Mac Users' Internet Experience to Retain Same Fonts

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."

Comments

It works!

[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:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

"...little boxes made of ticky-tacky..."

(http://ingeb.org/songs/littlebo.html - think abou tit)

Re:It works!

[Divebus]

Microsoft cares about a uniform web experience? There's a "Lost and Found" story for ya'.

Why was the project terminated?

[Gothmolly]

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'.

Re:Why was the project terminated?

[wall0159]

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?

[l33t.g33k]

One reason MS discontinued the initiative, according to this, is because people were frequently abusing the EULA by repackaging the fonts in other programs.

Re:Why was the project terminated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm going to go with "smart business practice".

Sucks if you're the consumer, but that's not really their problem now, is it?

Microsoft has always sucked at standards. They still haven't really gotten rid of WINS and NetBIOS in their IP stack.

Re:Why was the project terminated?

[Threni]

> people were frequently abusing the EULA by repackaging the fonts in other programs.

Why were they bothering, if the fonts were available for other programs on the same PC? Weren't they available to all apps on the same PC?

Re:Why was the project terminated?

[l33t.g33k]

Yes, once installed, it's available to all programs on the PC. However, many programs (especially on Linux, such as CodeWeavers/CrossOver Office and the installer for Debian) were automatically installing the fonts if they weren't already there. While that's convenient for the end user, MS felt slighted!

Re:Why was the project terminated?

[CarpetShark]

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

With physical property, that's how it works in court, too. Give someone a gift, and it belongs to them, not you.

Re:Why was the project terminated?

[aichpvee]

I'm pretty sure those were downloading the font pack from microsoft site and then installing them, which was explicitly allowed in the eula. They weren't bundling, which was not allowed. microsoft just didn't like it and threw a fit.

Huh?

[CrAlt]

Ive never noticed a difference from Firefox on my OSX machine and Firefox on my linux laptop. What sites are really using MS only fonts?

Re:Huh?

[CastrTroy]

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?

[VGPowerlord]

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).

Re:Huh?

[shutdown -p now]

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!

Eww, I wish that license would expire

[_merlin]

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?

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Dr Reducto]

Fucking agreed. Going back to Windows with its shitty font renderings is horrible on my eyes. The aliasing and ligatures are all wrong!

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[BlueCollarCamel]

Stylesheets. Consider them as "recommended display" by the webmaster. You can then define the hell out of a page to suit yourself.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Anonymous Coward]

Use your own CSS file.

Oh, it's practical all right.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Kalriath]

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.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[datapharmer]

no. while customization should be possible based on the underlying code the default should look the same no matter what. If everything was great with HTML displaying things however a browser wanted at some random resolution there would have been no reason for creating XML. The whole point of standards and having an Acid 2 Test is to make sure that no matter what platform, no matter browser you use things look the same by default. This is important because it changes line-breaks, overlays, and a number of other things which could be major concerns when it comes to things like electronic banking. I don't want my bank account to look like it was written in "kid script" or even worse hide a negative sign or lose several zeros due to a forced line-break or substituted font with no equivalent character.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[RedSteve]

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 doesn't mean that someone else's web design will look any better with your choice of font substituted for the designer's.

But as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Feel free to substitute away with a user style sheet.

(and for the record, I have no love for microsoft typefaces. Comic Sans may be one of the most abominable typefaces ever foisted on humanity.)

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[catwh0re]

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:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Mr. Slippery]

This is important because it changes line-breaks, overlays, and a number of other things...I don't want my bank account to look like it was written in "kid script" or even worse hide a negative sign or lose several zeros due to a forced line-break or substituted font with no equivalent character.

If a bank's website - any website, really - is dependant on the presense of certain fonts or the use of certain font sizes in order to be useful, the designer needs to be take out and severely beaten.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Anonymous Coward]

I love watching slashdotters talk about fonts since it's clear they don't know much.

It's a font called Grotesque

Grotesques are an entire class of fonts. It's not a single font. Perhaps you're thinking of Akzidenz Grotesk.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Joebert]

"Clear Type" whatchamacallit is turned off on anything Windows I have to look at for more than a few minutes, messes with my eyes too.

Maybe it's just for people who wear glasses & see blurry anyway.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Anonymous Coward]

Times New Roman is a standard publishing font. Screenplays are written in that font. Some fonts aren't designed to be attractive just legible.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[NMerriam]

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 agreement expired, indeed it would save me the hassle of telling Safari and Firefox to substitute decent fonts for Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Alien Being]

Get the fuck off my Internet or I'll throw a fucking chair at you.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[ShaggyIan]

It works on certain displays. Especially on some older notebook LCD's, it drives me nuts until I turn it on.

I've found that if characters look really blocky and broken up on your display, turning ClearType on helps. Otherwise, no need for it. Most recent displays seem fine without it.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Anonymous Coward]

This is important because it changes line-breaks

Haha. Hahahaha. No.

You seem to have severely misunderstood what HTML was designed for. There ARE document formats that work like that... PDF/PS/XPS, for example. Even PNG/GIF in a pinch. But not HTML. Anyone who heavily relies on explicit line breaks (or expect line breaks to occur in the same place, regardless of whether it's being rendered on a mobile phone or a 30" display) is rightly considered a halfwit. Font sizes change (some mobile phones are VERY tight on ROM/RAM... do less well-off people really want to pay for the storage of more than the bare minimum of fonts?). Screen sizes change. This is as it should be.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[forkazoo]

If a bank's website - any website, really - is dependant on the presense of certain fonts or the use of certain font sizes in order to be useful, the designer needs to be take out and severely beaten.

I Agree! But, I think that when you say "severely," that word needs to be in 24 point bold italic print in order to get the point across more precisely.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[JeremyBanks]

Why don't you just removed the fonts from your computer, then?

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Joebert]

More like "crackhead bait"...

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[CrackedButter]

And we need to illegally download the cash as well from the bank right?

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason why you wrote that anonymously(i ticked the box for the irony).. It's mostly to do with how wrong you are.(And you had feelings you might be too.) Originally Arial was built from a FONT, today Arial is a TYPEFACE (i.e a family of fonts - many of which don't look much like the Grotesque font used for the reproduction, such as Arial Black/Arial Rounded and their children.)

Since you clearly don't seem to understand the difference between FONT and TYPEFACE. A font is one set of type (once upon a time it was at one fixed size too.) A typeface is a family of FONTS. All shapes and sizes in a particular style.

So while the specific type number was omitted, the use of the word Font, indicated that only one style was used for the duplication.

For example: You come from a family of Idiots, but you're a wanker all on your own, but don't worry, as no one will be copying you.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Chief Camel Breeder]

"Microsoft have a history of fucking with typefaces to avoid paying licensing fees."

So it's good if a FOSS developer makes an ugly-but-useful clone of something, but bad when MS do it?

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I find that Verdana is actually quite good for headings in documents.

I use Palatino for text and Verdana for headings, and IMHO it looks really good as long as you keep the headings short (as they should be). And Palatino is so much better than TNR for print. It's so much more elegant and readable, it's almost ridiculous.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Anonymous Coward]

A font is one set of type (once upon a time it was at one fixed size too.) This is still true. A "font" is described as the typeface, its size, and the style.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[catwh0re]

no i'm against that too. MS should just know better since they can afford to pay for the typefaces. (Hell they could afford to make new innovative typefaces from scratch.)

On the other hand we have FOSS software (thinking certain ubuntu installations in particular here). They often use two excuses to blatantly copy MS, Apple & others. The first reason: "It's trivially obvious, and we all came to it at the same time." (usually a bullshit excuse, as many of those developers don't seem to think that anything is good unless a major vendor does it first) the other excuse they have is that "they are trying to replicate an environment that consumers are familiar with" which is just a pisstake for half implementing the feature they're copying. What I find troubling with many FOSS dupes, is that they merely copy the eye-candy portion(again usually poorly), but then the backend to that is utter rubbish and a total inefficient hack. So it looks similarish to say Leopard stack's feature, but it's functional portion is severly lacking and grossly inefficient.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at it this way: a typeface is a class, a font is an instance.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[blake3737]

Shouldn't the appearance depend on my preferences?

Depends which version of the web you use. If you use web 1.0, then no, you get what you're given. If you're on web 2.0 then yes, but you have to design and upload the font yourself.

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[Anonymous Coward]

I Agree! But, I think that when you say "severely," that word needs to be in 24 point bold italic print in order to get the point across more precisely. Would that be in Arial or Helvetica?

Re:Eww, I wish that license would expire

[toddestan]

I find it works great on high DPI displays (sadly only seen on some laptops), while generally looking like crap on lower DPI desktop displays.

Nice job "spelling"

[xmark]

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.

Fonts want to be free.

[Adelle]

but you get what you pay for. Helvetica sells for $24.

Re:Fonts want to be free.

[Anonymous Coward]

$18.64 with a coupon from the paper. ...oh sorry, that's a brick of velveeta.

a wild guess

[User 956]

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.

