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FONTLOG for Cantarell GNOME 0.0.5
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This file provides detailed information on the Cantarell font
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software. This information should be distributed along with the
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Cantarell fonts and any derivative works.
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The Cantarell typeface family is a contemporary Humanist
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sans serif, and is used by the GNOME project for its user
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interface and the Fedora project.
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Cantarell was originally designed by Dave Crossland as part
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of his coursework for the MA Typeface Design programme at
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the Department of Typography in the University of Reading,
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Dave was motivated to undertake a study of typeface design because
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he believes it is essential that when we use digital tools, our
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freedom to use, understand, modify and share these tools is
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respected. Otherwise, when the tool does not work in the way
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that we need, we will be unable to fix it.
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These fonts are developed using only such "libre" software,
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Cantarell was originally aimed at on-screen reading in a specific
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use-case and environment: reading web pages on an HTC Dream
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That device was the first to ship with Google Android [4], and
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came installed with a web browser that supported the exciting web
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fonts feature known as @font-face [5]. As Dave's very first typeface
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design, the typeface has many faults, yet he asserts it achieves
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his goal of improving readability on this device.
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The regular member of the family has had recieved the most focus, and a bold
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family has been developed quickly to provide better somewhat better results
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that an operating system's automatic bolding. In the case of oblique, we
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decided to rely on the system generated variant for now. An actual italics
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The Regular font fully supports the following writing systems:
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Basic Latin, Western European, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central
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European, Dutch and Afrikaans. To date, Pan African Latin has
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only 33% glyph coverage.
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Since the design is aimed at display on-screen at small sizes, the
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printed output (especially of the bold and oblique) may not work
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well. Fonts tuned to the needs of printing will be developed in
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The fonts were initially published on the 6th of July 2009 on
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Dave Crossland's foundry website [6] under the terms of the GNU
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General Public License version 3. [7] In May 2010 the fonts were
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republished through Google Web Fonts [8] under the terms of the
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SIL Open Font License version 1.1. [9] In November 2010 the
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project became part of the GNOME project and is now under active
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development by the GNOME design community. [10]
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Dave Crossland, 21st March 2011
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[1]: http://www.typedesign.reading.ac.uk
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[2]: http://fontforge.sf.net
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[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Dream
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[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29
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[5]: http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/Web_font_linking_with_%40font-face
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[6]: http://abattis.org/cantarell
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[7]: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
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[8]: http://www.google.com/webfonts
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[9]: http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
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[10]: http://live.gnome.org/CantarellFonts
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The original src/Cantarell-Regular.sfd file has the master sources
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as Cubic (PostScript) Bezier splines. There are temporary layers
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and a 'Spiro' layer in this file, containing forms used to create
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the master Cubic Bezier glyphs; the Spiro layer contains forms in
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Spiro splines, and much of the original typeface design by Dave
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Crossland was done by drawing in Spiro splines. However today the
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master drawing spline format is Cubic Bezier, and Spiro splines
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are used to inform their creation.
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The Cantarell-Regular.sfd file is the _master_ source, and was
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used to generate the Cantarell-Bold.sfd which is now a hard fork.
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All development occurs by making changes to these drawing files.
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When OTF or TTF binaries are compiled, they are copied to the
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Cantarell-*-OTF.sfd and Cantarell-*-TTF.sfd files and then a
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build process applied.
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This means that there should be a 1:1 match between these files,
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the OTF and TTF files in the otf/ and ttf/ directories, and the
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output of generating new OTF and TTF files from FontForge.
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The build process is simple; the Spiro and temp layers are removed,
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in the case of TTF files all layers are converted to Quadratic from
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Cubic, and then all glyphs have the Simplify, Add Extrema, Round
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to Int, and Correct Direction operations applied.
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In the future a build script will be developed to do this in an
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automated way, which will be important for adding OpenType
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Layout features through a feature.fea file.
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Please refer to the GNOME Git repository changelog at this URL:
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http://git.gnome.org/browse/cantarell-fonts/log/
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Here is a list of major contributors; all contributors are listed
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in the GNOME Git repository changelogs.
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If you make major modifications be sure to add your name (N), email (E),
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web-address (W) and description (D). This list is sorted by last name
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in alphabetical order.
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W: http://jimmac.musichall.cz
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D: Designer - many improvements and GNOME standards engineering
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E: dave@understandinglimited.com
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W: http://abattis.org/cantarell/
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D: Designer - original Latin glyphs