FarsiTel

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi all,

If you haven't seen yet, check it out:

http://www.farsitel.com/

For non-Persian-speakers: FarsiTel, a spinoff of Sharif FarsiWeb, Inc., has
unveiled a fully localized Persian Android system. Iranian calendar,
typeahead dictionary, local maps, lovely font, you name it.

I like the website in particular. Very clean, beautiful web-font.

Congrats, everyone who worked on this. Makes me very proud to see where
FarsiWeb is heading.

Cheers,
behdad

[Behdad Esfahbod]

And a video:

http://vimeo.com/13480387

behdad

[Mehdi Sharifzadeh]

Great work, indeed. Thanks for sharing.

How is this different from a Google Android release with supported Persian locale?

--Mehdi

--
http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing

[Sina K. Heshmati]

> On 07/20/10 03:18, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>>
>> If you haven't seen yet, check it out:
>>
>> http://www.farsitel.com/

Nice work! I just don't know whether this could be an application that we'd install on the upstream Android or a whole separate distro.

>> For non-Persian-speakers: FarsiTel, a spinoff of Sharif FarsiWeb, Inc., has
>> unveiled a fully localized Persian Android system. Iranian calendar,
>> typeahead dictionary, local maps, lovely font, you name it.
>>
>> I like the website in particular. Very clean, beautiful web-font.
>>
>> Congrats, everyone who worked on this. Makes me very proud to see where
>> FarsiWeb is heading.

"Behdad Esfahbod" <beh...@behdad.org> said:

> And a video:
>
> http://vimeo.com/13480387

A video in Persian would be better I guess. After all, the entire audience of the product, hence the video speak Persian.

SinDoc

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 07/20/10 03:47, Mostafa Hajizadeh wrote:
> First of all, I forgot to add in my last email that the lovely font is
> Hooman Mehr's "Iranian Sans." Great font!

Nice. Is it released anywhere? What's the license? Can the glyphs be
contributed to DejaVu Sans please?

behdad

[Mostafa Hajizadeh]

Well, it's an open font and was designed by Hooman Mehr for Supreme
Council of Information and Communication Technology (http://scict.ir/)
to be used in GNOME and KDE. It was once available as a download on
farsilinux.org, but its exact licensing situation isn't that clear
now. Maybe Hooman himself could help about that.

Mostafa

[Aziz]

OMG, I'm so happy someone finally done something interesting with
android. but to be honest I'm more happy to see a
new Persian font. I have not seen it before and as Behdad mentioned I
wish this could replace that ugly bullshit that is called Dejavu
Sans! :P, Persian fonts on both Gnome and KDE suck badly.

From the aesthetic point of view, I think this "Iranian Sans" font
totally match the Droid family font which is the default font for
Android UI,big thumbs up!

Big thanks to Hooman Mehr and anyone else who contributed to this
thing of beauty. I can't wait to get my hand all over it! :D


Aziz

[Hooman Mehr]

Hi everybody,

First, let me thank you for being nice to the font. Let me give you
some additional information about Iranian Sans font:

The license for the font is very similar to Bitstream Vera. It is a
free license and entitles you to use and modify it as long as you
don't release a modified variant with the same base name. The purpose
of this restriction is to protect end-users from the problems that
arise from having multiple similarly named fonts with incompatible
metrics or design.

The difference of the license with Bitstream Vera is an additional
restriction for distributors of the font that expressly prohibits
charging for distribution of verbatim copies of the font.

The copy of the license that I have mentions "Iranian National
Initiative for Free and Open Source Software" (www.foss.ir) which is
now dead or dormant and as far as I know, Persian
language/writing/font related projects of that initiative is now
considered part of SCICT.

It is also worth announcing that:

I am in the process of resuming the support and maintenance of the
font package and will host an improved official version if I can
obtain the permission from SCICT and Neviseh Pardaz. As I mentioned,
releasing a modified version of the font with the same name is not
covered with its release license and requires special permission from
the copyright holder, which I am not yet sure who the holder is.

Also let me note that Neviseh Pardaz (www.nevisa.com) was the main
contractor of the font. Hadi Navid (www.cameraglimpse.com) and I were
the consultants/subcontractors (I was the primary developer, so any
blames for lack of quality goes to yours truly).

By the way: the current license permits copying of the font glyphs
into DejaVu font if you wish. It is actually very easy to do so, since
the vertical metrics (especially descender) of the font is very
compact and compatible with Latin fonts.

- Hooman Mehr

P.S.: I attach a copy of the font license text that I have. It might
not be the final version of the license.

> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Thanks Hooman! Is there a canonical place to download the font? Is there
only a book weight available?

behdad

[Hooman-Mehr]

Obtaining "Iranian Sans" Font

As far as I know, there is no official download place right now. Since
it is a free font, anybody will be able to distribute it. I will need
to see if I have the latest released version. I have many pre-release
versions, but have to search and compare to find what was the official
delivery. Also, please if somebody wants to post the latest release
font, please post the complete rpm + tar.gz + zip package along with
documentation and source (FontLab + VOLT)

On the other hand, It is important to try to avoid upgrading and
fixing a font after its initial release, because it can create
document inconsistencies and problems for end-users (remember
confusions regarding Tahoma versions?) Since I have identified some
rather serious issues (both ergonomics and technical) after the font
release, I wanted to first fix those issues and then repost the
corrected version for a wider distribution to ensure proper end-user
satisfaction with the font.

