Mission: Find a free Prelude alternative

[Ben Combee]

So, one of the last remaining hurdles in our quest to open source Mochi is font licensing.  The Prelude font that we used in previous webOS releases was only for distribution with webOS projects.  The Mochi UI was designed to feature Prelude, but we're still working with LG and HP legal on rights to distribute the Prelude font for use with Enyo applications.

In the meantime (since legal issues tend to take a while to resolve), we're also looking for a good freely licensed alternative.  I'm not a font expert, but I'm guessing there are people out there who've already done this kind of search for their own web projects.  One place to look is https://www.google.com/fonts/, as all the fonts there have an open source license that should be compatible with the Enyo project, but there are plenty of great freely licensed fonts online from a number of sources.

You can refresh your memory of Prelude if you go to http://www.hpwebos.com/us/, as that's using the Prelude Light font.  If you find something that you think would work, please post a pointer here.

For reference, here's the current mochi-fonts.less file from the repo showing which weights are used:

/* PreludeWGL Family */

@font-face {
  font-family: "PreludeWGL Light";
  src: local("☺"),
    url("../fonts/PreludeWGL/PreludeWGL-Light.woff") format("woff"),
    url("../fonts/PreludeWGL/PreludeWGL-Light.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
  font-family: "PreludeWGL Medium";
  src: local("☺"),
    url("../fonts/PreludeWGL/PreludeWGL-Medium.woff") format("woff"),
    url("../fonts/PreludeWGL/PreludeWGL-Medium.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
  font-family: "PreludeWGL Medium";
  src: local("☺"),
    url("../fonts/PreludeWGL/PreludeWGL-MediumItalic.woff") format("woff"),
    url("../fonts/PreludeWGL/PreludeWGL-MediumItalic.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-style: italic;
}

@font-face {
    font-family: "PreludeWGL Bold Italic";
    src: local("☺"),
         url("../fonts/PreludeWGL/PreludeWGL-BoldItalic.woff") format("woff"),
         url("../fonts/PreludeWGL/PreludeWGL-BoldItalic.ttf") format("truetype");
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
    font-family: "Prelude Condensed Med";
    src: local("☺"),
    url("../fonts/PreludeCondensed-Medium.woff") format("woff"),
         url("../fonts/PreludeCondensed-Medium.ttf") format("truetype");
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
    font-family: "Prelude Med Oblique";
    src: local("☺"),
    url("../fonts/Prelude-MediumOblique.woff") format("woff"),
         url("../fonts/Prelude-MediumOblique.ttf") format("truetype");
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: oblique;
}

@font-face {
    font-family: "Prelude Bold";
    src: local("☺"),
    url("../fonts/Prelude-Bold.woff") format("woff"),
         url("../fonts/Prelude-bold.ttf") format("truetype");
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
    font-family: "Prelude Bold Oblique";
    src: local("☺"),
    url("../fonts/Prelude-BoldOblique.woff") format("woff"),
         url("../fonts/Prelude-boldOblique.ttf") format("truetype");
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: oblique;
}

[Alan Stice]

I just gave a quick look, but I think that Raleway (http://typecast.com/preview/google/Raleway) would be a good option. It seems to have a lot of similarities to Prelude.

[steven feaster]

Not sure how accurate they are but might be worth giving something like http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ a try? Pretty sure there are similar other tools, that's just the first I ran into.

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[Herman van Hazendonk]

I tried WhatTheFont but only comes up with paid variants. It might be an idea to contact Webtype and ask them if we can use Prelude? This is what PivotCE did and they were successful :)

http://pivotce.com/2013/10/12/webtype-gives-license-to-pivotce-com-for-webos-fonts/

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[Ben Combee]

We're definitely working towards making Prelude available; we know all the right contacts, but the situation is complicated due to our need to be able to relicense it not just for our own use but for others to use.

Raleway is interesting; the GitHub for it is https://github.com/theleagueof/raleway.  Looking at the letterforms, I think the "W" design might be a bit too out there for a UI font, though.

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[Alan Stice]

Ha ha, no kidding. Can't believe I didn't notice that. Guess my vision is getting worse than I thought.

[Farz Hemmati]

Actually it has alternative glyphs where the w is simpler.

http://www.impallari.com/media/uploads/profotos/16-foto01-original.jpg

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[Misj']

Another good open-source alternative to Prelude might be Source Sans Pro by Adobe (url: http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/08/source-sans-pro.html, source: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcesans.adobe/files/, font: https://github.com/adobe/source-sans-pro/downloads). It has a similar feel to it as Prelude (modern/professional), and a decent amount of weights available are available. I think it would work well within the design of Mochi.

I made a couple of quick mock-ups (based on the screenshots from the Verge article) to compare Prelude and Source Sans Pro and to see the alternative in action. I still prefer Prelude as I feel it is a little bit more subtle and has a bit more style to it, but that's a personal taste (plus a bit of nostalgia).

 

[herr...@gmail.com]

I have to agree it's not as elegant a Prelude, but it comes very close to the look & feel of Prelude!

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad

---

On 30 Jan 2014 23:41, Misj' <m.n.l...@gmail.com> wrote:

Another good open-source alternative to Prelude might be Source Sans Pro by Adobe (url: http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/08/source-sans-pro.html, source: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcesans.adobe/files/, font: https://github.com/adobe/source-sans-pro/downloads). It has a similar feel to it as Prelude (modern/professional), and a decent amount of weights available are available. I think it would work well within the design of Mochi.

I made a couple of quick mock-ups (based on the screenshots from the Verge article) to compare Prelude and Source Sans Pro and to see the alternative in action. I still prefer Prelude as I feel it is a little bit more subtle and has a bit more style to it, but that's a personal taste (plus a bit of nostalgia).

 

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[risko.ha...@gmail.com]

I suggest to give a try to Lato font http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Lato

 

 

[Misj']

Lato is indeed also a nice option. 

For reference, I've adapted my mock-ups to Lato to make it easier to compare it to Prelude (and Source Sans Pro).

For Raleway I could only find a single font-weight, so I didn't make mock-ups for those.

 

Op vrijdag 31 januari 2014 10:33:27 UTC+1 schreef risko.ha...@gmail.com:

[Kevin Schaaf]

We actually use Lato on the http://enyojs.com site, which is the closest open-source proxy for Miso that I found back when we launched the original site.  But don’t get used to the old site for long…

I do think we’ve found some great options— great suggestions from everyone.

Kevin

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