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The Internet Microsoft Businesses Graphics Software Apple

Mac Users' Internet Experience to Retain Same Fonts 282

Posted by CowboyNeal from the keep-on-truckin' dept.
thefickler sent in this article that opens, "Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended, thanks to the renewal of a font licensing agreement between Microsoft and Apple. At TypeCon2007 Microsoft and Apple announced they have renewed their font licensing agreement, giving Apple users ongoing use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts. Back in 1996 Microsoft started the "Core fonts for the Web" initiative. The idea of this initiative was to create a a standard pack of fonts that would be present on all or most computers, allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers. While the project was terminated in 2002, some of the fonts defined as core fonts for the web have gone on to become known as "web safe fonts," and are therefore widely used by Internet developers."
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Mac Users' Internet Experience to Retain Same Fonts More

Mac Users' Internet Experience to Retain Same Fonts

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  • It works! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The idea of this initiative was to create a a standard pack of fonts that would be present on all or most computers, allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers.
    Yup, everything looks just fine on both my Windows XP and Windows Vista computers! Life is good.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Divebus ( 860563 )
      Microsoft cares about a uniform web experience? There's a "Lost and Found" story for ya'.

  • Why was the project terminated? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @08:53PM (#20096209)
    Perhaps, after 6 years, MS realized it had achieved font lock-in?

    It seems to me, if you give something out, then its out, and not yours to later revoke.

    btw, the submission is verbatim cut from the source article, nice job 'editting'.

    • Nice job "spelling" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by xmark ( 177899 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @08:56PM (#20096237)
      Just kidding...seriously, I agree that if you give something to the web community as an act of goodwill, that goodwill pretty much evaporates (and then some) when you start tugging on the attached strings.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wall0159 ( 881759 )
      Exactly. That's the way it reads to me. Get it accepted as a standard, and then revoke it.

      This type of behaviour should be remembered when thinking about ODF/OOXML. Seems to me that the words "Microsoft", and "standards" just don't go together, and that if you care, even remotely, about a level-software-playing-field you should be avoiding their products.

      What're the MS fanboys' take on this?

    • Re:Why was the project terminated? (Score:5, Informative)

      by l33t.g33k ( 903780 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:16PM (#20096419)
      One reason MS discontinued the initiative, according to this [blogging.biz], is because people were frequently abusing the EULA by repackaging the fonts in other programs.

    • Liberation fonts... (Score:4, Informative)

      by nigham ( 792777 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @10:55PM (#20097139) Homepage
      Why don't we all install liberation fonts [redhat.com] and be done with it?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @08:53PM (#20096211)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:01PM (#20096275)
      A web designer should never assume that the user has any specific fonts on their machine. If your site doesn't look good with any serif,sans-serif, and monospace fonts, that I choose to use, then you didn't do a very good job with it. There's some other nice fonts, like fantasy, and cursive, that I would try to stay away from. Stick to the first 3 I mentioned, and stop worrying about whether or not you site looks exactly the same on everyone elses computer/browser as it does on yours. Because it never will.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

        by VGPowerlord ( 621254 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:40PM (#20096585)
        Cascading Style Sheet docs recommend specifying multiple fonts for exactly this reason, suggesting that you use one of the generic font family [w3.org] names last as a fallback (serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, or monospace).

        • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Friday August 03, 2007 @02:33AM (#20098269) Journal

          Cascading Style Sheet docs recommend specifying multiple fonts for exactly this reason, suggesting that you use one of the generic font family names last as a fallback (serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, or monospace).
          Better yet, restrict yourself to generic font families only. I know better what serif or sans-serif font I prefer to see on my monitor and with my antialiasing settings. Some fonts look great with antialiasing enabled but awful without it; some require subpixel antialiasing to look great and some don't; some Microsoft fonts are specifically designed to look good with Windows font rendering engine, and suck with FreeType. Don't think you can guess how it'll best look on my system!

    • You aren't a designer (Score:5, Interesting)

      by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:07PM (#20096339) Homepage Journal
      You, like most users, are not a designer, and don't notice the subtle differences between the proprietary fonts used on a Mac and the free (as in speech and beer) fonts used on Linux. You probably think Arial and Helvetica look the same, too. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and just highlights one reason that most people won't really care whether this license is extended or not - most people just want legible text so they can get the information.

      On the other hand, I am a pedant. I pay close attention to fonts. I notice when a single character has been substituted because the specified font didn't have a glyph for a particular codepoint. But I don't care too much for this license, either. I hate Arial with a passion, and wish my Mac would substitute Helvetica, since Arial was actually designed as a Helvetica clone that cost less to license. Verdana was designed to be legible on low-resolution displays. Displays have higher resolutions now, and font rendering technologies have improved. Verdana has outlived its usefulness. Courier New is just plain ugly. I want my fixed-pitch text rendered in Monaco.

      So all in all, I don't see how the extension of this license is a good thing for anyone.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I hate Arial with a passion, and wish my Mac would substitute Helvetica, since Arial was actually designed as a Helvetica clone that cost less to license.

        Actually, Monotype originally developed Ariel for IBM [stepinsidedesign.com] in the early 80s, except at the time it was known as Sonoran Sans. Sonoran Sans was then repackaged as Ariel for Microsoft in the early 90s.

      • Re:You aren't a designer (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:17PM (#20096421)

        Verdana was designed to be legible on low-resolution displays. Displays have higher resolutions now, and font rendering technologies have improved. Verdana has outlived its usefulness.

        Hey, I like Verdana (aside from the fact that it renders larger at a given point size than other fonts). Just because it may have been designed for some particular purpose doesn't mean it isn't pretty!

        • Re:You aren't a designer (Score:5, Informative)

          by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:22PM (#20096455)
          (aside from the fact that it renders larger at a given point size than other fonts)

          The point size of a font is measured from the top of the highest ascender (think l's, b's, and d's) to the bottom of the lowest descender (p's, q's, and y's). A typeface can be specified to be 14 points, but if it has a small x-height with ridiculously long ascenders and descenders, it will appear tiny. Verdana happens to have a large x-height, so at the same point size it appears larger than other typefaces that have a more "normal" x-height.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by 1729 ( 581437 )

        On the other hand, I am a pedant. I pay close attention to fonts. I notice when a single character has been substituted because the specified font didn't have a glyph for a particular codepoint.

        That reminds me of this message [stanford.edu] on Donald Knuth's webpage. As much as I appreciate both the fonts and the typesetting provided by TeX, I doubt I would ever notice the difference between the deltas.

      • You aren't a small handheld device. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:44PM (#20096633)
        "Verdana was designed to be legible on low-resolution displays. Displays have higher resolutions now, and font rendering technologies have improved. Verdana has outlived its usefulness."

        Let me introduce you to this new fangled device known as...a smart phone.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Yoozer ( 1055188 )
          But because smartphones usually run in portrait mode (240 x 320 instead of 320 x 240) Verdana is too wide. Windows Mobile 6 has a narrow font (with anti-aliasing) that is very legible. Even then, Tahoma, not Verdana used to be the font of choice in WM5 and before (Windows 2000, XP); the difference is obvious if you compare 'm side by side.

      • Re:You aren't a designer (Score:5, Informative)

        by jalefkowit ( 101585 ) <jason@NosPam.jasonlefkowitz.com> on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:47PM (#20096665) Homepage

        I hate Arial with a passion, and wish my Mac would substitute Helvetica, since Arial was actually designed as a Helvetica clone that cost less to license. Verdana was designed to be legible on low-resolution displays. Displays have higher resolutions now, and font rendering technologies have improved. Verdana has outlived its usefulness. Courier New is just plain ugly. I want my fixed-pitch text rendered in Monaco.

        Good news! You can have the Web this way right now. (At least, you can if you're using Firefox; Safari probably has a similar feature, but I don't use it so I can't guarantee that.)

        1. Go to Firefox preferences panel
        2. Choose "Content" tab
        3. Under "Fonts & Colors", click "Advanced"
        4. Choose the fonts you want to use everywhere: in your case, Helvetica for sans serif faces, and Monaco for proportional
        5. Uncheck the box labeled "Allow sites to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above"
        6. Click "OK" button

        Now the Web will be rendered in exactly the fonts you specified, and you never have to be offended by the sight of Arial again :-)

        • Re:You aren't a designer (Score:4, Informative)

          by Mattintosh ( 758112 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @11:30PM (#20097353)
          Here's the Safari version:

          1. Go to Safari's preferences window
          2. Choose "Appearance" pane
          3. Choose the fonts you want substituted for the "Standard Font" and the "Fixed-Width Font". In your case, Helvetica for Standard and Monaco for Fixed-width
          4. Close the preferences window

          Note that the default font in the "Standard Font" is Times (not TNR!), which is not sans serif. There's no option to choose a sans serif font separately. Presumably, Safari uses the system font (Gill Sans, IIRC) as its sans serif font. Though as I type this, the text in /. appears to be using Helvetica (and I have default font settings). And, yes, I know what to look for to tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica.

      • I hate Arial with a passion, and wish my Mac would substitute Helvetica, since Arial was actually designed as a Helvetica clone that cost less to license.

        You can set the font you wish used as the default for sans type, serif type, etc. in the preferences of Firefox and forbid websites from displaying other fonts. Better yet, get the Stylish [userstyles.org] extension so you can further customize your websites' styles (website specific options).

        I like setting all left aligned text to left-right justify, for instance, but you

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by grahamd0 ( 1129971 )

        IAANAD (I am also not a designer), in fact, I'm a developer, so designers are both my life's blood and my mortal enemies (oh, what tragedy!).

        Is it possible to explain what is so offensive about arial other than it being common and Microsoftish? I can spot the difference, and I like helvetica, but it's just honestly not that big of a deal for me.

        This strikes me as one of those "menus belong on the top-left of the screen!" type of arguments, where the person making the argument claims that it's an objecti

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )
          Cut-off tail and ugly bowl on lower-case A; angled cap and ugly tail on lower-case T; upper-case C looks unbalanced because of the angle of the ends of the strokes; the tail on the capital R has weird uneven stroke width and doesn't flow naturally from the bowl; I could go on... Suffice to say that I'm fussy.
      • In the U.S, fonts are not copyrightable (although there is a movement [typeright.org] to change that). Only the "hints" and associated software behind them can be copyrighted. However, for a fixed point size, anyone can copy a font, pixel for pixel, without infringing copyright. Since web pages typically use a small number of standard point sizes, there is no reason why a set of fixed point sized fonts can't be created by copying them exactly from the screen displays of Microsoft's or Apples's or anyone's proprietary fo
      • My inner self must be a designer then, because it always takes a few minutes to get acquainted when I switch OS's. I am surprised that more people don't notice.
      • There's an excellent article here [ms-studio.com] on the Arial/MS font bastardization issue.

        Agreed .. I would much rather see the licensing and control flow back to the foundries like linotype [linotype.com] who have a much better feel for layout and design than microsoft [microsoft.com]. If you're ever in NY, there's an excellent exhibit at the MoMA [moma.org] on Helvetica that has a 5 minute loop from Michael Price's excellent film [helveticafilm.com].

      • On the other hand, I am a pedant. I pay close attention to fonts. I notice when a single character has been substituted because the specified font didn't have a glyph for a particular codepoint. I hate Arial with a passion, and wish my Mac would substitute Helvetica, since Arial was actually designed as a Helvetica clone that cost less to license. Verdana was designed to be legible on low-resolution displays. Courier New is just plain ugly. I want my fixed-pitch text rendered in Monaco.

        Wow, you could get a job writing a column about fonts [theonion.com] for a newspaper or something.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )
        "Displays have higher resolutions now"

        Really? Which ones? When I look around, I don't see displays pushing past 100PPI much for the desktop. The most common LCDs are between about 85PPI (things like 19" 4:3s) and 100PPI (things like 20" widescreens). I just can't find any normal desktop displays, even high end graphics ones, that push past that. Only in the laptop arena do I see higher PPI and even then it caps out around 130PPI (17" 1920x1200 widescreens). Compared to print at least this is extremely low P

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pla ( 258480 )
        I want my fixed-pitch text rendered in Monaco.

        So download a Monaco TTF, and override it in your browser preferences as the default monospace/np/fixed font.

        You have it right that this "act of goodwill" on MS's part means nothing to most people - But for the wrong reason... If the music industry thinks it has a problem with getting people to recognize its copyrights, I pity the font industry. At least most people "know" copying music counts as wrong on some level. Copying fonts, no one even thinks twic

  • Eww, I wish that license would expire (Score:5, Insightful)

    by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @08:54PM (#20096215) Homepage Journal
    Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana are all horrible fonts. I'd rather have my Mac automatically substitute decent fonts when they're specified. Isn't the point of HTML, and hence the web, to specify the structure of a document rather than its appearance? Shouldn't the appearance depend on my preferences?
    • Personally I tend to specify Tahoma if present with a fallback of Helv (Helvetica family, which AFAIK is available on Mac computers only with, I think, Tahoma as the PC equivalent).