On the other hand, since FarsiTel seems to be the first redistribution
of the font since its original short-lived release, they may be
interested in sponsoring and helping out with the fixes, I don't know.
I didn't even know they exist till yesterday. I also welcome any
community involvement, but we need to first obtain a permit to release
a modified (improved) version with the original name. I think it is
preferable (at least from a nationalistic point of view for me) to
release an improved version with the same "Iranian" name.

Available Variants of "Iranian" Font

The font has a bold version which tracks the weight of Bitstream(R)
Vera(TM) Bold according to the original contract specification. Since
the Vera Bold is a bit too bold to look nice in Persian, I am thinking
of producing a lighter bold variant. Naming it demibold or outright
replacing the current bold variant remains an issue.

There is also a serif version of the font that tracks the sans version
rather closely. The key shortcoming of the serif version is lack of a
bold variant and the other issue is its too subtle "serif-ness", which
is not very visible and distinguishable (from sans) on screen. I think
the main reason behind the lack of bold variant of serif design was
the limited time and budget at that time which resulted it being
omitted in the initial contract.

For the Record (in History)

I believe it is worthwhile to invest in this font series (both sans
and serif) and produce very high quality and complete family (with
oblique and additional weight variants). The problem is the lack of
free time (as opposed to paid, rather than busy! -- just joking!) on
my part.

I also have to confess that I feel responsible for sub-optimal quality
of the font and its obscurity. Several personal issues and probably my
lack of focus and dedication caused the project to take significantly
more time than planned and come out with lower quality than I (and
everybody else) wanted. I publicly apologize for the negative impact
that I had to all affected parties FOSS.ir SCICT.ir, Nevisa.com and
Persian-Computing community. There were some other serious technical
issues and bugs in the developer tools (specifically Microsoft tools)
that also had an impact on the timing and quality of the result.

- Hooman Mehr

P.S.: I ask google group admin to split "Iranian Sans" font discussion
topic from the original FarsiTel topic to make it easier to find it in
the future.

[Hooman Mehr]

Here is a repost with text license instead of attachment:

---------------------

Hi everybody, 

------------------------  Attachment  -------------------------------------

=======================================================================

THIS PACKAGE IS FREE SOFTWARE BUT IS NOT GPL. PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING 

LICENSE FOR DETAILS OF YOUR RIGHTS:

=======================================================================

Arabic Script Glyphs, OpenType Layout and TrueType Instructions (c) 2007 by Iranian National Initiative for Free and Open Source Software (www.foss.ir) See license details in section one.

Latin Glyph Outlines Copyright (c) 2003 by Bitstream, Inc. See license details in section two.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SECTION ONE - Iranian National Initiative for Free and Open Source Software Font License

Copyright (c) 2007 by Iranian National Initiative for Free and Open Source Software,

All Rights Reserved.

"Iranian Sans" is a service mark of Iranian National Initiative for Free and Open Source Software

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the fonts accompanying this license ("Fonts") and associated documentation files (the "Font Software"), to reproduce and distribute the Font Software, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, merge, publish, distribute, copies of the Font Software, and to permit persons to whom the Font Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright and trademark notices and this permission notice shall be included in all copies of one or more of the Font Software typefaces.

The Font Software may be modified, altered, or added to, and in particular the designs of glyphs or characters in the Fonts may be modified and additional glyphs or characters may be added to the Fonts, only if the fonts are renamed to names not containing the word "Iranian".

This License becomes null and void to the extent applicable to Fonts or Font Software that has been modified and is distributed either under the "Iranian" names or claimed to be endorsed or associated with Iranian National Initiative for Free and Open Source Software.

The Font Software may be sold as part of a larger software package provided that: a) No copy of one or more of the Font Software typefaces may be sold by itself or as part of a package that only consists of a collection of fonts and associated supplementary documentation and utilities. b) No price is charged or associated with any of the Font Software typefaces themselves. So, the price of the package with or without the Font Software typefaces should be the same.

THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL "IRANIAN NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE" BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.

Except as contained in this notice, the names of "Iranian", "Iranian Sans", "Iranian National Initiative for Free and Open Source Software" or "www.foss.ir" shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Font Software without prior written authorization from the Iranian National Initiative for Free and Open Source Software. For further information, contact: fonts (at) foss (dot) ir.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SECTION TWO - Bitstream, Inc. License

Copyright (c) 2003 by Bitstream, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

Bitstream Vera is a trademark of Bitstream, Inc.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the fonts accompanying this license ("Fonts") and associated documentation files (the "Font Software"), to reproduce and distribute the Font Software, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Font Software, and to permit persons to whom the Font Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright and trademark notices and this permission notice shall be included in all copies of one or more of the Font Software typefaces.

