Author Topic: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?  (Read 13062 times)

Greggory Shaw

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Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« on: February 26, 2016, 01:03:26 pm »
Creating a font pack for OS/2 ? What format ttf, otf, eot or woff and how ?

I was wondering how many people have 'Workplace Sans' installed ? Since it's that main font I use on my site.

Also, what other fonts have you added to OS/2, tested, tips ?

I'm testing out the support for the @font-face HTML attribute (aka downloadable Web fonts) with the new FF 38 on my site - any thoughts ?

Added to the front page only for now:

      <link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto+Slab:700' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
      <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans+Condensed:300,700' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
      <link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto+Condensed:400,700' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

Roboto Condensed looks almost the same as 'Workplace Sans'

http://os2notes.net/


Any thoughts ?

Greggory
« Last Edit: February 26, 2016, 10:04:23 pm by Greggory Shaw »

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2016, 01:53:03 pm »
Hi Gregg.

I'm not sure if I'm shifting away from what you ask, but I will be interested on an "Free/Open/Free of Charge Font Pack for OS/2".  I want to use it on my experiments on replacing OS/2 components.  It can be interesting putting each font on the pack and listing the license of each one on the readme.

It may be easy or not, but I'm also looking for replacements TIMES.FON, SYSMONO.FON, HELV.FON and COURIER.FON. Why? Because the ones that we have on OS/2 works fine but are copyrighted by IBM and BitStream. I want some .fon files that can be distribuited, modified and improved by everybody (an open license).

But I don't think it will not only be useful for me, I think we need someone trying to consolidate OS/2's open fonts and put them together.

On my cWarp experiment I just have this fonts that are under an open license:

Quote
├──Resources\
│  ├──Fonts\
│  │  ├──DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSans-ExtraLight.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSans.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSansCondensed-Bold.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSansCondensed-BoldOblique.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSansCondensed-Oblique.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSansCondensed.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSansMono-BoldOblique.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSansMono-Oblique.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSansMono.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSerif-BoldItalic.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSerif-Italic.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSerif.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSerifCondensed-Bold.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSerifCondensed-BoldItalic.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSerifCondensed-Italic.ttf
│  │  ├──DejaVuSerifCondensed.ttf
│  │  ├──GentiumPlus-I.ttf
│  │  ├──GentiumPlus-R.ttf
│  │  ├──MIDORI.TTF
│  │  ├──MIDORIB.TTF
│  │  ├──newathu5.ttf
│  │  ├──newathuBold5.ttf
│  │  ├──newathuBoldItalic5.ttf
│  │  ├──newathuItalic5.ttf
│  │  ├──WPCONC_R.TTF
│  │  ├──WPSU.TTF
│  │  └──WPSUB.TTF

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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Alex Taylor

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2016, 04:49:51 pm »
Greggory: the Roboto fonts are nice, as long as you get the fixed & redesigned 2.0 versions instead of the rather half-baked 1.x versions. I normally install them, along with the Droid font series, on my systems. 

Personally, I don't think Workplace Sans is well suited to web page text, although of course it depends on the web page.  It's optimized for UI labels, not paragraph text.  That's one reason I designed Workplace Gothic (which I pulled from my website a couple of years back while I overhauled it; it's almost ready for a reappearance).

Martin: My ALMSWISS.FON is actually very similar to HELV.FON (by design), only in larger sizes.  FWIW, OS/2 doesn't actually require any font besides System Proportional, System VIO, System Monospaced and WarpSans (all of which are built into DSPRES.DLL) in order to run Presentation Manager, although of course some things may look rather ugly without the others. :p  (Also, DBCS versions will face some issues, but that's a whole other tanker of fish.)

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2016, 11:43:13 pm »
Thanks Alex. I replaced HELV.FON  with your font, no problem at all.  I did not have any issues removing the fonts at my experiment, only PMDLL.EXE complains at first, but keeps working after it (Screenshot attached). Alex, by any chance do you know or can you point me on how to generate a new  "DSPRES.DLL". I want to document it on the EDM/2 wiki and also have a replacement for my experiment.

Regards
« Last Edit: February 27, 2016, 11:57:26 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
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Greggory Shaw

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #4 on: February 28, 2016, 12:41:50 am »
Greggory: the Roboto fonts are nice, as long as you get the fixed & redesigned 2.0 versions instead of the rather half-baked 1.x versions. I normally install them, along with the Droid font series, on my systems. 

...

I swithed to Roboto+Condensed for the body and yes they are nice ! It maybe just my setup, but FF for OS/2 is alot better at displaying fonts then (FF /Win 10 is terrible - chrome is a bit better).

@Martin/Alex - I'll try to put something together, but suggestions on which ones ???

- OS/2 only uses ttf format ?
- How to auto add fonts ?
- From where, Google fonts ?
- Copyrights
- My Rexx is -  looking up onekeywords at a time :(


Greggory
« Last Edit: February 28, 2016, 12:45:12 am by Greggory Shaw »

Dave Yeo

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #5 on: February 28, 2016, 07:05:05 am »
Truetype is the only format that everyone has support for. Opentype does work after updating the WPS freetype driver, thanks to Alex.
At this time, everyone pretty well has WorkPlace Sans installed as it has been a requirement for Mozilla since FFv3.5 or FFv3.6
For installing fonts from the cmd line, http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/font/instfont10.zip
One source of free fonts, http://bohoomil.com/repo/fonts/
Some info for using fontconfig to use those fonts, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration/Examples and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Infinality

ak120

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #6 on: February 28, 2016, 11:25:27 pm »
Quote
Truetype is the only format that everyone has support for.
Not absolutely, in an OS/2 installation only Win-OS/2 component provides Truetype-support. Truetype fonts are only added to \psfonts if you install additional language fonts (japanese, etc.). Of course they could be used for PM display but printing is another topic.

