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Font files available from Google Fonts, and a public issue tracker for all things Google Fonts
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Add "D-Din Pro"? #3150

Open d-mal opened 3 years ago

d-mal commented 3 years ago

https://github.com/CyberFei/D-DIN-PRO OFL The original D-DIN was made by Charles Nix / Monotype for a company called Datto. It looks like it is not available from them directly any more, but can be found at many other places. The fork "D-DIN Pro" seems to add more weights, but has dropped the condensed and expanded cuts.

driehuis commented 3 years ago

These fonts by CyberFei lack sources, and I don't think that's acceptable to Google. CyberFei also forgot to update the OFL, and even though his/her chosen RFN is different from Datto's, its legal status is dubious at best because the new names are not added to the OFL.txt and the fontlog is missing.

The Datto fonts are supposed to be Open Source, but I've never seen sources to them, only the released font in .ttf, .otf and .woff formats. Maybe I didn't look hard enough though... The font license declares Reserved Font Names, so if someone were to convert the .otf's into .ufo (which I believe would be legal, but IANAL) to meet Google's source requirements, the RFN means that the font would then have to be renamed (and preferably, licensed under the OFL as a derivative work without RFN, which I also believe would be legal, but again, IANAL).

Actually, looks like https://github.com/Altinn/altinn-din already converted D-DIN to .sfd (fontforge) format, but assigned a new RFN. That one meets the source code requirement, and maybe they can be talked into dropping the RFN.

I love challenges like this, just not sure that I've got the spare time to tackle them :-)

d-mal commented 3 years ago

Thanks for the info and the insight into the legal issues... I had not seen the Altinn version before, it does indeed look like it follows the rules better. Maybe they would be fine with dropping the RFN for a wide distribution through Google. Don't worry, there's no hurry for this addition (at least for me) ;-) My motivation for this issue was just that there's no "DIN-clone" at Google, and I knew there were OFL versions around.

thlinard commented 3 years ago

Gidole is another possibility, but since its development seems abandoned, it should be resumed.

driehuis commented 3 years ago

There is actually a number of issues open on Gidole, some of which directly affect its usability as a web font. So there is more to the state of maintenance than just "Cyrillic hasn't been done yet". It is, of course, not inconceivable that the problems go away after running the font through fontbakery and fixing the most egregious errors. There are 63 forks of the repo, so maybe someone has gone the extra mile already, hard to tell.

Gidole looks nice and I like it's source repo a lot, so maybe I'll find an excuse to try running fontbakery myself and see where it leads.

Of course, a classic DIN font would have stricter adherence to grid sizing than Gidole has, so even if Gidole made it into Google Fonts I think there would remain space for a DIN font derived from for example the Datto version. Gidole is a bit too playful for a typeface specified by rulers and compasses :-)