The Font Software may be modified, altered, or added to, and in particular the designs of glyphs or characters in the Fonts may be modified and additional glyphs or characters may be added to the Fonts, only if the fonts are renamed to names not containing either the words "Bitstream" or the word "Vera".

This License becomes null and void to the extent applicable to Fonts or Font Software that has been modified and is distributed under the "Bitstream Vera" names.

The Font Software may be sold as part of a larger software package but no copy of one or more of the Font Software typefaces may be sold by itself.

THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL BITSTREAM OR THE GNOME FOUNDATION BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.

Except as contained in this notice, the names of Gnome, the Gnome Foundation, and Bitstream Inc., shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Font Software without prior written authorization from the Gnome Foundation or Bitstream Inc., respectively. For further information, contact: fonts at gnome dot org.

On Tir 30, 1389, at 9:20 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

Hi Hooman, seems like your message was rejected by the group because it
contained a zip file.  Can you please resend with plain text attachment?

Thanks,

behdad

On 07/20/10 20:00, Hooman Mehr wrote:

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Thanks Hooman for the detailed reply. Personally, I think it would be best to
try to get the glyphs completed and merged into DejaVu and/or Droid. Having a
separate family would be nice, but for me, coming from a Free Software
background, getting this into DejaVu / Droid is a much bigger achievement IMO.

Please do send the latest versions over when you get the time.

On 07/21/10 12:51, Hooman-Mehr wrote:

> P.S.: I ask google group admin to split "Iranian Sans" font discussion
> topic from the original FarsiTel topic to make it easier to find it in
> the future.

Anyone know how to do that? Can't find such an option.

Cheers,
behdad

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 07/21/10 14:13, Hooman Mehr wrote:
> My issue with your suggestion (coming from a desktop publishing software developer background who knows end-user issues) is what I stated earlier:
>
> I don't recommend significantly changing the design of any font (including DejaVu) after its release. The name of the font identifies it for the user with all its quirks. Users don't check the version of the font and (unlike software) do not expect a new release of the font to look or behave different. It may add features and extra glyphs or language coverage, but should not change the design or metrics of the existing glyphs. Since Droid font does not still have a widely distributed version with Arabic script support, it might be a possibility.

I understand where you're coming from. Desktop Publishing, and normal desktop
/ web use are two completely different usecases, and require different fonts.
That's why I think having a separate package is useful, but having the glyphs
replace DejaVu's is also useful.

> There is another possible issue:
>
> Different cultures that use Arabic script (Iranian Persian, Afghani Dari, Arabic in various Arab countries, etc) have different tastes. They also may prefer different ligatures or glyph shapes. The existing "Iranian" font may not appeal to other (none-Iranian) cultures. One possible solution would be using OpenType's language discrimination features to design per-language variants while keeping its current look for "default language". For example, the existing "Iranian" font uses language variants feature to show Arabic comma shaped decimal separator instead of the Persian slash shaped separator if the language is set to Arabic. It defaults to Persian shape when language is not specified. This has limited use, though. You can not radically change the design and look of a font based on the language let alone if the languages share the same base script. It will be very confusing for the end-users and impede correct identification of the font.

OpenType can handle the minor differences. Other than that, matter of fact is
that the DejaVu Arabic glyphs are so ugly anything replacing them would be an
improvement and hugely appreciated. It bothers me that we don't have a nice
decent Persian font in Fedora, because there is no nice released Persian font
family with clear legal status and license :(.

behdad

> - Hooman

[Aziz]

Hi everybody,

I was playing with Hooman's (et al.) new Persian font the other day that I realized I'm still missing the bold and Italic (Iranic?) variations of the font.
Do I miss anything or those variations are still under development?

I wish the font was available on a public repo (github, google code, bitbucket) so that we can easily track the development and grab the latest version.

Special thanks to Hooman and all the other team members.

Cheers,
Aziz 

  

[Hooman Mehr]

Hi,

Thank you for your interest. There is a bold variant of the sans serif version. Italic/iranic does not exist (yet). I have been working on the license of the font before seriously resuming work on it. I want to first cleanup and augment the existing fonts and then work on additional variants. 

I am also interested in developing a new derivative font that relaxes the original requirements that dictated that the font should fit in the same height as Vera. This has caused a none-standard (raised) baseline and some characters to become sub-optimal. The existing vertical metric also prevents it's extension to support some additional characters for languages such as Kurdish which I plan to ultimately support. I am looking for sponsors for the development of this new variant which according to Iranian font license may not have the word Iranian in it's name. 

On the other hand, it seems that I might be able to secure the license to release the improved and enhanced version of Iranian font with the same name (as an official update) while keeping 99% metrics compatibility. 

Also, please note that releasing a modified version of the font with the same name is a violation of it's license. You need permission from the copyright holder to do that. The problem is, with so many changes in the government, nobody takes the responsibility to issue such license. 

- Hooman Mehr  

Sent from my iPad

--
http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing

[Hedayat Vatankhah]

Hi Hooman,
Happy to hear that. It would be great if we can have these fonts with a free license such as Open Font License. Looking forward to hear more from you in this regard :)

Good luck,
Hedayat

--
http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing