Trademarked glyphs in fonts can be a touchy issue. Several historic 8-bit fonts that Platillo seeks to provide compatibility with have company logos that are trademarked, and three other glyphs in the font are reminiscent of brand and/or trademarked logos.
Several historic 8-bit fonts that Platillo seeks to provide compatibility with have company logos that are trademarked.
The Apple II ‘MouseText Mode’ font included both a filled and outline version of the trademarked Apple logo.
The bitmap Apple Macintosh ‘Taliesin’ font included both a filled and outline version of the trademarked Apple logo.
The Apple version of the Adobe ‘Symbol’ font included a filled version of the trademarked Apple logo.
Both Apple and Adobe often use PUA code-point U+F8FF for the filled version of
the Apple logo but I do not feel comfortable doing so without explicit
permission to do so in an open-source GFL/LPPL licensed font especially since
Adobe did not include the glyph if non-Apple versions of their ‘Symbol’ font,
indicating to me that Apple may have a specific desire to not have that glyph
available on operating systems that are not theirs.
The thought did occur to me to pull an iCarly and put a glyph of a pear at
U+F8FF which would be perfectly legal, but that would not be accurate.
The historic 8-bit font ‘Wingdings’ included the trademarked Microsoft logo.
Some fonts like to encode that glyph in the PUA at U+F000 but I do not feel
comfortable doing so without explicit permission to do so in an open-source
GFL/LPPL licensed font.
The ‘Linux Libertine’ font places a glyph of the ‘Tux’ Brand Character in the
PUA at U+E000 and Platillo follows that precedent.
The most commonly known version of ‘Tux’ was designed by Larry Ewing who specifically granted permission for its use with the following condition:
Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me [email protected] and The GIMP if someone asks.
NCSA Mosaic wasn’t the first web browser, but it was the first web browser that was easy for the end user to use and thus helped to jump-start the Internet revolution.
Platillo pays a respectful homage to NCSA Mosaic by placing a ‘Web Client’ glyph
reminiscent of the NCSA Mosaic logo at PUA code-point U+E003. I believe the
glyph is different enough from the NCSA Mosaic logo that there should not be any
issues with using it as a generic web client glyph, especially since the last
version of NCSA Mosaic shipped in 1997.
Twitter historically used U+EA00 for the ‘Twitter Bird’ in their ‘Chirp’ font.
During the 2016 election cycle, the authoritarian religious right used Facebook to spread blatant misinformation and lies about Hillary Clinton and the left in a successful attempt to persuade many voters to back Donald Trump. This misinformation campaign used Facebook’s algorithm to specifically target the type of misinformation sent to users. For example, conservative religious people I know who are transphobic would regularly get stories about Michelle Obama being post-op trans with the Obama children being adopted, etc. As the disinformation was targeted using Facebook’s algorithm, the extent if the campaign simply was not known to many.
After the 2016 Election and under pressure, Facebook and Twitter started clamping down on the use of their platform to spread politically motivated targeted disinformation. This resulted in many on the authoritarian religious right complaining about ‘Free Speech’ so they started several social media platforms of their own.
The problem with that strategy, people to the left of the religious right did not want to join those social media platforms because of all the vileness and hate speech that were specifically allowed and embraced on those sites, and most members of the authoritarian religious right are the embodiment of Galatians 5:19--21. They are literally addicted to the degradation of those they are in disagreement through insults, lies, and general vileness. So those to the left of the authoritarian religious right stayed away from those hate sites and even many who are part of the authoritarian religious right did not use them because there was no one they could troll and insult so they got bored. Thus those sites failed to attract enough users to remain financially solvent.
Disinformation through social media though is too powerful of a campaign tool for the authoritarian religious right to just give up on the ability to use it, so Elon Musk (who does not appear to be religious but often aligns himself with the authoritarian religious right) bought Twitter, knowing that it would be psychologically difficult for people to leave Twitter and thus allowing the platform to be used in an attempt to sway the 2024 election towards the interests of the authoritarian religious right.
As Twitter at least historically used U+EA00 for the ‘Twitter Bird’ in their
‘Chirp’ font, I am using the same PUA code-point for a dead bird, as a political
statement that Twitter is now a dead platform. The dead bird is reminiscent of
the Twitter Bird but is definitely not the same logo, and its use is protected
as protected satire. No reasonable person could confuse the dead bird glyph
with the actual Twitter bird. See ‘Hustler v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988)’.
There was another religious authoritarian leader in history, his name was Antiochus IV Epiphanes. It is rather amazing to me that the Evangelicals in America do not understand the danger of such evil when their books of Daniel and 1 and 2 Maccabees were authored in response to the events caused by that evil and vile political leader. I guess history is not a passion of study for them.