      That's only when I want a specific view (but don't want it falling back to the Times family if not specified). Otherwise I'd just say Helv and let it go at that.
    • Yes and no. You are certainly free to set your own style sheet specifying your own typeface to override a site's choices. However, that doesn't mean you're going to anticipate all invocations of a typeface, since user style sheets, like all CSS, works at at the element level and is not as a typeface substitution method.

      Of course, the other thing to consider is that web designs -- for good or for bad -- use the typeface as an integral part of the design. Just because you like Rotis Sans instead of Arial does

    • Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire (Score:5, Informative)

      by catwh0re ( 540371 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:28PM (#20096497)
      I find it ironic that Apple are paying MS for Arial.. when Arial was MS trying to make sure they didn't have to pay licensing for Helvetica. Apple license a number of fonts from their originating foundries(where available) instead of making near-duplicates which are considered by those in the industry as the equivalent of piracy.

      A bit of history on why Arial is so awful (in short). It's a font called Grotesque built to the proportions of Helvetica (so that it can be substituted for Helvetica without changing the page length.) As a result it has terrible eveness and is generally avoided by designers not out of design-snobbery, but due to how Arial negatively affects "grey area".

      Microsoft have a history of fucking with typefaces to avoid paying licensing fees. Repeating this act recently with a their new vista font "Segoe" which is almost a carbon-copy of Frutiger. It's subtle differences can only be seen when enlarging the type beyond the 16pt standard test for font similarity. (A test which Segoe failed against Frutiger, flunking it's attempt at registration with the EU trademark office.) Also in Vista the use of Segoe is at 8, 9 and 10 point, figures significantly smaller than the generous 16pt test EU test.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NMerriam ( 15122 )

      Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana are all horrible fonts.

      I won't disagree on Arial or TNR, but Verdana is a very well-designed font for use on low-res screen displays with sub-pixel rendering. But that's not how most people use it, they think it is just another "kinda Helvetica" that happens to be wider than Arial. In fact, all of the original design web fonts MS released were very well-made and well-designed, but are just very rarely well-used.

      The world would not be much poorer had this licensing agreem

  • a wild guess (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:03PM (#20096309) Homepage
    While the project was terminated in 2002, some of the fonts defined as core fonts for the web have gone on to become known as "web safe fonts"

    I'm guessing the "Goatse Wingding super font pack" is not on that list.

  • One of Apple's worst decisions (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:10PM (#20096357)
    Let's see what Apple gained here:

    1. Arial - Crap
    2. Times New Roman - Crap
    3. Comic Sans - Quite possibly the font of the antichrist
    4. Courier New - Crap and Apple has access to Courier (the good one) anyway
    5. Georgia - Decent but could be replaced with Garamond in any situation for better results
    6. Impact - Futura with a missing chromosome
    7. Trebuchet - I was mistaken, THIS is the font of the antichrist
    8. Verdana - Doesn't Apple own their own variant of Myriad? What the hell do they need this for?
    9. Andale Mono - Could be worse, but why care when you have the rights to use Monaco?
    10. Webdings - wow, just wow

    I sincerely hope Apple didn't spend a lot of money on this crap.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by moosesocks ( 264553 )
      I don't think he's joking.

      There are some beautiful typefaces out there, and Microsoft has more or less veritably shat upon the world of typography by imposing Arial and Times New Roman on the world for over a decade.

      As a concession, some of the new office 2007 fonts are quite nice [poynter.org], and Consolas [wiredprairie.us] is probably one of the best fixed-width fonts out there.

      Apple's built-in font collection is quite a bit better, and their font-rendering system is vastly superior to just about anything else out there.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Qbertino ( 265505 )
      I'm a Webdesigner and I actually like Trebuchet. ... Does that make me a follower of the antichrist?

  • See the difference (Score:5, Interesting)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:14PM (#20096389) Homepage Journal
    Here's a little page I whipped up with the different fonts [insomnia.org] from five different combinations of browser and OS.

    Personally, I've never really been able to tell the difference between one font or another :)

    • Re:See the difference (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zarel ( 900479 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:23PM (#20096467)

      Here's a little page I whipped up with the different fonts [insomnia.org] from five different combinations of browser and OS.

