From: "Michail Vidiassov" <CyrTeX-ru@vsu.ru>
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Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:18:29 +0300 (MSK)
To: Cyrillic TeX Users Group <CyrTeX-ru@vsu.ru>
Subject: LM Cyrillic (fwd)
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Ув. All,

цитата из переписки c Bogusław Jackowski из польского шрифтового
проекта http://www.gust.org.pl/gust/projects/e-foundry/.
Они хотят добавить кириллицу в Latin Modern (расширение Computer Modern)
и TeX Gyre (расширение PostScript шрифтов из поставки GhostScript).
Но использовать существующие наработки им мешают различия в лицензиях и 
неясность позиции авторов.

Не стоит ли побить челом нашим бодхисатвам, приносившим людям шрифты с 
глубокой древности, дабы снизошли они к страждущему человечеству и
дали отмашку полякам на использование их шрифтов или не мучали ляхов 
неопределенностью и однозначно отказались менять лицензию?

Ну и, быть может, коллективный разум CyrTeX может дать GUSTовцам к-л.
ценные указания по добывлению кириллицы в шрифты, у которых есть шанс 
стать "шрифтами по умолчанию" для по крайней мере некоторых программ.

> Recently I started the discussion in the mailing list about
> Cyrillic support with default font.
> ... the result produced is OK, except for my language, becuase LM fonts
> shipped with ConTeXt lacks Cyrillic.

Shame on us!

About a year ago we contacted Olga Lapko and Sasha Berdnikov in this matter and 
-- alas -- actually nothing happened since then. Partially because of us being 
concentrated on providing OTF math for the Latin Modern fonts  (and, later, for 
the TeX Gyre ones). Perhaps your email
is a good occasion to improve somewhat impaired contacts?

The problem in contact with us is that, as you can see, we are not especially 
prompt in aswering... ;-)

This time, however, we've had a good reason: the problem of Cyryllic concerns 
also the TeX Gyre collection. We are in the midst of the action of legalization 
other than GPL licence (if you are interested in details, do not hesitate to 
ask) for the TeX Gyre fonts; we got the agreement from Han The Thanh to use his 
Vietnamese characters under the new licence,
but -- so far -- we have not received the agreement form Valek Filippov
for his Cyrillic extension. Actually, he has not answered yet to our emails (we 
mailed to him twice) -- we hoped to have his answer before writing to you, 
hence the delay...

If he does not answer, or if he answers negatively, we'll have
to drop out Valek's Cyrillic, and, needless to say, to think about
a new one.

So the problem actually concerns not only LMs, but -- probably -- also TGs.

> I was advised by context gurus to request Cyrillic support in LM fonts,

Well, if we were genuine gurus, we would provide Cyryllic for LMs already ;-)

> becuase is seems that this font will remain default option for long time.

Perhaps yes.

Can you see how the problem of Cyrillic in LMs can be resolved?

Both improvement of the glyphs from the CM-Super fonts (as far as I remember, 
Cyrillic glyphs were generated using Olga's sources) and generating an outline 
version of Olga's LH fonts (either by tracing bitmap fonts anew or manipulating 
-- less or more manually -- on the output produced by MetaPost run on Olga 
sources) seems higly time-consuming.

I should think that the former method is simpler a little bit.
The problem is, however, that Vladimir Volovich, similarly to Valek, released 
CM Super fonts on the GPL licence and it is not obvious whether he is willing 
to agree that somebody takes a part from his deed and works on it under another 
licence.

Anyway, it is a lot of work!

Can you see anybody that would have enough time to spend on
such a task?

Thank you for raising the important question -- cheers -- Jacko
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