Re:a wild guess

[Dachannien]

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

Today's episode of Slashdot has been brought to you by the letter O.

Re:a wild guess

[thatskinnyguy]

Isn't Goatse the reason why /. started with the site name after links in the first place?

Re:a wild guess

[Farmer Tim]

"Goatse Wingding super font pack"

Every keystroke is a colon. Except the semicolon, and that's bad enough.

Re:a wild guess

[Anonymous Coward]

> > I'm guessing the "Goatse Wingding super font pack" is not on that list.
>
> Today's episode of Slashdot has been brought to you by the letter O.

...and the operator "=".

=0=

Re:a wild guess

[Midnight Thunder]

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

Man, just when I get out of therapy someone has to bring Goatse up again :-/

so what

[bl8n8r]

fonts? Most of the time crappy CSS layouts makes the font face pointless anyway. Use fixed width for everything.

Re:so what

[cdrudge]

Hell yeah. And while we are at it, why don't we get rid of the whole color monitor thing too. We should all just go back to line printer terminals.

Re:so what

[omeomi]

Hell yeah. And while we are at it, why don't we get rid of the whole color monitor thing too. We should all just go back to line printer terminals.

You kids and your fancy newfangled "monitors"! Why, in my day, computer output was on paper! So was the input!

;-)

Re:so what

[that this is not und]

If it doesn't lay out well in Links, it doesn't belong on the Web. If it doesn't deprecate gracefully in Lynx, the page isn't worth loading.

Re:so what

[Anonymous Coward]

If it doesn't deprecate gracefully in Lynx, the page isn't worth loading.

You keep using this word... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:so what

[Anonymous Coward]

He means degrade. Deprecate means to put down, as in "with your poor use of grammar, you deprecate yourself".

You aren't a designer

[_merlin]

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:You aren't a designer

[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 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

[mrchaotica]

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

[gEvil (beta)]

(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:You aren't a designer

[1729]

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 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.

Re:You aren't a designer

[jalefkowit]

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

[Franklin Brauner]

I agree with you 100%, however I still find Verdana to be beautiful. One need not look farther than Emigre's Base 10 font to see that older, retro fonts are not only en vogue, but beautiful in a classic way.
--
Franklin

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

You, like most users, are not a designer, and don't notice the subtle differences

Either that, or he has the core fonts installed on both machines, making your condescension entirely without merit. You do realise that these are just normal TTFs, right? And that some distributions install them by default? The original EXE that Microsoft distributed the fonts in was under a non-revocable license that allowed redistribution.

Re:You aren't a designer

[thePsychologist]

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 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 your imagination is the limit. I've never liked the way most websites choose their fonts anyway. And for Linux, where the only fonts which exist are "Sans", "Monospace", and "Serif" practically speaking, it's best not to let websites use their own fonts, or you might end up seeing some of the terribly fuzzy stuff that are supposedly fonts.

Re:You aren't a designer

[grahamd0]

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 objective statement of fact, and one can make an equally logical argument against it. Indeed, merely being able to say, "I prefer Y" makes a statement of "X is objectively better" somewhat dubious.

I'm really interested in hearing, specifically, what makes arial an unacceptable substitute. In your post, you don't actually give any single reason why arial is so offensive other than it being inexpensive, which, IMHO, is not valid in and of itself unless you're a snob attempting to appeal to other snobs.

I don't meant to imply that you're a snob. I'm sure you have good reasons for making that statement, and I would genuinely like to hear them.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I am a pedant.

I'm a "pedant" too, and I think all web pages look like utter shit. HTML has made a mockery of the art of visual design.

Ariel vs. Helvetica (they are both overused and utterly boring fonts) is the least of my problems.

Monaco is nice though.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Mattintosh]

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.

Re:You aren't a designer

[ortholattice]

In the U.S, fonts are not copyrightable (although there is a movement 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 fonts, for use on Linux. It puzzles me as to why this hasn't been done.

Re:You aren't a designer

[bendodge]

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.

Re:You aren't a designer

[_merlin]

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.

Re:You aren't a designer

[grahamd0]

Fair enough. I'm satisfied.

Re:You aren't a designer

[tobiasly]

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 for a newspaper or something.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Graff]

Actually that's wrong. The x-height is the height of the body of the font, that is the part of the font that DOESN'T include the ascenders and descenders. The point size of a font is the height including ascenders and descenders. IMO you should never use the point size to determine the size of a font, the x-height is much more useful visually. However, most computer typography systems do use point size which is why some fonts usually look much larger or smaller than other fonts of the same point size.

Here's a good discussion on typography and the visual impact of different type styles.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html

Good article about it..

Re:You aren't a designer

[moreati]

you never have to be offended by the sight of Arial again :-)

Surely you mean the site of Arial?

Re:You aren't a designer

[Sycraft-fu]

"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 PPI and it really isn't any higher than what we've had in the past with computers. Even Apple doesn't break this trend. Their monitors are a little higher PPI than most for example their 23" is the same resolution as 24" panels, (at least until they stop buying the 23" IPS panel and go with the new 24" IPS panel that NEC is using) but we are still talking under 100PPI.

So where are the high resolution displays? I don't mean showing me something that is available for a special purpose at a big price, I mean where are the high rez displays on the market now, that a consumer might buy? I sure as hell can't find them, and I don't find that graphics systems are ready to drive them. Even high end graphics consumer cards seem to top out at 2560x1600. You are talking things like the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 (which costs damn near $3000) before you see support for higher resolutions.

While I'll certainly agree that the over all number of pixels on desktop monitors is going up, they are doing it by getting larger, not by getting more pixels per inch. We are still in the same effective PPI range as we were when LCDs first started hitting the desktop.

Re:You aren't a designer

[dhavleak]

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. This is a matter of taste/preference -- and to each their own in that respect. I use Verdana a lot (and Tahoma for UI) on a 24" WUXGA -- I've got decent eyesight, and Verdana/Tahoma give me the option of maximizing real estate. I agree about Courier New bieng ugly, but I don't think Monaco is really an improvement (that taste thing again). In fact I think all fixed-width fonts are butt-ugly and only put up with them for coding purposes.

Btw: here's an interview of Tom Rickner (the guy MS contracted to design Verdana, Arial etc.). Has some interesting nuggets of info in it:
http://www.will-harris.com/msfont-hint.htm

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is what he said?

Re:You aren't a designer

[pla]

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 twice about, they view it as more of a program dependancy to resolve. "This popup says I should use font X... Okay, let's download this 1000 bitstream fonts pack and see if it has it. Nope? Okay, how about 2215 linotype fonts? Ah, that did it."

Re:You aren't a designer

[gEvil (beta)]

As the AC pointed out, that's what I said. Try re-reading my post.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Verdana has outlived its usefulness.

Verdana is readable at low point size (6 points) and has optimal readability around 10pts.

For many purposes it's wonderful, it is still less large than a monospace, it has not 1-l-|-I or 0-O ambiguities, it is clear to read and (on Win) it's cleartype beautifully while other fonts aren't.

The first things I do when I get a new (Win) machine is replace the standard fonts with a combination of Tahoma (where width is important) and Verdana (and set the background to grey instead of stupid-white).

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's almost as if you were just rehashing the same stuff off this page. And considering your blog contains absolutely nothing about design, I'd say you were.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Hijacked Public]

For whatever reason, a lot of people don't notice subtleties (or even non-subtleties) in text layouts and typeface. I blame poor reading skills.

I was thinking about this while driving to the store yesterday. There is a new housing development on the way with signs around their retention pond NO TRESPASSING VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED, set out one word per line on a rectangular sign, no punctuation. Isn't likely what they mean to convey but no one seems to have noticed yet.

Some organization around here has handed out bumper stickers. They are black with yellow text in a bulbous font. The first line reads "It is a poverty that", maybe 1" high letters. Second line "a child must be killed". Third line something I don't remember. The problem is that the font size of the second line is double that of the first and third, so that at normal following distances the only text I can make out is "a child must be killed". This is a private hilarity to me.

Re:You aren't a designer

[pantherace]

Strange, my old monitors seem to have about 133ppi. Perhaps it's partly because Windows looks bad at high resolution, there (unfortunately) isn't much of a demand for them? Of course, it's only recently that LCDs have had anything near a decent response time, and a whole lot of them *still* don't.

Re:You aren't a designer

[nutshell42]

So where are the high resolution displays?

Noone (almost) wants them because apart from spotting the miniscule differences between Arial and Helvetica the main duty of designers is to make sure that fonts on all webpages are illegibly small even at normal dpis.

Years and years ago when developers still ruled the internet before the time of usability-optimized webdesign there was this funny setting in browsers called "font size". If you changed the value the size of the fonts changed.

Completely stupid, only a nerd could want something like that, I know. As everyone knows, larger font sizes should be avoided because they distract the eye from the overall structure of the webpage and lead it to focus on the actual content and no designer wants that. So now we have CSS, the font size setting in browsers is useless on >50% of all pages, you have to work with minimum font sizes which break the layout of the rest.

In short: Until the majority of all computer users has an OS with a resolution independent UI, high dpis are useless because they create more problems (the above isn't only a problem of browsers, I've got a number of apps - .Net apps especially - where the GUI breaks if you change the font size in Windows) than they solve.

Re:You aren't a designer

[TheRaven64]

My Nokia 770 has a 225dpi screen (which looks gorgeous). 150dpi laptop screens are available, but they are uncommon because most desktop environments assume 1pt = 1px[1]. With OS X 10.4, Apple introduced resolution-independent support, but it was disabled by default. This was to allow developers to test their applications with different display resolutions. With 10.5, it should be turned on by default. At this point, Apple is likely to start using 150-200dpi screens on their laptops. Since they are responsible for around 15% of new laptop sales, expect the number of laptops with high resolution screens to increase in the next few years.

[1] Since there are meant to be 72 points per inch, this makes everything slightly too small on common 100dpi screens.

Re:You aren't a designer

[conigs]

Wow, it's almost as if you were just rehashing the same stuff off this page. [ms-studio.com] And considering your blog contains absolutely nothing about design, I'd say you were.

Because heaven forbid someone someone have knowledge and opinions about something that is not on their blog! The motion designer at our office periodically posts to his blog about electronic music. I guess I should tell him he doesn't know anything about design, typography and animation.

Re:You aren't a designer

[James_Duncan8181]

Lenovo T61p. 15 inch screen, 1920x1200.

Lenovo x61t. 12 inch screen, 1450x1024.

It's coming.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's truly as passionate about typography as he makes himself out to be, don't you think he might mention something about it once in a while? I guarantee you he couldn't tell you the differences between Monotype's cut of Garamond and Adobe's (and there are quite a few). Yet he paints himself as an expert on the differences between Helvetica and Arial (which coincidentally are well documented around the net). Not to mention that his listing is nearly verbatim from the most popular of those sites.

Re:You aren't a designer

[stewbacca]

Not funny. Not even a chuckle. Flat out stupid. Would you find it funny if someone posted a mock article about your profession, then proceeded to get everything wrong based on perceptions and stereotypes, all in the name of humor? The first tenant of humor is that it is steeped in just a wee bit of truth, and this one falls flat because it shows the author is biased against "artsy fartsy" (my emphasis) people. He probably likes to mock wine-tasting and cigar afficianados too, since they seem to be the same disingenious types who care about seemingly unimportant minutiae.

I for one am quite tired of the lack of understanding people have of the importance of proper print standards. The Onion is only furthering stupid stereotypes with a low-brow attempt to be cute. The author most likely had a bad encounter with the typesetting shop one day and is taking it out on them ;-)

I once read that the print/publishing industry (at the time, 10 years ago maybe) was the third largest industry in the world, yet people carry on as if it were a throwback. I also recall the printing press being one of the most important inventions of all time. Thank you, Windows 95, for letting everyone NOT in the industry think they are professional designers and that the print industry is dead.

Re:You aren't a designer

[dbzero]

I wish there were a heavier version of Monaco that I could use for my terminal.app. If you increase the Monaco's size it actually gets harder to see; at least for me with my aging eyes.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I am a pedant^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Mac fag.

There. Fixed that for you.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm a "pedant" too, and I think all web pages look like utter shit. HTML has made a mockery of the art of visual design.

Good! If you're a pedant, you surely know that HTML was never originally intended to handle visual design.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Yvan256]

And, yes, I know what to look for to tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica.

Me too! Arial begins with "A" and Helvetica begins with "H".

Re:You aren't a designer

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

IIRC, Typefaces (the collections of glyphs) aren't copyrightable, but vector fonts (the computer files that describe the typefaces) are.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... couldn't you just rename Arial to something else (in case you need it later), duplicate Helvetica, and rename the copy Arial (you might have to clear the font cache afterward)?

I haven't actually tried this, but it should work.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Inconsolata for coding purposes for a while, and think that it's just beautiful (also both free and Free).

Your mileage may vary, of course.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

Scratch that -- it doesn't look too good in Terminal.app. It's great for use in code editors, though (I use it in TextMate).

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes that is true, but Sonoran Sans was created as a Helvetica knockoff. Adobe was charging huge licencing fees for their proprietary format and everyone was cloning Helvetica, the most prolific typeface out there.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad Adobe has nothing to do with Helvetica. (The standard cut of Helvetica belongs to Linotype.)

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Linotype owned Helvetica, but Adobe had a lock on the digital version with Postscript. They got the licence from Helvetica to produce its postscipt file. When other companies wanted the quality Type 1 postscript files, they had to go to Adobe. They didn't like that and made cheap knockoffs.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the version of Arial that's everywhere is the TrueType version (the PostScript one from Monotype costs the same as a PostScript version of Helvetica from Linotype), your little theory falls apart.

Re:You aren't a designer

[Graff]

Bleh sorry about that. Dunno how I misread that to think you were saying the x-height included the ascenders and descenders. Ahh well, thanks for pointing that out.

Re:You aren't a designer

[jubei]

For the benefit of the math impared, I will mention that these screens work out to about 150dpi.

One of Apple's worst decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

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:One of Apple's worst decisions

[deadmantyping]

I wonder if Calibri and Cambria are listed under this agreement. If so I would put those in the "not crap" category, I happen to like Calibri alot and use it extensively, I realize that its similar to Lucida Sans.

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

They all look like crap - bring back 8pt Topaz!

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[moosesocks]

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, and Consolas 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:One of Apple's worst decisions

[Qbertino]

I'm a Webdesigner and I actually like Trebuchet. ... Does that make me a follower of the antichrist?

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[stewbacca]

GREAT POST! Too bad it will go over the heads of about everyone on slashdot.

Just out of curiosity...do I have all these fonts on my Mac because I have Office installed? Otherwise, why would Apple pay for a bunch of fonts that are already on my Mac? And I have to take back my Verdana comment earlier in this thread...Comic Sans is quite possibly the most mind-numbingly offensive assault of my senses I've ever experienced. I'd prefer to watch the edited-for-tv version of Showgirls on a repetitive loop than read another e-mail signature block and (not funny) quotation written in Comic Sans.

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[rho]

Oh, I dunno. What would the lolcats be without Impact? 1/3 less funny, I think.

It is too bad that we can't have nice things on the Web, but we could have if the foundries had cut licensing requirements to the bone on the appropriate fonts.

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It does.

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[Orwells]

Georgia and Verdana are very unlike any of the other fonts you listed there. Both were designed specifically to be legible on a low resolution monitor and are not intended for the printed page. For example, Georgia and Verdana have much larger x-heights than the other fonts, along with thicker stroke widths, more spacing between letters and words, and wider characters. Georgia and Verdana are great fonts for their intended purpose. The other MS fonts, I agree, are cheap knock-offs.

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Verdana is just Geneva with a very slightly wider spacing (a few pixels' worth over an entire sentence). Neither one is particularly easier or harder to read than the other, and the characters look nearly identical at relatively small sizes.

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Consolas is pretty decent. I don't know why they're comparing it to Proggy Clean, though. It's hideous and makes my eyes hurt trying to read it in the screenshot of actual code; it makes Courier New look pretty. I still have a soft spot for 9-point Monaco, although comparing it on OS X and XP, it looks kind of weird on Windows.

Re:One of Apple's worst decisions

[Orwells]

Actually, Verdana has nothing to do with Geneva. Here's some additional info. about Verdana (and Tahoma, in that Tahoma was once named "Verdana Narrow"): http://www.microsoft.com/typography/css/gallery/sp ec1.htm Microsoft's new Verdana typeface family consists of four TrueType fonts created specifically to address the challenges of on-screen display. Designed by world renowned type designer Matthew Carter, and hand-hinted by leading hinting expert, Monotype's Tom Rickner, these sans serif fonts are unique examples of type design for the computer screen. The Design of Verdana In its proportions and stroke weight, the Verdana family resembles sans serifs such as Frutiger, and Johnston's typeface for the London Underground. But to label Verdana a humanist face is to ignore the successful fusion of form and function Carter has achieved. This isn't merely a revival of classical elegance and savoir faire; this is type designed for the medium of screen. The Verdana fonts are stripped of features redundant when applied to the screen. They exhibit new characteristics, derived from the pixel rather than the pen, the brush or the chisel. The balance between straight, curve and diagonal has been meticulously tuned to ensure that the pixel patterns at small sizes are pleasing, clear and legible. Commonly confused characters, such as the lowercase i j l, the upercase I J L and the number 1, have been carefully drawn for maximum individuality - an important characteristic of fonts designed for on-screen use. And the various weights have been designed to create sufficient contrast from one another ensuring, for example, that the bold font is heavy enough even at sizes as small as 8 ppem. Another reason for the legibility of these fonts on the screen is their generous width and spacing. At low resolutions, because of the limited number of pixels, letters cannot differ very much. But often the smallest differences can often change the whole look of a page, or a screenful of type

See the difference

[QuantumG]

Here's a little page I whipped up with the different fonts 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

[Zarel]

Here's a little page I whipped up with the different fonts 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:See the difference

[Petrushka]

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:See the difference

[Jarjarthejedi]

Man...the Apple one looks nice...if that's the result of not renewing a license I hope Microsoft 'forgets' to renew :P.

