Distributing a font with Gtk+ (for the linux-fb port)

[Alexander Larsson <alla lysator liu se>]

The font support in the linux-fb port currently consists of scanning a
list of well known paths for truetype and type 1 fonts, with some built-in
lists of aliases (currently some MS truetype fonts and the URW fonts).

If non of the current aliases for "Sans" is found nothing will be able to
render text. Therefore i've been thinking of distributing a font with Gtk+
which is installed and used as the last resort in the font aliases (like
the "fixed" font in X).

Would this be Ok, and if so what kind of license does it have to be?

One example of a possible font is the "Lucidux Sans" font from XFree4. It
is a postscript type 1 font at 71k with the following licence:

% Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
% copy of these Fonts and associated documentation files (the "Font Software"),
% to deal in the Font Software, including without limitation the rights to
% use, copy, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, 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, trademark, patent notices and this permission notice
% shall be included in all copies of one or more of the Software.

% The Font Software may not be modified, alterered, or added to, and in
% particular the designs of glyphs or characters in the Fonts may not be
% modified nor may additional glyphs or characters be added to the Fonts,
% except that composite characters composed of two or more characters in the
% Fonts may be created using the seac (Standard Encoding Accented Character)
% Type 1 operator.

Another example would be the "URW Gothic L Book" postscript type1 font at
34k with the following licence:

% Copyright (URW)++,Copyright 1999 by (URW)++ Design & Development
% (URW)++,Copyright 1999 by (URW)++ Design & Development
% See the file COPYING (GNU General Public License) for license conditions.
% As a special exception, permission is granted to include this font
% program in a Postscript or PDF file that consists of a document that
% contains text to be displayed or printed using this font, regardless
% of the conditions or license applying to the document itself.

What do you think?

/ Alex