      Personally, I've never really been able to tell the difference between one font or another :)
      Your Windows screenshot has no anti-aliasing. Retake that screenshot with ClearType on, or else that's really unfair to Windows.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by QuantumG ( 50515 )
        How about you take a screenshot (or get someone to take a screenshot) and post it here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sqrt(2) ( 786011 )
        The windows ones look the best to me. I prefer that to the AA fonts that always looked too blurry to me. I wish there was a way to replicate that look, exactly as it is in Windows with Linux (Merely turning off AA is NOT a solution, the results are horrid and nothing like what they look like in Windows, even when using the exact same font files). That's one of the things I miss about windows is how clear and crisp the fonts were rendered.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kotj.mf ( 645325 )
          Word. First thing I do on a new install is enable bitmap fonts, and change my app font to Adobe Helvetica and my terminal font to either DEC Terminal or X Fixed, depending on resolution. I really wish Truetype fonts were rendered better. They need so much antialiasing that it makes me think one of my contacts has fallen out.

        • The windows ones look the best to me. I prefer that to the AA fonts that always looked too blurry to me. I wish there was a way to replicate that look, exactly as it is in Windows with Linux
          Move out of the United States and recompile FreeType with support for Apple patents. You can move back once the TrueType hinting patents expire.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Foresto ( 127767 )
          Rebuild FreeType with the bytecode interpreter enabled, disable anti-aliasing, install the Microsoft Core Fonts, and reconfigure your desktop & apps to use those fonts.

          I used to do all that with every linux distribution I installed for my own use. This last time, I installed Ubuntu Feisty, and found that I didn't have to touch FreeType.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sqrt(2) ( 786011 )
            Yeah I tried that and the results never quite were the same. Some letters had problems displaying correctly with misaligned or superfluous pixels that I just couldn't stop ignoring. Maybe I'm a pedant but it really irked me. I settled on default Ubuntu fonts lowered to size 8 (default was 10 and looked way too big for my liking) with the option Subpixel Smoothing and Full hinting. I also installed the msttcorefonts package and websites render pretty good now, not the same as windows obviously but still clea

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by twitter ( 104583 )

          The windows ones look the best to me.

          They look like shit to me, but you are free to pay for them. Until recently, the rest of us didn't have a choice when we buy a computer from most major vendors.

          My wife did not like them either. She almost picked the Apple Safari fonts once but then consistently chose konqueror/debian. This may be due to aliasing from the screen shot, but he's used png so that's probably not an issue.

          Kudos to QuantumG for putting the page up.

      • Cleartype? Is that the only antialiasing that Windows has? Cleartype is rainbow-making even when "properly" set up. I don't like it, even after playing with the TweakUI settings that handle ClearType. Subpixel rendering like that just turns the edges of a font to random colors rather than let them be normal colors, that being red on one edge and blue on the other edge into a series of red, green and blue colors, depending on where the edge falls.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Wyzard ( 110714 )

          ClearType's "rainbows" are an optimization meant specifically for LCD monitors, to gain a bit of extra sharpness. It doesn't work on CRTs; you see the colors but you don't gain the sharpness.

          Windows has had "standard" anti-aliasing (using only shades of grey, no "rainbows") since Windows 95, much longer than ClearType has been around. However, for some reason, the "standard" AA only kicks in at larger sizes; typical sizes (12pt, etc.) are left with the jaggies. That's why many people think the only opt

    • That's handy, but note that the Windows ones look very different from a standard XP/Vista display, as font smoothing isn't turned on (whether ClearType or not). (I'm not complaining, mind you -- my browser under Windows is non-standard anyway: I've set the default font to Lucida Grande, copied over from my Mac.)

      Anyway, I agree with the guy who said that the whole point of HTML was to separate content from presentation. Oh well.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jarjarthejedi ( 996957 )
      Man...the Apple one looks nice...if that's the result of not renewing a license I hope Microsoft 'forgets' to renew :P.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Personally, I've never really been able to tell the difference between one font or another :)

      Though you may not be blind, you really should have stopped sooner.

  • Whatever happened to content vs presentation? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NoMaster ( 142776 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:14PM (#20096405) Homepage Journal

    allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers.
    Except that the whole point of using a simplified SGML (HTML) on the WWW was to separate content from presentation - a fact maybe forgotten, but even more important now what with the spread of WWW content to different classes of devices (TV, mobiles, handhelds, etc).