Re:See the difference

[kcbanner]

Mod this up!

Re:See the difference

[QuantumG]

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

Re:See the difference

[digitalchinky]

Your 'Linux' font doesn't look anything like mine - in fact it looks exactly like what I get on Vista. The one beneath for 'windows' is identical to what mine looks like in Ubuntu.

Re:See the difference

[CaptDeuce]

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.

Re:See the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

My Safari looks nothing like that. Are you sure the default fonts were selected?

Re:See the difference

[sqrt(2)]

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:See the difference

[Carlinya]

I love your Linux Firefox font. What is it, if you don't mind me asking?

Arial and Helvetica are pretty good fonts, but serif fonts now tend to make my eyes bleed.

Re:See the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of HTML was to make publishing and retrieving documents easy. The whole point of CSS was to separate content from presentation.

Re:See the difference

[kotj.mf]

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.

Re:See the difference

[RealGrouchy]

He states on the page (perhaps after you wrote your comment) that Windows did not have ClearType on, presumably because ClearType is not on by default. That's not exactly unfair to windows.

If you show up to a race with your tires deflated, it's not the judges' fault you lose.

- RG>

Re:See the difference

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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:See the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

"...really unfair to Windows."

Where does one begin?

Re:See the difference

[Foresto]

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:See the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on your version of Windows. XP IE6 Off by default, IE7 on by default. Of course your computer manufacturer may also enable it by default.

This will, however, make no difference, as the truthiness is that Windows is always bad.

Re:See the difference

[twitter]

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.

Re:See the difference

[sqrt(2)]

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 clear enough that it doesn't bug me.

I look over at my windows machine and still wish I could get things to work exactly the same across both, but at least I've found a solution that is acceptable.

Re:See the difference

[Zarel]

I'm not sure, but I remember ClearType being on by default in as early as Windows XP (I remember having to turn it off because I hated anti-aliasing, since it made stuff too blurry). Either way, ClearType is definitely enabled by default with Vista, and we are comparing the latest technology (regardless of our opinion of that latest technology).

Re:See the difference

[Markos]

On the Ubuntu forums, there is a post with a fonts.conf for freetype that sets the fonts exactly the same as on Windows regarding the aliasing.

I'm on a CRT here and I can't stand the small fuzzy fonts that all linux distros default to these days, and setting anti-alias min/max isn't enough, it was still pretty bad, although it helped.

Search the forums, you won't regret it.

Re:See the difference

[TheThiefMaster]

No, it's not the only kind of font anti-aliasing windows has, it has "standard" anti-aliasing too.

My guess is that you either have a BGR (reversed) TFT, or a crt. Cleartype is set up for RGB TFTs by default, and can be set up for BGR TFTs, but it doesn't work on a CRT (and it's not supposed to either).

Re:See the difference

[jawtheshark]

Actually, there are three modes: the box before "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" is unchecked. In that case nothing at all is done. The second is "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" and the method "Standard" is selected. Finally the third is "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" and the method "ClearType" is selected.

By default, it is the second possibility two that is chosen.

Re:See the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

They look like shit to me,

"Shit", as opposed to the "shit" fonts that ship with Leenucks?

Until recently, the rest of us didn't have a choice when we buy a computer from most major vendors.

Wow, you didn't actually say anything here.

My wife did not like them either.

Look everybody, twitter's "wife" didn't like them. Maybe you're doing the GNU/HardSell with too much enthusiasm, and she's become GNU/Intoxicated with the "M$ Windoze shit fuck rape shit fuck Windoze M$ shit fuck rape shit" party line.

BTW, I seriously doubt you have a wife. I doubt there is a human being capable of putting up with a fucked up schizo liar like you.

Re:See the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

You insensitive clod, I still have a CRT!

Seriously, I've always found that CRTs look better with ClearType off. I find every font on the sample screen ahrder to read than the Windows examples.

Re:See the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed the same thing. Arial renders perfectly, but verdana and Ms Sans get little smudges on the some of the numbers.

I hate it that everyone moves to sub-pixel rendering and anti-aliasing as a solution. It looks like crap to me. There must be a better way.

Re:See the difference

[KozmoStevnNaut]

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v291/KozmoNaut/? action=view&current=desktop2007-04-14.jpg
(Please excuse the huge screenshot... I took it mostly to brag about my humongous amounts of desktop space)

This is the way my fonts are set up right now. Bitstream Vera Sans 8pt with AA and subpixel hinting at 96dpi. I've never seen a single OSX or Windows screenshot with fonts this nice (provided you use an RGB pixel LCD monitor, of course).

The terminal font is Terminus 9pt, btw. I like it even more than the standard X Fixed font. Irssi is extremely easy on the eyes and it's slightly thinner than Fixed so you'll be able to fit a few more columns in each term ;-)

I still use Helvetica for file names in Konqueror. I don't know why, it just feels right somehow.

Re:See the difference

[stewbacca]

This whole conversation explains EVERYTHING wrong with ClearType (well, and Microsoft in general). First of all, the original post is accused of not "turning it on", then other posts complain about the jaggies and the rainbows unless ClearType is properly tweaked. Why do you people tolerate this junk?

Re:See the difference

[dargaud]

A quick look at your page shows why I'm still stuck with Windows: font aliasing (or whatever it's called) is truly horrible to read. My eyes keep trying to focus on it, and they can't because of the blury sub-aliasing. How can anyone want to read blurry text instead of some font optimised for the pixel size ?!?

It was the main reason why I ditched my mac in late 2000, and why I use Linux through X on a Windows machine. Why, why, why can't you get a proper, readable font in those 2 OSes ?!? Aliases fonts are good for graphic work when you need to manipulate them as bitmaps without aliasing problems, they are not meant for reading. I've looked all around, asked on forums, etc, but if you disable font aliasing in those OSes, the display is even more horrible.

Note: I'm not trolling and I really want to know.

Re:See the difference

[russotto]

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

Yep, pretty much the same as I do. It ain't a Mac but it's better than those crap free fonts which are included and look like blocky and misshapen messes. Ubuntu has had the interpreter enabled since at least 6.10, too. I guess Apple's lawyers can't figure out who to sue, the distributor being out of the country and Apple being not stupid enough to sue the end users.

Re:See the difference

[Wyzard]

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 options are ClearType or no AA at all.

Microsoft has a "ClearType Tuner" program that you can use to adjust how the ClearType font rasterizer works. I haven't used it, but it probably has a "contrast" slider for adjusting the amount of coloration used. Turn that down to zero, and you'll get what the "standard" AA ought to be, smoothed at all sizes but without the LCD-specific coloration trick.

Re:See the difference

[toddestan]

Seriously, I've always found that CRTs look better with ClearType off. I find every font on the sample screen ahrder to read than the Windows examples.

Cleartype works by subpixel rendering, in other words treating each red, green, and blue elements of each pixel seperately to render the fonts. Cleartype assumes that the elements in each pixel are arranged like how LCDs arrange them, which is the reason why it looks terrible on CRTs since they arrange the elements differently. Though you can get away with it on (some) Trinitrons because they arrange their pixels more like an LCD.

Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[NoMaster]

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?

[Dr. Cody]

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.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[Anonymous Coward]

in the 1990, perhaps
but the advancement in the web standard like CSS are about providing the flexibility of print design to the web

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[foniksonik]

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, always has been always will be (hopefully).

There are times when information presented out of context becomes less successful at communication. 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.

A fast car is still a fast car (but not as fast) with an ugly non-aerodynamic body style... but it will never feel as fast (or be as fast) as a fast car with a sporty and aerodynamic body style.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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 can reverse the change.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[SanityInAnarchy]

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 you can ensure they're expressed in exactly 12-point Verdana (in purple!), or whatever your font fetish is.</sarcastic>

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[Billly Gates]

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:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[suv4x4]

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:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[fermion]

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.

What is even more sad is that CSS2 is provided for those who want exact placement, but developer still insist on using the table hack. Likewise, few project have a well documented stylesheets, generally just adding tags as developers find the need.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[garyboodhoo]

simply not true. Helvetica Bold Expanded and Helvetica Light Condensed are different fonts but same typeface. Significantly different appearance. That ship hasn't sailed at all. Design isn't random, its as specific as engineering in its way. We wouldn't confuse a class with an instance of that class would we?

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[Zixia]

OTOH if you would like to see and experience the website the way the designer intended ...

