[Xapian-discuss] Powered by Xapian

Thanks for raising this. We should have some more helpful guidance,
and that might help encourage people to add a link.
I don't think we have an explicit licence on it.

It was actually drawn in a "xapian logo competition" by a tweakers.net
user, and I don't think a licence was specified. We really should have
picked up on this at the time - I did try to make contact later but
failed.

It's probably reasonable to assume that it was provided to us to use as
a logo for Xapian, but I'd certainly be happier with an explicit
licence.

I've just done a quick bit of internet stalking (um, I mean sleuthing)
and I seem to have found an email address for him, so I'll try to
contact him once I checked I remembered the right user name.

I guess we should think about what licence is most appropriate. I don't
think we want to demand verbatim use, but also I'm not sure a completely
liberal licence is appropriate for what is essentially branding.
Jenny Black drew this SVG version a couple of years ago, which should
be good for making resized bitmap versions, and for different
backgrounds:

http://oligarchy.co.uk/xapian/patches/xapian-logo-square.svg

Cheers,
Olly

Jenny Black really did a good job, her SVG version is very nice.

I've started to play with Inkscape (never used it before...) to produce
some derivatives (logo with text, powered-by logo, blog style buttons)
with transparent/white backgrounds in different sizes.

May I create a new page on the wiki and upload them so we can discuss
further? Or perhaps a new ticket? Please let me know.


Another point with the logo is the font used for the textual parts
("Xapian" and "Powered by").
By using "What the font" [1] on the upper-left Xapian logo on the web
site, I identified it as being "ITC American Typewriter medium" which is
a commercial/copyrighted font by Linotype [2].

I don't know if this is a problem or not to use a commercial font in the
logo of a GPL project...

By looking around, it seems that the Drupal project had the same
problem. They resolved it by providing a SVG version of the word
"Drupal" so derivatives works can be done without having to buy the font
[3]. On the other hand, Wordpress also uses a licenced font but only
mention it [4].

If you agree, it would be easy to do as Drupal.


Last : I don't know what are the most useful sizes/formats to offer to
users.
If anybody have any hint/recommendation, it would help (for now I've
just taken multiples of 2 for the height: 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256 px).

Cheers,

Daniel


[1] http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
[2] http://www.linotype.com/187375/itcamericantypewritermedium-font.html
[3] http://drupal.org/node/86942
[4] http://wordpress.org/about/logos/ (end of page)

There's a tension between trying to lock down the branding so that it
can't be diluted by inappropriate uses, and the freedoms/openness
which Free Software/Open Source promotes (at least for code).

Different approaches have been taken by various projects, sometimes with
results which seems to nobody's benefit (e.g. Debian feel forced to
unbrand Firefox, and rename their version "Ice Weasel").

I'm not sure I've seen a totally satisfactory solution yet, and it's
quite possible there just isn't one.
Sure. A wiki page seems best - if the name is sane we can just evolve
it into a permanent home for such images.

You should be able to attach files to wiki pages and reference them
inline. If not, let me know and I'll check the trac permissions.
Yes, that's what I concluded before. It is apparently included with Mac
OS X, which also makes it a likely choice.
My (probably inaccurate) understanding is that the actual shapes of a
typeface and bitmap renderings of them aren't copyrightable (at least in
the US), but scalable fonts (with hinting) are regarded as computer
programs of sufficient complexity to be subject to copyright.

I don't know how this would apply to an SVG of text rendered using a
scalable typeface (I'd guess the outline is rendered as if at a certain
point size, and only the results of the hinting are present in the SVG),
and the situation may not be the same outside the US anyway.
Legally it may be fine to provide an SVG version, but it's unambiguously
safe to use a freely licensed font, and it's certainly philosophically
more consistent. So I think that's probably my preference if we can
find one which looks good with the logo.
That seems a good start. If we also provide SVG versions where possible
it'll be easy for people to produce them at other sizes too.

Cheers,
Olly

I've just tested with the SandBox page. I'm able to upload and attach a
file, but I don't see an option to then delete the attachment...

BTW, if I save many times the wiki page, won't it generate too many
entries in the trac timeline, and perhaps send mails to admins or things
like that?
(I ask because I see that my test now appear in the timeline and I don't
want to create "pollution"...)
Ok.
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure to understand your answer... Do you mean I
should:
(1) use the commercial font for the logo and provide SVG versions for
the texts (Drupal approach);
(2) try to find a free alternative font which looks similar;
(3) try (2) and then (1) if no free font can be used;
(4) go back to school and take an English course ! ;-)

(1) is very easy to do. For (2), the font "American Typewriter Medium
BT" can be downloaded freely from many web sites [1] and looks very
similar, but how can I be sure that this font is really free/not
licensed/not copyrighted?
OK, will do that.

Thanks for your patience!

Cheers,

Daniel

It looks like that's probably controlled by the WIKI_DELETE permission
which is only available to admins currently. I think we'd want to
check that deletion can be undone before allowing it to be done by
anyone who signs up for an account (so spam and vandalism can be
reversed).
It appears in the wiki edits timeline, and RSS feed for that. I'd say
don't worry about it - the wiki is there for people to use, so use it.
Or maybe I should...

I think it would be better to find a free (as in freedom not just as in
beer) font. It doesn't necessarily have to look similar even, provided
it looks good with the logo.
There was no URL for "[1]", but I found it and if I open it in the Gnome
font viewer I see:

Copyright 1990-1998 Bitstream Inc. All rights reserved.

Which doesn't sound promising.

Cheers,
Olly

Oh yes, I understood. I while leave a note in the wiki page if I have
files/attachments I wish to delete.
Sorry for the missing link! For anybody interested, it was just a Google
search:
http://www.google.fr/search?q=%22American+Typewriter+Medium+BT%22)

I should have checked. But it's just a copyright, it does not necessary
mean that the font is not free, does it? (I mean. Xapian is free but
source files headers contain copyrights. Am I wrong?)

However, I agree that I can't use this font because it is not
accompanied by a full license.

So I searched a bit and I found this site
http://openfontlibrary.org/
which offers "Public domain" [1] and "Open font licence" [2] fonts (I
confess: I did not yet read the texts).

If I stay in the monotype fonts family, there are 5 fonts [3] (some
fonts have previews, click on the font name), but I don't know how to
use one of them (adler clean : pfb file only).

To my eyes, UMTypeWriter looks like the most similar to the original one
but we can also start with something completely different...

There are many fonts, the choice is hard and I'm not the one who should
decide...

Do you have a preference?
(I mean : Xapian team, please, choose one for me!)

Cheers,

Daniel


[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain
[2] http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
[3]
http://openfontlibrary.org/media/search/results?search_text=monospace&search_type=any&search_in=3

There isn't a perfect solution. However Mozilla makes things worse
because of their guidelines around branding, which mean that you can't
distribute modified versions under Mozilla names. The logo cannot be
distributed under DFSG, so Firefox has to be modified, so it can't be
called Firefox.

We can avoid this particular issue by allowing things to call
themselves Xapian in more relaxed circumstances. (Since we don't have
a policy on the Xapian name at the moment, it isn't a problem right
now.)

To avoid similar problems with the logo, my current feeling is that we
should have a mechanism for creating a distribution that doesn't use
it at all. Right now, that is all distributions; in my docs branch
I can add a mechanism to build all docs with just the name "Xapian"
instead of the logo. This provides an entirely-GPL distribution, and a
mixed distribution if anyone wants; the website doesn't have to be
under the same license, so we can use the logo no matter what license
it's under.
I'd like to second that, by the way. It's a very good job.
This is correct. (While IANAL, I've had to deal with font licensing
before.) What tends to happen is that the font files are licensed, and
that license includes permission to create renderings.

SVG typically will just reference the font, but of course you can
generate outlines of the font rendering as proposed. This will in
general produce lower quality bitmap renderings than by working with
the original font, because of the lack of things like hinting and
kerning information.
I'm not wild about the font we have at the moment anyway. I will note
that lots of suitably-free fonts aren't actually very good. There are
lots of fonts that aren't strictly OSS, but have licenses sufficiently
permissive that they can be used by anyone; some of these are pretty
good.
They feel very techie-orientated. I don't know any designers who'd
naturally chose those kinds of grids. It may be worth looking at the
IAB ad sizes guidelines (currently
<http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452>)
for button sizes.

J

If if understand correctly, it would mean that the "Drupal approch" is
acceptable.
For me, the problem is to choose one...
If you have some candidates, I can render some graphics so we can see if
they look good with the logo.
Good suggestion, I will check.

Thanks,

Daniel

How about the Deja Vu family (descendants of the Bitstream Vera
fonts)?

* http://dejavu-fonts.org/
+ http://packages.debian.org/lenny/ttf-dejavu

* http://www.gnome.org/fonts/
+ http://packages.debian.org/lenny/ttf-bitstream-vera

Deja Vu comes in a narrow "condensed" form as well, these days, I think.

There's also the fonts created for the Android phones:

* http://www.ascendercorp.com/pr/2007-11-12/
+ http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/ttf-droid


Best regards,

Adam