    Specific fonts (or, correctly, "typefaces" - a given font is a particular incarnation of a typeface, including size, so Comic Sans 10pt is a different font to Comic Sans 12pt) shouldn't be necessary - families of typefaces maybe, if you're trying to achieve a particular style, but not fonts or even necessarily typefaces.

    Trying to nail presentation of a presentation language down to specific fonts or typefaces is about as sensible as demanding your viewer's browser window be 800x600. If you absolutely can't live without your web-based masterpiece being presented in point-perfect font specifivity, present it as a .gif or .pdf...

    • Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dr. Cody ( 554864 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:25PM (#20096477)
      Specific fonts (or, correctly, "typefaces" - a given font is a particular incarnation of a typeface, including size, so Comic Sans 10pt is a different font to Comic Sans 12pt) shouldn't be necessary - families of typefaces maybe, if you're trying to achieve a particular style, but not fonts or even necessarily typefaces.

      I spent a few years working with desktop publishing gurus turned web developers, and I heard this goddamn typeface/font distinction made all the time.

      It drove me nuts, but, in the end, one of us was correct about the use of a common technical definition, and the other had sex with women.
    • All browsers now have a user specified stylesheet available. You are more than welcome to customize your experience there as the css spec states that a user supplied stylesheet overrides the server supplied styles (unless the server calls out !important, in which case the user must also call out !important).

      OTOH if you would like to see and experience the website the way the designer intended, thereby seeing the content within the context of a presentation... then allow it to happen. It's still your choice,

      • Markup and semantics simply are not nuanced enough to communicate mood, they do well with meaning but mood and character are out of their scope.

        <skeptical>Oh really?</skeptical>

        <seriously>Markup and semantics, combined with the content itself, is more than sufficiently nuanced to communicate mood. If they aren't, you're not a very good writer, or you're designing for a really stupid audience.</seriously>

        <sarcastic>But I suppose your mood and atmosphere are so much better if

    • Specific fonts (or, correctly, "typefaces" - a given font is a particular incarnation of a typeface, including size, so Comic Sans 10pt is a different font to Comic Sans 12pt) shouldn't be necessary - families of typefaces maybe, if you're trying to achieve a particular style, but not fonts or even necessarily typefaces.

      That ship has sailed. The only place that distinction really matters is where style designers like to talk their jargon. Unfortunately, languages change and it's not likely that profession
    • I hate ASP and php because it intermingles html and code.

      At least with .Net its autogenerated but still a real seperation is better engineering.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      Except that the whole [goal] of using a simplified SGML (HTML) on the WWW was to separate content from presentation [..] Specific fonts [...] shouldn't be necessary

      We in the real world differentiate abstract goals from actual results, and stress on having results.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I agree. One of the biggest waste of money on corporate project is the insistence on a specific presentation. Very often the usability and content is crap, you usually can't find what you are looking for, but thousands of hours have been put in to make sure the text is in the exact correct place in every browser. And heaven help you if your eyesight is not so great, as the web site is set up for a specific size screen at a specific font, and the content is so convoluted that a screen reader is no help.

  • Embrace extend extinguish (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:16PM (#20096415)
    I this is just part of an evil plot to get Mac users used to using these fonts then later MS will make you buy the vowels.

  • Very funny you guys (Score:4, Informative)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:29PM (#20096511)
    "Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended"

    What's Wrong With Apple's Font Rendering? [codinghorror.com]
    Welcome to the blurry, but fast, browser... [scobleizer.com]
    Apple and Microsoft have always disagreed in how to display fonts on computer displays... [joelonsoftware.com]

    • Re:Very funny you guys (Score:4, Informative)

      by atrocious cowpat ( 850512 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @11:34PM (#20097375)
      You might have also given a link to the slightly less inflammatory titled folluw-up post to "What's Wrong With Apple's Font Rendering", called:

      Font Rendering: Respecting The Pixel Grid
      I've finally determined What's Wrong With Apple's Font Rendering. As it turns out, there actually wasn't anything wrong with Apple's font rendering, per se. Apple simply chose a different font rendering philosophy, as Joel Spolsky explains:...       (link to article [codinghorror.com])

      Rather good and concise explanation of the different strategies of font-rendering.
    • While your post is mere flamebait, you almost got to the core issue: Mac users will see the Internet as MICROSOFT intended. Excuse me if I think this is a very bad thing.