I wouldn't call anyone who used Comic Sans a designer.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[Anonymous Coward]

customize your experience

The web is not a goddamn "experience"! Go die of AIDS, you shitty little fucking fag.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[stewbacca]

It isn't about content vs presentation. The same content presented in a professional manner will ALWAYS be more effective than content presented in an amatuerish manner. The problem is that there are far too many hacks who think they are good designers when their presentation skills frankly suck. This is also why good firms separate their content creators from their designers. They are two separate skills that very few people have.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[jez9999]

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

I don't buy this. (X)HTML w/ CSS already does a pretty good job of separating content from presentation. However... you're still, um, specifying presentaton. Guess what? The presentation part (CSS) is where you specify font info. Here's an example line from my site's CSS:

BODY.fancy { font-family:"Arial", sans-serif; }

Why is it I shouldn't be able to say what font, or what kind of font, I'd like my content to be displayed in, again?

Now, speaking with my user hat on:
Why is it the site designer shouldn't be able to say what font, or what kind of font, they'd like their content to be displayed in, again? I WANT them to do this so their site doesn't look like shit.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[foniksonik]

Hmmm I don't recall those tags being a part of the html spec... and honestly it's still more like a robot speaking in a monotone voice with an lcd screen in front telling me that it's being skeptical, serious or sarcastic.

Design doesn't need writing to convey mood. Just color and composition.

If I were a typographer though I would be severely insulted by your insinuation that typefaces don't make a difference.

Here's my best attempt to humor you though... ironically enough I only have markup and /. CSS to design with.

1. skeptical

seriously

• Sarcastic

• So much for conveying mood with markup

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[foniksonik]

There were many great uses of Comic Sans before it became synonymous with lack of imagination.

Here's a great example of it being used properly

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[poot_rootbeer]

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...

SSSH. Don't encourage them.

("Them" being former print designers who can't conceive of the web as a different medium...)

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[SanityInAnarchy]

They don't have to be part of the html spec. In fact, more than one browser does allow you to send an XML document with an XSLT stylesheet for converting to HTML, so we could invent a new spec which allows them. Or we could just use class names and apply CSS to those.

Design doesn't need writing to convey mood, and writing doesn't need design. I have no opposition to a bit of style -- simple colors, bold, italic, etc... But when you start insisting on typefaces, let alone exact fonts, it's over the top.

Also, there have been plenty of books written with no more typeface control than the occasional italics. Most books I could call good or bad, but certainly not a robotic monotone. (Although some are, deliberately, a robotic monotone -- Slaughterhouse 5, for one -- but that's unusual.)

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[prockcore]

Actually, it's being used improperly there. Penny Arcade draws their comic in photoshop (not illustrator), and as a result, they draw their comic and lay out the type at 100x scale. Then they use photoshop to shrink it down. As a result, the hinting for comic sans is completely wrong for the point size.

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[foniksonik]

Novels are all about letting the user interpret he prose, in fact they rely upon it.

The web is not a distribution channel for prose however at least not in it's entirety. Attention spans are way too short for using words to communicate on the web. It has to be done with visuals and media... for 99% of the people out there who really don't know what they are looking for and need someone to identify what is important. They simply won't take the time to read a lengthy document unless they have first been captivated by a first impression that grabs their interest.

Ad people, marketing people and designers with experience know this, it's statistical fact.

FYI, bold brightly color text may not be appealing to you but it does grab your attention (though with a negative impact) and is typically targeted at a low income demographic (think coupon mailers or 'on sale, 30% off' signs for reference).

Re:Whatever happened to content vs presentation?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Novels are all about letting the user interpret he prose, in fact they rely upon it.

Novels are also about expression. They are about expressing a setting, a mood, a philosophy, or a character -- or any number of other things. And certainly, most novels are intended to be interpreted in more or less the same way -- 1984 is meant to make us fear a totalitarian government, and take steps to prevent one. Neuromancer and Snow Crash show us what a high-tech future might look like. And so on.

And there are novels which are never interpreted the same way, and are perhaps difficult or impossible to interpret at all -- Slaughterhouse Five, for instance.

The web is not a distribution channel for prose however at least not in it's entirety. Attention spans are way too short for using words to communicate on the web.

I suppose it depends what you want to communicate.

For example, Myspace allows people to communicate with colors and music. Many pages instantly scream "I'm a pathetic attention-whoring emo. Friend me! Please?"

But the vast majority of content I actually want to look at is either pure text, or text and pictures (or video, or something). It's not big, bold, orange text, or gentle, flowing fuschia text, or clean, rounded borders with crisp brushed-metal buttons. Those are nice decorations, to be sure, but they are NOT the content.

And if I don't have the particular font you need, or I'm running on a display too small for your borders to look clean and rounded, you should degrade gracefully -- I should still be able to read your prose, or look at your pictures. Otherwise, I'm going somewhere else.

They simply won't take the time to read a lengthy document unless they have first been captivated by a first impression that grabs their interest.

I'm unusual, but a first impression that grabs my interest is a headline that says something interesting. It also helps to have decent grammar (know the difference between its and it's), and in general, to sound like a moron.

FYI, bold brightly color text may not be appealing to you but it does grab your attention (though with a negative impact)

Yes, it does. And especially if it's animated in any way.

But you can have normal-sized black text on a normal white background, and be saying something interesting, and I might actually notice -- for example, look in the lower-right of Slashdot and there's a one-line fortune cookie. You can also have the biggest and best design in the world, but if you start out with "omg lol we rulez", it's just that much more annoying.

And the first time I see a particular animated web ad is always the last, because I adblock it. Getting my attention is good, but forceably and annoyingly grabbing my attention and CPU cycles buys you nothing. Recently I've come across a firm called "ad-trusion", which pretty much sums up my distaste of traditional advertising.

Embrace extend extinguish

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Embrace extend extinguish

[letsgolightning]

Mcrsft wld nvr d tht!

Re:Embrace extend extinguish

[lpangelrob]

As long as I get a chance to randomly receive $250 to $5,000 for each consonant. Bring it on!

Re:Embrace extend extinguish

[Michael Wardle]

We should start using FF Mt, just in case.

Why was the BS perpetuated?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Perhaps, after 6 years, MS realized it had achieved font lock-in?"

That's six years that the FSF and RMS could have came out with their own solution. Instead we have proof that the cathedral model still rules for the most important things.

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

That's slashthinking for you. Just because something is on the internet doesn't mean it's public domain. Besides they aren't "revoking" it to individuals, but giving Apple permission to continue to use them.

Re:Why was the BS perpetuated?

[raylu]

"Perhaps, after 6 years, MS realized it had achieved font lock-in?"
That's six years that the FSF and RMS could have came out with their own solution. Instead we have proof that the cathedral model still rules for the most important things.

A solution to what? The font problem? There was no problem after a standard was defined, and MS did that already.

Unless you mean the problem to lock-in. In which case...

"It seems to me, if you give something out, then its out, and not yours to later revoke."
That's slashthinking for you. Just because something is on the internet doesn't mean it's public domain. Besides they aren't "revoking" it to individuals, but giving Apple permission to continue to use them.

While we are well aware it's not public domain, the argument here is that it should be. Damn, do we need to be as explicit as lawyers here?

From what I can tell (not that I've looked into this at all), MS said that these fonts would be safe to use on the web because everyone would have them. In other words, it would be a standard. In that sense, they are definitely to blame for revoking it (or, as you would like to put it, defining-it-as-a-standard-and-then-charging-for-th e-use-of).

Re:Why was the BS perpetuated?

[Anonymous Coward]

"While we are well aware it's not public domain, the argument here is that it should be. Damn, do we need to be as explicit as lawyers here?"

"But it's NOT Theft! It's copyright infringement." You were saying?

"From what I can tell (not that I've looked into this at all), MS said that these fonts would be safe to use on the web because everyone would have them. In other words, it would be a standard."

No, it would be a defacto-standard. Not to be confused with a "standards body" standard.

"In that sense, they are definitely to blame for revoking it (or, as you would like to put it, defining-it-as-a-standard-and-then-charging-for-th e-use-of)."

Well first of all, revoking Apple license doesn't mean they're charging anyone. Apple just can't use their fonts anymore.

And even if money crossed hands? All that means is that they were never free to begin with, and all slashdot is engaging in is wishful thinking.

Re:Why was the BS perpetuated?

[dfghjk]

"While we are well aware it's not public domain, the argument here is that it should be."

I don't see how you got that from what was posted. It wasn't your comment either.

"Damn, do we need to be as explicit as lawyers here?"

No, it's just plain English. You do need to have basic reading comprehension skills hoewever.

Re:Why was the BS perpetuated?

[raylu]

"While we are well aware it's not public domain, the argument here is that it should be."
I don't see how you got that from what was posted. It wasn't your comment either.

The article made it sound like MS defined it as a standard. This means that everyone should have free access to it, no?
It wasn't my comment...so?

