Tuesday 19 July 2011

New Fonts?

As part of a general overhaul of the UI, I'm experimenting with using Angband fonts:


To be honest, I think it improves the look of the game dramatically. Due to their slightly larger size however, I'm going to have to move the equipped items out of the inventory items view and into a new view of their own (like Angband!), but I think I'll only do that when I implement proper keyboard-equipping and removing items.

I do have a query though before going ahead with this in the next Alpha Release, which I've been unable to find the answer anywhere on the web: am I legally allowed to use the fonts that come with Angband in an MPL project? If so, what license are they under? If they are GPL, then I think I can distribute them solely as GPL and include them in my MPL program and then get a sore head due to all these mad license incompatibility.

4 comments:

Jose said...

I wouldn't give a fuck about licenses. You Americans are always crazy about that :)

Dave said...

Ha! I'm actually British but your point is appreciated! :p

Jose said...

You got me, hehe.

Pikalek said...

From what I've found, the subject is complex & uncertain even within GPL alone. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has this article regarding font licensing: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050425novalis

And here's the GNU Font Exception statement: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException

If you've not yet done so, you might want to contact the Angband developers & see what they have to say regarding the fonts.

You could also look for a similar font with a known compatible license. That might be time consuming, but you might be able to leverage some of your readership to help out...