[9fans] docfonts problem

[9fans] docfonts problem

[erik quanstrom]

forwarded ...

> I thought I had the typesetting correct, but I had not included the
> macros.  When I do, it completely messes everything up -- like expanding
> two words and having them type over each other (see attached).
>
> I'm running this on plan9port with the command:
>
>  9 troff -mpictures -ms  macros.ms generic.ms  | 9 tr2post | 9
> psfonts > generic.ps
>
> Do you know how to fix this?  If not, do you have source for a TeX paper
> to use as a template so I can format it that way instead?

this doesn't work for me either on p9p, but it does work under
plan 9.  it's a font problem.

after a little experimenting, prepending /sys/doc/docfonts to the ps
before running psfonts helps — at least the bold and title lines are
properly set.

i suspect that there is some sort of font name snafu between p9p and
plan 9.  russ?

- erik

p.s.
i'm not sure why you're including mpictures.  i use the guess-o-matic
way of processing troff/pic/eqn/etc.

	eval 9 `{doctype macros.ms generic.ms}

Re: [9fans] docfonts problem

[Russ Cox]

> this doesn't work for me either on p9p, but it does work under
> plan 9.  it's a font problem.

do you have the fonts?
they do not come with plan9port, because the
postscript fonts cannot be redistributed except
with plan 9 itself.

i believe that if you copy /sys/lib/postscript/font/*
to /usr/local/plan9/postscript/font then it should
behave the same way in both places.

russ

Re: [9fans] docfonts problem

[EBo]

> do you have the fonts?
> they do not come with plan9port, because the
> postscript fonts cannot be redistributed except
> with plan 9 itself.

turns out no.  Here is a sticky question (one I will likely have to write
Bigelow & Holmes for final clarification), but if I write a script (portage
ebuild) which downloads and extracts the fonts into plan9port so all this
works.  Is this a violation of their license?  I would not be
redistributing it, but would this be considered a derivative work?

> i believe that if you copy /sys/lib/postscript/font/*
> to /usr/local/plan9/postscript/font then

This worked.  Thanks Russ!

If I mix the two, how do I (re)build the fontmap to include both?

Re: [9fans] docfonts problem

[Russ Cox]

>> do you have the fonts?
>> they do not come with plan9port, because the
>> postscript fonts cannot be redistributed except
>> with plan 9 itself.
>
> turns out no.  Here is a sticky question (one I will likely have to write
> Bigelow & Holmes for final clarification), but if I write a script (portage
> ebuild) which downloads and extracts the fonts into plan9port so all this
> works.  Is this a violation of their license?  I would not be
> redistributing it, but would this be considered a derivative work?

where would the script download them from?
whoever makes them available for download
separate from plan 9 is violating that license.
further, this kind of dancing on the edge of a knife
approach to software licensing is not typically
looked kindly upon by the distributions.  i bet
gentoo would object if they found out.

honestly, i wouldn't play these games.

bigelow & holmes granted plan9port a license to
distribute plan 9's lucida bitmap fonts as long as
they were named something other than lucida
(that's why the directories are named luc instead
of lucida), and that same license explicitly excluded
plan 9's lucida sans postscript fonts.  they were very
gracious about licensing even the bitmap fonts when
there was little benefit to them other than good will.
instead of violating the spirit and possibly the letter
of both licenses, i would suggest that you use the
postscript fonts that i substituted in their place, namely
luxi sans, also by bigelow & holmes.  the ms macros
that ship with plan9port use them if you start your
document with

    .FP luxisans

they have equally good unicode coverage and a
similar look to lucida sans.

if you do write such a script to pull the lucida fonts
out automatically and drop them in, please don't use
the name plan9port to describe the resulting software.
i don't want any part of it.

thanks.
russ

Re: [9fans] docfonts problem

[EBo]

As I said, I would ask Bigelow & Holmes for final clarification before
releasing anything.  I am not trying to dance around the license, but get
clarification on what is OK.  I have made it a habit of asking people here,
and elsewhere, if there they would mind if I do something in a particular
way.  I have even caught flack for asking 9fans before "showing them the
code", but it is exactly this kind of toe stepping that I like to avoid.  I
could go through the dance steps of how portage can download multiple
source trees to build stuff, but you have made it quite clear how you feel
about it. 

Now for the problem behind all this.  I am basically required to use troff
for formatting the iwp9 paper submissions.  I have asked repeatedly for the
a TeX macros, or the source for an acceptable macro.ms equivalents.  All of
these requests have been greeted with silence because someone, and I would
have to guess who, is discouraging the use of TeX for these submissions. 
Frankly troff has been a pain, and I do not use it for anything else, and
will not except for necessary plan9 related documentation.  Thanks for the
work around BTW, but next time I rebuild plan9port it will be blown away
unless I add these dance steps to the ebuilds.  See the chicken ant the egg
problem?

As for Gentoo, I would have to go through a formal review before having
them added to any repository AND the licensing field in portage ebuilds
explicitly contain all the licenses of the software used to build the
programs.  So, gentoo would know right off -- I would not hide it.  Also,
there are ebuilds for proprietary closed-source programs in gentoo, though
not many.

On Sun, 12 Sep 2010 11:42:13 -0400, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
>>> do you have the fonts?
>>> they do not come with plan9port, because the
>>> postscript fonts cannot be redistributed except
>>> with plan 9 itself.
>>
>> turns out no.  Here is a sticky question (one I will likely have to
>> write
>> Bigelow & Holmes for final clarification), but if I write a script
>> (portage
>> ebuild) which downloads and extracts the fonts into plan9port so all
this
>> works.  Is this a violation of their license?  I would not be
>> redistributing it, but would this be considered a derivative work?
> 
> where would the script download them from?
> whoever makes them available for download
> separate from plan 9 is violating that license.
> further, this kind of dancing on the edge of a knife
> approach to software licensing is not typically
> looked kindly upon by the distributions.  i bet
> gentoo would object if they found out.
> 
> honestly, i wouldn't play these games.
> 
> bigelow & holmes granted plan9port a license to
> distribute plan 9's lucida bitmap fonts as long as
> they were named something other than lucida
> (that's why the directories are named luc instead
> of lucida), and that same license explicitly excluded
> plan 9's lucida sans postscript fonts.  they were very
> gracious about licensing even the bitmap fonts when
> there was little benefit to them other than good will.
> instead of violating the spirit and possibly the letter
> of both licenses, i would suggest that you use the
> postscript fonts that i substituted in their place, namely
> luxi sans, also by bigelow & holmes.  the ms macros
> that ship with plan9port use them if you start your
> document with
> 
>     .FP luxisans
> 
> they have equally good unicode coverage and a
> similar look to lucida sans.
> 
> if you do write such a script to pull the lucida fonts
> out automatically and drop them in, please don't use
> the name plan9port to describe the resulting software.
> i don't want any part of it.
> 
> thanks.
> russ

Re: [9fans] docfonts problem

[Russ Cox]

> Now for the problem behind all this.  I am basically required to use troff
> for formatting the iwp9 paper submissions.  I have asked repeatedly for the
> a TeX macros, or the source for an acceptable macro.ms equivalents.  All of
> these requests have been greeted with silence because someone, and I would
> have to guess who, is discouraging the use of TeX for these submissions.
> Frankly troff has been a pain, and I do not use it for anything else, and
> will not except for necessary plan9 related documentation.  Thanks for the
> work around BTW, but next time I rebuild plan9port it will be blown away
> unless I add these dance steps to the ebuilds.  See the chicken ant the egg
> problem?

It's just not that hard to use the iwp9 macros with plan9port.
They work fine, and if you put .FP luxisans at the top of your
ms file you can get a nice-looking B&H-designed sans serif font too.
And then when you submit the source to them you or they
can delete that one line.  It's easy.

Or you can run 9vx pointed at a real Plan 9 ISO image
and run Plan 9 in all its glory.  That's easy too.

You're making things a lot harder than they need to be.

Russ

Re: [9fans] docfonts problem

[EBo]

> It's just not that hard to use the iwp9 macros with plan9port.
> They work fine, and if you put .FP luxisans at the top of your
> ms file you can get a nice-looking B&H-designed sans serif font too.
> And then when you submit the source to them you or they
> can delete that one line.  It's easy.

and as far as I know you are the first to document this little gem.  Thank
you.

> Or you can run 9vx pointed at a real Plan 9 ISO image
> and run Plan 9 in all its glory.  That's easy too.

that was about to be my next step, but I haven't been using 9vx for much
of anything for awhile because it does everything in a single core and I
want to test how well things work on multi-cores.  So, I'm trying to work
with mainly one toolset -- in this case plan9port.