  • RAWR! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ShamrawkNRoll88 ( 1113451 )
    At the risk of being modded troll...

    WE NEED MORE OPEN SOURCE FONTS!

    Microsoft is stifling competition in the font war by forcing internet font lock in! Linux users, and the tech-proletariat in general, demand an end to this typeface travesty!
  • I wonder whether the so called Linux sellouts (read Novell, Linspire, Xandros) will be next. After all, fonts on these Linux systems and Linux in general are still very very wanting.

    I must say that there is an effort in the KDE development circles to make the KDE desktop and internet experience through Konqueror, the best it can be.

    • Frankly, I own licenses of Windows that came with the laptops. So I feel like I can legally take my Windows fonts and drop them in Linux, which is exactly what I did. I have the various open-source fonts (like the Liberation series) sitting right along side various commercial fonts I picked up, and the core Microsoft fonts.

      It generally isn't very difficult regardless of distro to get the Microsoft fonts in Linux. The only question is the legality of it.
    • Well, yes, as a matter of fact, the distros stealth-purchased by Microsoft come with those stupid fonts already.

      It is a terrible patch-solution to follow MS' "standard" web developers should seriously know better and I think that apple has seriously screwed up with this one, they should have tried to battle those fonts instead of keeping licensing them. Apple is an strong enough company...

    • I wonder whether the so called Linux sellouts (read Novell, Linspire, Xandros) will be next. After all, fonts on these Linux systems and Linux in general are still very very wanting.

      It would be nice for those users who actually want such things to have them, even though I think those fonts suck (parent post has images to compare) [slashdot.org]. You can already get the M$ core fonts from M$ themselves by following crossover office instructions. M$ has the fonts in a series of files on some hideous and obfuscated supp

      • You can already get the M$ core fonts from M$ themselves by following crossover office instructions. M$ has the fonts in a series of files on some hideous and obfuscated support website

        Or right here on the Sourceforge network in source RPM form [sourceforge.net], but don't let that stop your bitching.

        They're under a "distribute all you want however you want as much as you want to whoever you want, but don't change the fonts and claim they're the same or charge for them" license. Hardly as evil as you claim.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by twitter ( 104583 )

          Or right here on the Sourceforge network in source RPM form, but don't let that stop your bitching.

          A link to cab extraction utilities and a pile of .exe "form" fonts? How friendly. Must be that cross platform obfuscation M$ likes to talk up.^M

  • A question to the world: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pizzach ( 1011925 ) <pizzachNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday August 02, 2007 @09:58PM (#20096723) Homepage
    Has anyone noticed that when you use a Mac for a while, Windows fonts suddenly feel really pixelated with Cleartype?

    Then if you use a PC for a while, when you come back to a Mac the fonts feel really blury?

    • Re:A question to the world: (Score:4, Informative)

      by Idaho ( 12907 ) on Friday August 03, 2007 @09:25AM (#20100891)

      Has anyone noticed that when you use a Mac for a while, Windows fonts suddenly feel really pixelated with Cleartype?

      Then if you use a PC for a while, when you come back to a Mac the fonts feel really blury?


      Yes. This article [joelonsoftware.com] explains exactly why this is the case.

      The "too long; didn't read" summary: Microsoft optimizes font display for on-screen readability, whereas Apple optimizes for getting the same results (page coverage or "grayness %") on screen as you would obtain in print.
  • Nope, I don't see any similarity with the story a few down about a JPEG replacement. None at all.
  • My memory is a little clouded on all this, but at one point in the late '80s or early '90s, MS and Apple decided that Adobe was really being bitchy about Postscript fonts, and they developed, together, True Type. That hung together for maybe a year, and then, guess what, MS developed its own version of the standard, and went off to MS Land. So when the web developed, MS and Apple had a cheap and scalable font standard they could work from. Of course, by this time, MS's version had "evolved" a bit from the s
  • The way the Web is intended to look is like the Photoshop designs that most sites are based on, with print-style typography. It's when the designs are implemented in the browser that the same old shitty fonts are slapped on. From design to implementation the only thing that changes visually is the text, except in Safari which also has print-style typography. We are about to go to 300 dpi displays and screen and print will be the same, all the screen hacks are nearly obsolete.

    Also these Microsoft fonts are s

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