“I think it is impossible to copyright empty space” (Pierre H quotes Pierre M) We received different responses to our open letter to Monotype that we posted here and on Typophile. Actually, we did get a reply from MonoType’s lawyer, acknowledging our letter, and asking us to identify ourselves as a legal body. We responded […]

It’s hard to believe that we are back for more than three weeks from Tel Aviv, where we participated in Open Code Versus Military Culture? Aspects in Israel Digital Culture. It feels both close and very far away. Open Code Versus Military Culture? was initiated by digital artist Tsila Hassine, asking pertinent questions about the […]

Next week another delegation of OSP travels to Tel Aviv to present at the conference Open Code Versus Military Culture? Aspects in Israel Digital Culture organised by the Shenkar College for Engineering and Design. Following the talk, there will be a worksession at the Israeli Center for Digital Art. From the conference description: “The interest […]

The Hadopi is a big thing in France. At its origin, a piece of legislation that implements the three strikes model for illegal downloads. You receive three warnings and then you are ‘banned’ from the internet. The authority who is in charge of applying the sanction is the Hadopi. A new logo has been created […]

Found on the developper’s website: The image mosaic plug-in for the GIMP is no longer supported or distributed. Mr. Robert Silvers, the holder of a patent related to the technology that was used in the plug-in, argued that the software would directly infringe his patent rights. It is not clear if the patent is applicable […]

Qu’attend-on pour libérer le magenta ? A very good article by Pascal Riché on the website of rue89 on how the trademark law makes it possible for companies to own a color for a specific commercial field. Autrement dit, si vous voulez repeindre votre maison en magenta (appelé ainsi à cause de la bataille du […]

A photo-reportage by Dave Bullock, published on the Wired, that shows the process of digitalising books for the Internet Archive. This process is still done manually due to the fragility of old books and their size variance. “For those picturing an efficient, automated process involving robotic arms and high-tech scanners, the scanning at the University […]

After the presentation of Igor Novikov about the new version of sk1, the OSP team can’t wait. It is promised to be published for June, in the meantime we installed the current version and are testing our svgs with it. To install the current version on ubuntu: grab the three .deb files from the products […]

The Apache Foundation has released a new version of Batik. Batik is a Java-based toolkit for applications or applets that want to use images in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format for various purposes, such as display, generation or manipulation. Using Batik?s thumbnail function to navigate a complex SVG document Batik is not only relevant […]

Use Inkscape and XSLT to Create Cross-Platform Reports and Forms, an article by Chad Files on the Linux Journal website that details a workflow to produce dynamic forms and reports for both print and web using Inkscape and Xslt. Description of the problem and requirements: Health-care claims are very intricate (Figure 1). Many boxes and […]

A news found on Linuxhelp: Visit any random website and chances are the website expects your machine to have a set of fonts which have become the de-facto standard on the Internet. The fonts being Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New and so on. While it may not be illegal to install these fonts on […]

As we already mentioned in this blog, Adobe owns many of the (proprietary) tools used by designers nowadays: Indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and after having acquired Macromedia, it also owns Dreamweaver, Flash, Director, etc. Monopoly rhymes with monoculture. However, Adobe has not always been the enemy of free formats. A recent example being the viewer for […]

Since long, we wished to write about scripting for image creation and manipulation. There are many reason why you would spend some time to do it. To resize a lot of images by hand can be a tedious task, or your software misses a component to achieve a particular result. Or you want to turn […]

Invalidity Division, sounds like science-fiction, doesn’t it? Registered community design is not bad either. Time to start a jargon file… […]this time the dispute is over fonts; specifically Segoe, one of the typefaces Microsoft wants to use in Vista (the new Windows, “bringing clarity to your world”). Microsoft filed its “registered community design” for the […]

http://www.dustismo.com/ Domestic Manners, by Dustin Norlander. “This font is basically my handwritting. Why anyone would want to use my crappy handwritting for anything, I can’t say. It would be a good way to forge a note from me I guess. Anyway, use it for whatever you want, its released under the GPL so change it […]

The “user-friendly” distribution Ubuntu is distributing its font under the LGPL. I have not heard the same from other distributions. It seems that Redhat or Novell do not want to share their corporate identity with the rest of us. Ubuntu’s founder Mark Shuttleworth, who sold his company Thawte(a company that issues security certificates) to become […]