Quote
Opentype does work after updating the WPS freetype driver, thanks to Alex.
Opentype is not a completely new font format, more another kind of packaging fonts. You're mentioning this software: http://www.altsan.org/programming/os2/#ft2. OpenType works to some degree (only for TT fonts), to cite from Alex's page: "It does not currently support OpenType PostScript fonts..."


Pete

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #7 on: February 29, 2016, 03:46:47 am »
Hi Andreas

I seem to recall Truetype fonts being supported by Warp4 without the need for Win-OS2 although the support may have been introduced in a fixpack rather than included in the Warp4 box.

I have not installed DOSWIN support on any of my systems for years - probably ecs1.0 was the last install that I bothered with "Legacy" support. No problems with Truetype fonts despite no DOSWIN support.

I believe the \os2\truetype.dll file may be involved in truetype support.


Regards

Pete



ak120

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #8 on: February 29, 2016, 12:01:57 pm »
Of course, that is the same kind of support you can also have with updated Warp 3. But the screen rendering of those fonts is a topic on its own.

I can only speak about OS/2 but eComStation should be not much different. Or does it support Unicode TT fonts for PM better?

For PageMaker and FreeHand I still have to use Win-OS/2 with ATM for good results - and it simply works.

Alex Taylor

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #9 on: February 29, 2016, 12:06:11 pm »
Quote
Truetype is the only format that everyone has support for.

Type 1 fonts are arguably more widely supported, if not so ubiquitous, and have existed for longer.

Not absolutely, in an OS/2 installation only Win-OS/2 component provides Truetype-support. Truetype fonts are only added to \psfonts if you install additional language fonts (japanese, etc.). Of course they could be used for PM display but printing is another topic.

I'm not sure what to make of this.  The first two statements may have been true for Warp 3, but since Warp 4 TrueType support has been included in OS/2 out of the box.  And there's nothing to stop them being printed, although quality may suffer unless you use something like PSPRINT.

Quote
Quote
Opentype does work after updating the WPS freetype driver, thanks to Alex.
Opentype is not a completely new font format, more another kind of packaging fonts. You're mentioning this software: http://www.altsan.org/programming/os2/#ft2. OpenType works to some degree (only for TT fonts), to cite from Alex's page: "It does not currently support OpenType PostScript fonts..."

That applies to the GA 1.3.x version.  The beta v2.0 version adds support for all OTF fonts.  (It's not on my main website because it is still beta, and has known bugs, but it's on my github and I think on Hobbes.)

Greggory Shaw

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #10 on: February 29, 2016, 03:14:21 pm »
Thanks everybody for the posts and info, but what about the top fonts used.

- Where's a list of top fonts used (google data...) on the internet
- OS/2 standard install pack & extra one fancy ?
- votes for the top ones for a standard ?

Mmmm, my vote !

- (Titles) Roboto+Slab:700'
- (Body) Roboto+Condensed:'400,700'


Greggory

ak120

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #11 on: March 01, 2016, 01:14:36 am »
I'm not sure what to make of this.  The first two statements may have been true for Warp 3, but since Warp 4 TrueType support has been included in OS/2 out of the box.  And there's nothing to stop them being printed, although quality may suffer unless you use something like PSPRINT.

It depends on the view what support means. I took the user's view who simply wants to use truetype fonts in a text processing program. Ok, it works in Write from Win-OS/2 when installed in Warp 4. But not very smooth in real OS/2 PM programs - and mostly only for english language texts.

Quote
That applies to the GA 1.3.x version.  The beta v2.0 version adds support for all OTF fonts.  (It's not on my main website because it is still beta, and has known bugs, but it's on my github and I think on Hobbes.)

Great, it works for installing OpenType fonts. But it brings in my opinion no better handling of font capabilites. At least not for mozilla apps that provide their own (broken) freetype. Some things work (black magic?) like german ligatur (tz ch) in entry fields (also in composer), but more common thing like "long s" don't. Every word should start with it by using a german font. In this case you have to check every small s in a text for the right setting by hand - quite boring. Also windows notepad needed a long time to support this (in win7).


Alex Taylor

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #12 on: March 03, 2016, 03:48:40 am »
Quote
That applies to the GA 1.3.x version.  The beta v2.0 version adds support for all OTF fonts.  (It's not on my main website because it is still beta, and has known bugs, but it's on my github and I think on Hobbes.)

Great, it works for installing OpenType fonts. But it brings in my opinion no better handling of font capabilites. At least not for mozilla apps that provide their own (broken) freetype. Some things work (black magic?) like german ligatur (tz ch) in entry fields (also in composer), but more common thing like "long s" don't. Every word should start with it by using a german font. In this case you have to check every small s in a text for the right setting by hand - quite boring. Also windows notepad needed a long time to support this (in win7).

Contextual substitution, which I believe is what you are referring to, uses the OpenType layout tables. So first of all the font itself must support it.  Moreover, this cannot be handled by the font driver, but is the responsibility of the layout engine. Effectively, that means it's up to the individual application to support it.

ak120

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Re: Web Fonts for OS/2 ?
« Reply #13 on: March 03, 2016, 10:48:19 pm »
Quote
Contextual substitution, which I believe is what you are referring to, uses the OpenType layout tables. So first of all the font itself must support it.  Moreover, this cannot be handled by the font driver, but is the responsibility of the layout engine. Effectively, that means it's up to the individual application to support it.

I'm not sure, there a lot of possibilties to create content. So I already used feature-rich fonts. For me it's enough to read some e-books. Fortunately I don't have to deal with it.