No, it's just plain English. You do need to have basic reading comprehension skills hoewever [sic].

What is "it?" By being vague with words like "it" and "the problem," I feel there is really no way to respond to you here. I've explained the argument already: standards should be for everyone; otherwise they're not standards. This is called implication. It may also be categorized as logic. You can call it "slashthinking" if you want, just like you can call me illiterate, but it is you that are the fool.

Very funny you guys

[suv4x4]

"Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended"

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

Re:Very funny you guys

[atrocious cowpat]

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)

Rather good and concise explanation of the different strategies of font-rendering.

Re:Very funny you guys

[shutdown -p now]

The problem is that Microsoft has now also decided to not respect the pixel grid: that's how font smoothing works in WPF applications! The result is that small text is those is very blurred & ugly, but apparently, MS is now trying to convince the early adopters that it's actually better!

Read more about it.

Re:Very funny you guys

[TheRaven64]

Interesting read, but I am a bit confused by the fontfocus article. The algorithm described there for nudging glyphs so that they were positioned on a pixel boundary was present in the Display PostScript implementation on the original NeXT machines. It wasn't used specifically for fonts; any line that was drawn slightly offset from a pixel boundary was nudged onto the pixel, giving a very crisp look to the GUI.

The one drawback I can see with this approach is that you are going to mess up kerning. Even if you use something like error diffusion to maintain the average grey density (which it appears they do), you are going to get kerning artefacts (which they do).

INFO: TrueType core fonts for the Web

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to risk inserting some signal into a Slashdot discussion. Please don't hate me. ;)

The fonts are freely available and distributable within the limits that they are not altered or charged for.

Here's the EULA
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/eula. htm
Here's the FAQ
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq8.htm
Here's the fonts
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=34153
Here's the Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_We b

You may now return to bitching about how Verdana or CSS or Microsoft raped your childhood.

Re:INFO: TrueType core fonts for the Web

[MrNaz]

How dare you sully this fine web forum with your facts?!

Re:INFO: TrueType core fonts for the Web

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you sully this fine web forum with your facts?!

Have no fear my friend -- I posted it AC. Pure content is never modded up.

Re:INFO: TrueType core fonts for the Web

[MrNaz]

So the Anonymous gang reported on by Fox news are not only hackers and life destroyers, now they're posting content on Slashdot! And here we thought we were safe.

RAWR!

[ShamrawkNRoll88]

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!

Re:RAWR!

[Remusti]

Liberation Fonts ftw?

If it wasn't for the licence debate that is..

Will the Linux sellouts be next?

[bogaboga]

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.

Re:Will the Linux sellouts be next?

[Enderandrew]

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.

Re:Will the Linux sellouts be next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if, by "wanting", you mean "isn't exactly the same as Windows", or "when I disable anti-aliasing and use unhinted fonts, the fonts look like they've not been hinted".

On an LCD display with subpixel rendering enabled, or a high-res CRT with greyscale AA enabled, Linux fonts are usually fine. The font renderers work the exact same way that Mac OS X works, with one exception. FreeType's auto hinter produces a result that's somewhere between Apple's (antialiased, but slightly fuzzy fonts), and Microsoft's (hammer everything strictly onto the pixel grid, even if it destroys the look of the font), and looks fine when used with the common Linux fonts, or with Apple's OS X fonts. It looks absolutely horrible if you use Microsoft's fonts, since they were all designed for monochrome hinted display, with the newer ones being designed for Microsoft's ClearType renderer. They all look hideous on Mac OS X, or on Linux (unless you enable the bytecode hinter, and disable all anti-aliasing, in which case it looks identical to Windows without ClearType).

The only reason to use Microsoft's fonts is to get a font of a similar style, which has compatible glyph metrics. In which case, you may as well use RedHat's Liberation Fonts.

Helvetica scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading this post I think I finally understand the fundamental origin of the Helvetica scenario. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY7XH2ulTEU&eurl=ht tp%3A%2F%2Fwww.eyebeam.org%2Freblog%2Farchives%2F2 006%2F08%2Fyoutube_the_helvetica_scenario_1.html

You aren't a small handheld device.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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:You aren't a small handheld device.

[Yoozer]

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.

A question to the world:

[pizzach]

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:

[grahamd0]

Yes. As I've said before, both OSes are terrible in their own way.

Re:A question to the world:

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could use Safari on Windows and just have a really bad headache all the time!

Re:A question to the world:

[stewbacca]

Nope. I just see really bad jaggies in Windows, and nice, smooth, high-quality fonts in OS X. The differences are exacerbated when running Widows side-by-side in a virtual machine on Intel Macs. To kill this argument, one simply needs to run the two OSes side-by-side. If you still side with the Windows font implementation, then good on ya. Good luck in life, but please stay out of the design business.

I hear the "blurry" comment all the time, but I just dont' get it. I just have to ask, do others with perfect vision, like myself, have no problem with OS X fonts? Maybe it is blurry for people who wear glasses, or have astigmatism or other problems? If OS X is so "blurry", then why do all my friends and family who have never seen a Mac before immediately comment about the great quality of the text? I think the answer is in your post: people who are used to ugly, jagged fonts really have a hard time cueing in on what makes OS X fonts so much nicer.

Re:A question to the world:

[Heian-794]

The first thing you have to know about Microsoft's and Apple's attempts at clearer type is that Windows ClearType breaks each pixel into three sub-pixels sitting side by side, and thus only uses the horizontal axis, whereas Apple softens the sharp lines both horizontally and vertically.

This means that at large sizes, where you might not even be able to discern individual pixels all that well, OSX font smoothing looks great. It smooths things all the way around rather than in just one direction.

Remember, though, that pixels consist (in general) of red, green, and blue side-by-side (left, center, and right). You can't break a pixel into top, center, and bottom sub-pixels unless you rotate your screen 90 degrees..

At small sizes, though, Windows' system assures that the height of characters is a fixed, integral number of pixels. Unlike with OSX, in horizontal lines a line of black pixels will definitely be present. The middles of the letters B and E at an 8-pixel-high font size, for example, will probably have (vertically from the top) black, white, white, black, white, white, white, black. (Forget serifs for now.) The Mac will attempt to "smooth" those lines out even though there's not much space in which to do it (since you can't break a pixel vertically). Thus you get horizontal lines that become halftone grays as the renderer battles bravely to get "smooth" lines without regard for the increased difficulty of vertical smoothing.

Apple doesn't seem to expect people to attempt smooth fonts at sizes below about 9 or 10, if you look at the System Preferences. Windows will smooth them out for you at any size.

I find myself wishing for Windows-style ClearType at small sizes, and on the Mac I end up simply viewing the Web and word processing documents at immense font sizes rather than strain my eyes on the gray blurs. That's fine in these days when 1024x768 has become a small screen resolution, but it is a waste of resolution. I'd rather fit a lot more on that big screen! But I suspect that Apple's system will come out ahead as screen resolutions (both in DPI and in total) increase and we have less and less need to actually see 7-pixel-high text.

Re:A question to the world:

[Idaho]

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 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.

Re:A question to the world:

[russotto]

Part of it may be people who used OS X previously but not recently. Font smoothing has improved considerably since 10.0. It certainly started as a blurry mess which I'd hack to disable, but it's quite readable now above 12 point or so.

Re:A question to the world:

[porcupine8]

I have astigmatism and nearsightedness, and when I go to the eyedoctor they skip the little "stand 20 feet away and tell me which direction these Es are pointing" test because I can't even tell that the big blurry block at the top is an E without my glasses on. But I've never thought the fonts on my Mac look blurry (with vision correction). Ugly Windows fonts drive me CRAZY. Even when I had to use Windows at work (not anymore, thank goodness), I didn't come home and think my Mac fonts were blurry.

Re:A question to the world:

[stewbacca]

Isn't this why OS X gives the user the option to turn off font smoothing for fonts sized 12 and below?

Re:A question to the world:

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of a graphic artist friend of mine. He was applying for a new job and the IT guy told the boss that this new graphic artist would be required to use windows.

My friend (who would not take the job if required to use Windows) agreed to talk to the IT guy to see if they could come to some sort of agreement.

They both went into the meeting with facts ready to hammer it out. The IT guy started it out.

IT Guy: Well as I see it the Mac is just about dead and Microsoft has/is (blah blah blah). I did some research and it seems Windows has some trouble with pagination breaking from what is onscreen with what is printed. But it appears to be related to Postscript.

Graphics Guy: Printing is Postscript. Macs do it right in matching what I see with what I get.

That ended the conversation and he was hired with a brand new Mac on his desk.

One of the appeals of the Mac way back when was the WYSIWYG. So I would contend for my purposes the Mac is better.

