>> I think he fixed the metric files to better work with
>> the Arial Narrow
>>> font.
>>
>> I extended the Liberation Sans font family with Narrow font
>> faces and contributed these changes upstream.
>>
>>> But still, he will be sad, that they have to go.
>>
>> Not only me, but everyone who is using documents with it or
>> its metrically compatible counterpart. These documents or
>> their text boxes tend to overflow and this often looks
>> nasty.
>
> I might've got it wrong, but I understand "liberation"
> fonts are actually replacements for fonts that are already
> installed on Windows. MS-Windows users don't need them

The narrow font faces are not installed with the plain system, they get 
usually installed with certain productivity suites.

> and linux/BSD users have them preinstalled.

Yes, we can add them as a dependency or a recommendation.

>> Maybe I should look into basing some new Narrow font faces
>> on a font family that has a license acceptable for bundling
>> them as binaries in an Apache release (e.g. OFL?)
>
> Unfortunately really good fonts are all commercial.

For finding a good looking sans serif font that is usable as a base for 
a metrically compatible set of narrow faces there are a couple of good 
candidates. E.g. the DejaVu fonts were considered once and IIRC the 
metrically compatible narrow font faces based on them looked quite nice.

Herbert