Re:A question to the world:

[alanoneil]

As a Mac user with an LCD display, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you. Yes, Apple appears to bias toward font trueness (adding the blurry factor), while Microsoft biases toward pixel-grid alignment (removing differences between fonts at small sizes). But to me at least, the Apple method appears easier to read. When you hammer the shapes of all the letters to fit the up-down grid on screen like MS does, it becomes harder and harder to tell the letters apart. Many times while reading on a Windows computer I've been forced to increase text size just to make my reading speed up to par.

Call me a weirdo mac fanboy with aspirations of artsy snootyness, but as a native speaker/reader/writer of the English language, I believe that typeface rendering should be truer to the font in order to preserve easy legibility. The MS way makes all characters with vertical lines (l, b, i...) appear nearly identical and flat-out destroys inter-character spacing, in the interest of preserving pixel boundaries. This destroys the "gray percentage" of the paragraph and makes it less like natural text that I've grown up reading. Leave the pixel-perfect order for package tracking grids that have to be machine-readable-- my eyes use fuzzy logic, so exploit the anti-aliasing to its fullest!

Good, now...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only we could have the same Java experience.

Monotype Grotesque

[tepples]

It's a font called Grotesque Grotesques are an entire class of fonts. It's not a single font. Perhaps you're thinking of Akzidenz Grotesk. Wikipedia and its citations say Arial was a stretched version of "Monotype Grotesque" published by Monotype. But Helvetica, Univers, and Arial are considered to have been inspired by Akzidenz Grotesk.

Move out of the United States

[tepples]

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:Move out of the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

Move out of the United States and recompile FreeType with support for Apple patents. You can move back once the TrueType hinting patents expire.

No, you have to wait until the period set out in the appropriate statute of limitations has passed, and even that may not help you if you were subjected to a John Doe case in absentia. The rules about that vary by federal circuit.

The bright side is that currently in the USA federal statute limits patent infringement liability to six years between the time of the infringement against a then-valid patent and the filing of a lawsuit.

No, they are not.

[SanityInAnarchy]

They are about even further separating content from presentation.

The idea being, you design your content in HTML, then you use CSS to specify some presentation. Not all of it, you leave some up to the browser, but some, allowing you to tweak things for print vs web vs handheld.

But if you're wanting to design something intended to be printed, HTML is probably not the best thing to use, and certainly not the easiest.

Re:No, they are not.

[Steve001]

SanityInAnarchy wrote:

They are about even further separating content from presentation.

The idea being, you design your content in HTML, then you use CSS to specify some presentation. Not all of it, you leave some up to the browser, but some, allowing you to tweak things for print vs web vs handheld.

But if you're wanting to design something intended to be printed, HTML is probably not the best thing to use, and certainly not the easiest.

I agree. With so many variables out there, using only HTML it's not possible to ensure that what the user sees will match what the creator intended. The best a designer can to is to provide suggestions of what the page should look like and hope that the users will follow those suggestions. Other formats can provide appearance control if needed.

But this also works as an advantage because it makes it possible for a webpage to be displayed legibly on many different devices. To me, a text of a webpage should be able to be displayed on all devices, rather than being designed with only one type of device in mind.

Also, based on comments in this thread, there seem to be many fonts that people dislike, and everyone has their own opinions. But due to the display flexibility of HTML, users can choose fonts that they do like, rather than having to put up with fonts that they dislike.

Re:No, they are not.

[SanityInAnarchy]

With so many variables out there, using only HTML it's not possible to ensure that what the user sees will match what the creator intended.

I'd say, under most circumstances, the creator should give up such anal control over what they intend. I've seen far, far too many websites set to exact pixel constraints, and there's no call for it -- make flexible designs, or your websites will look tiny and stupid on large, high-resolution displays.

(Which isn't to say that you need to let it stretch across the entire window, the way Slashdot does. I kind of like trusting the user that much, but constraining the width of your text does actually make it more readable. Five lines of 80 chars are really much more readable than one line 400 chars across. But you can get this effect much more reliably and flexibly by using em units, and then if the user is aging and wants to zoom the font, they can.)

But if you're making a website, your primary purpose should be delivering content, and that should always be visible. Having a page that loads quickly helps, too. Your secondary purpose is to make the site look good, but if you only design it to look good at 800x600 or 1024x768, it's going to look retarded at 1600x1200 or 320x240. There's nothing wrong with specifying a font in CSS, but comment out that line for a second to see what happens -- if your site completely falls apart, go back to school on making a gracefully-degrading website.

There are exceptions, and there are valid uses for things like PDF. But I don't think there are many times when it's a good idea to constrain so thoroughly, unless you are eventually targetting print media.

JPEGHD, here we come

[freeweed]

Nope, I don't see any similarity with the story a few down about a JPEG replacement. None at all.

Patch solutions worst

[Vexorian]

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...

Liberation fonts...

[nigham]

Why don't we all install liberation fonts and be done with it?

Re:Liberation fonts...

[Trogre]

Because the silly sausages released it under a licence that prohibits any distribution whatsoever.

Re:Liberation fonts...

[stonedcat]

What do you think I'm reading these comments with? ^_^

But seriously, the Average Joe user doesn't even know about alternative fonts.
Half the time he/she doesn't even know there is any relation to fonts and viewing webpages, or hell that fonts even exist outside of MS Word.

Average Joe is font locked by his/her own ignorance.

Re:Liberation fonts...

[moosesocks]

Man.... is it just me, or did Red Hat hire a bunch of ex-soviet propaganda writers to be their marketing department?

I'll have some liberation toast with my freedom fries. Thanks.

Re:Liberation fonts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I don't think so.

The GPL doesn't exist out there somewhere. It's just a boilerplate license. You can license something any way you want. Unless RedHat got the fonts from someone else who licensed them to RedHat under the GPL, my gut reaction is to call BS.

Re:Liberation fonts...

[asc99c]

Weren't liberty cabbage and freedom fries part of the US capitalist propaganda?

Re:Liberation fonts...

[Haeleth]

Why don't we all install liberation fonts and be done with it?

Because they only solve part of the problem. They provide free alternatives to Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New, which is great, but that doesn't help for sites that use popular fonts like Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Comic Sans, etc, let alone the small but growing number of sites that favour the new ClearType fonts that Microsoft is promoting with Vista and Office 2007.

It's great to have more free fonts available, but sadly they only solve one very specific problem, and there's a long way to go before Linux will be able to compete with Windows or OS X typographically without the user having to supply a lot of additional non-free fonts.

Re:Liberation fonts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we all install liberation fonts and be done with it? I installed those fonts to my OS X right after hearing about them but some stuff in website like "No kerning supported yet" really killed whole fun. Forget the screen, what about my laser printer? They look horrible while printing. In fact, I am not some DTP pro or a font purist but even I figured there is something strange looking there.

I hope they already fixed it since I can't find the line mentioning "kerning not supported yet" on the site.

Redhat is not a company in some basement. It is a huge enterprise OS vendor. They should stop acting like they are one and pay to some commercial font company to design some fonts with kerning etc. if they really want to do OSS community a favor.

Re:Liberation fonts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. The browser substituting Comic Sans for Helvetica or some such is not a bad thing in my book.

Can somebody sue Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please be aware its not the fonts what matter or important regarding this font licensing agreement between Microsoft and Apple. It is three patents held by Apple. For more info regarding these patents please read: http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html

It doesn't matter whether you have best of best fonts, to display or print clearly you need a license from Apple which they don't give it to others. This font licensing agreement means, you give me fonts, I give you license for three (3) patents.

Fonts on Microsoft Windows is clear because Microsoft is licensed to implement methods covered by these patents. If Apple, remove the license given to Microsoft, fonts display or print by Microsoft Windows is just blur, not suitable to read. Why not suitable to read is? if you read blur fonts (either on screen or paper) you get eye ache, if you continue to read, in the long run you may damage your vision.

So, how about others? Linux, FreeBSD and all other BSDs, etc. etc.

Because of the patent litigation, other operating system developers do not implement the methods covered by the above patents. Therefore, by default, their font display is blur. So, you call other operating systems are not good. What the other operating system developers do is, they pass to the end user to violate above patents if they want clear display. That is, provided you know how to do it. If don't know how to do it, just continue read blur fonts.

We all know reading blur fonts are harmful. We should not forget, specially, millions of kids & students use open source operating systems. Under the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, millions of such laptops are now under production, to be stuff with Linux operating system. So they all are forced to read blur fonts and potentially damage the vision of these kids in the long run.

By right, by realising the public harm caused by above patents, Apple should withdraw or abandon or put them to public domain and let anybody implements these patents. Sun will rise from other side of world if Apple do it. So we cannot day dream for that.

If you are a individual or an institution based in US, and willing to do a public good, please do seriously consider to sue Apple and explain in the court the public harm caused by above patents and ask the court to advice the US Patent Office to cancel or revoke those patents. (This author reside outside of US)

Re:Can somebody sue Apple?

[jkoke]

I think I speak for the entire /. community when I say.... what?

Re:Can somebody sue Apple?

[Kalriath]

If you are a individual or an institution based in US, and willing to do a public good, please do seriously consider to sue Apple and explain in the court the public harm caused by above patents and ask the court to advice the US Patent Office to cancel or revoke those patents. (This author reside outside of US) My understanding is all I have here, but that's NOT grounds for a lawsuit and any such attempt would fail. Terribly. And likely cost YOU (the plaintiff) thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees (presuming they can protract court cases with annoying gnats as well as IBM can).

Some other terms incompatible with "Microsoft"

[cmacb]

Ethics, honesty, style, humor, etc.

Re:Some other terms incompatible with "Microsoft"

[vimh42]

You listed "ect." as a "term" that is incompatible with Microsoft. I take it you mean that "everything" is. Can't say I disagree.

Re:Some other terms incompatible with "Microsoft"

[_anomaly_]

Weird, I took it as meaning and so on, implying there's a discrete list...

That would not be so horrible, and is available.

[twitter]

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). 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, but Windoze applications work better with them installed so it's worth the time. If you go through all of that trouble you can have the web as M$ intended.

Funny thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just money wasted by apple... Microsoft are selling their fonts back to monotype imaging by the years end, and at that time Apple will have to pay yet another liscensing fee... Though I cannot wait, because maybe monotype will use the deal to strongarm apple into letting them sell new fonts for the iPhone... They are basically drooling at the idea of all these untapped smartphone users unhappy with their basic fonts...

Re:That would not be so horrible, and is available

[Kalriath]

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, 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.

Utterly Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

An "Internet as it was intended" that includes Microsoft fonts is a piece of shit and a waste of time. Let's all get down to Dvorak's blog and check out all the new cool stuff. Some people just don't get it: Microsoft suck hippo testicles. Mod down this entire thread and fire Neal for being so stupid as to post it.

Arial and Helvetica (was Re:You aren't a designer)

[Jon_E]

There's an excellent article here on the Arial/MS font bastardization issue.

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

True Type

[Swift2001]

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 standards, and now, since everybody was using the MS "standard," Apple had to license the fonts that it had developed, together, with MS. If you sometimes, oh Windows lovers, wonder why Mac users seem to have it in for MS, it's composed of little incidents like this. Thousands of incidents like this.

Re:True Type

[TheRaven64]

Microsoft and Apple developed the TrueType format together. The individual fonts had nothing to do with this.

"The Internet as it was intended."

[sakusha]

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.

Re:"The Internet as it was intended."

[suv4x4]

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.

Good job, I love it when a flamebait shouts "a flamebait!"...

What's the point (size)?

[drfuchs]

Five hundred plus years of non-digital typography says you are wrong. Go out and take some measurements from some old books. The formula you give is just something some programmer came up with a few decades ago, that kind of worked most of the time. Next thing you'll be telling us is that a point is exactly 1/72 of an inch...

Re:What's the point (size)?

[gEvil (beta)]

You're correct. In the days of movable type, type was measured based on the size of the entire body which held the character. And a true typographical point is approximately 1/72 of an inch (and also depends on whose system you are using, as there have been a few over the past five or six centuries). 1/72 of an inch was chosen a few decades ago by Adobe when they developed PostScript.

Web intended to look like a print mag, not shit

[gig]

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 some of the worst typefaces every created. Not only are they clones but they are made deliberately too square so as not to tax MS Windows' shitty font rendering. The best thing you can do for your eyes is to remove them from your system immediately. Mac OS X includes much better typefaces that will simply look much better. Once you remove Arial you'll see Helvetica which is the original and in an artfully done implementation.

Re:Web intended to look like a print mag, not shit

[Sycraft-fu]

Where are these 300DPI displays you speak of? I do a quick check, and I don't see them on sale. Currently, far an away the most popular LCDs are 19", both 4:3 and 16:10, 22" 16:10 and 24" 16:10. In all cases you are talking a DPI less than 100. The 24s aren't cheap either, these are "high end" monitors with good panels in them. In fact, when I look at a site like Newegg, I don't see any displays for sale that are in the DPI range you talk about AT ALL. If they aren't available even on the tech sites, they aren't coming to the average home any time soon. The highest DPI LCDs I see anywhere on the consumer market are for laptops, and none of them break 150DPI.

This is all an aside from the problems we run in to driving high resolution displays. 1920x1200@60Hz is right at the limit for single link DVI and by extension current HDMI connections. Then of course there's the issue of the GPU power needed to do 3D at higher resolutions, an 8800, the biggest baddest, hottest, most expensive toy on the block is about maxed for 1920x1200 and for the 30" 2560x1600 beasts you generally have to whack 2 of them together to drive it well in 3D which is expensive, consumes a shitload of power, and is only supported on a limited number of platforms.

So unless you can show me where these 300DPI displays are, I'm calling BS. Currently I see a big deal being made out of just hitting full HD resolution (which requires 1920x1080 on a 16:9 display), and little chatter about going past that.

Re:Web intended to look like a print mag, not shit

[Anonymous Coward]

> The way the Web is intended to look is like the Photoshop designs

No, the web is intended to look like the end user wants, that's why we can scale text, choose our own typefaces and override a sites style definitions. You can't do that in a raster image and only those who don't understand the web (most so-called web designers) would claim such a mockup is representative.

Re:Web intended to look like a print mag, not shit

[IBBoard]

You've never heard of usability and the opportunity for users to change fonts and font sizing to something they can actually read, have you? Or different levels of standards support? Or different devices and applications?

In a 'perfect world' then a web page might render identical to the Photoshop image some designer created that was pixel perfect. In the real world there are too many variables and too many reasons why it shouldn't render pixel perfect in all situations.

Designers need to learn that the web isn't print ;) Also, from one experience I had of a Photoshop image I had to convert to a web page, designers need to understand that IE sucks when it comes to rendering their designs perfectly, and that if it works in one then it won't necessarily work in all.

Re:Web intended to look like a print mag, not shit

[stewbacca]

Excellent points all around. I recently read an article that described Helvetica as the near-perfect font and then discussed the technical merits of why. The article went on further to break down all the problems with the Microsoft implementations (i.e. poor imitation). It even described Verdana as the single worst font (although I'd vote for Courier). I've been in and around the industry for nearly 20 years now, and Microsoft attempts at forcing their font standards has been an offensive insult the entire time. For those who 'think' that Mac OS X fonts are hard to read or look ugly: it is a good thing you all aren't in the visual design industry.

Re:Web intended to look like a print mag, not shit

[Ant P.]

That's nice, except people in the real world don't have 300DPI e-ink screens and the web isn't a fucking printed magazine. Sites created with that assumption either look like shit or don't work whatsoever unless the user has one specific OS with one specific font and one specific browser.

Re:Web intended to look like a print mag, not shit

[Sax Maniac]

I've seen one at a supercomputing expo. IBM was showing the Bertha, a 22" 200 dpi monitor, running a mapping program (this was years before Google Maps). It was really incredible. Icons the size of fleas, and you could see detail with a magnifying glass, that you really couldn't see without it. Got $9K?

Scan them and copy them

[Anonymous Coward]

The fonts are easy, print them, scan them and trace them, the that how come everyone has a version of Palatino, Times Roman, Courier, Futura, Garamond and Helvetica. Only the *names* can't be copied.

But we also need hand tweaking of the faces. The rendered typefaces at small sizes are not good on Linux, on Windows they've been hand tweaked, on Linux the kerning pairs look wrong and some fonts haven't been cleaned up by hand.

Windows Vista Default for Comparison

[Petersko]

A picture of the same information rendered on Windows Vista with default setting is here

I think you'll find it perfectly fine.

Re:Windows Vista Default for Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's thin and ugly. Both linux and Mac use heavier type to compensate for the AA.

Sorry to burst your bubble but anybody with an appreciation for design is going to avoid Vista and it's pukey aero theme. Microsoft have much to fix before the fonts become important.

Re:Windows Vista Default for Comparison

[Suddenly_Dead]

I don't know, but I like it. OS X, and the Windows version of Safari, overdoes the AA a bit. Linux obviously varies (I've seen it do better than either, and far worse).

Re:Windows Vista Default for Comparison

[Petersko]

"No, it's thin and ugly."

Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. In my opinion the one I posted looks substantially better than any of the five shots from the original. Frankly the linux one looks like the kind of typeface one would use to print "Hardy Boys" books. I'm out of junior high - I can handle fonts made for grownups. It looks amateurish.

Re:That would not be so horrible, and is available

[twitter]

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

Holy shit

[Anonymous Coward]

How many dollar signs do I have to use in a post to make me look completely stupid? Answer: Only 'twitter' knows.

Slightly On-Topic

[Evets]

I put together a sample page of fonts for my own design activities.

Web Design Font Families
same thing, but a little bit of javascript to keep things on a single page

I have found that when selecting point sizes directly that there are definite differences in rendering quality between OS's and browsers - what looks fine on one machine can look exceptionally poor on another. I've been meaning to put together a page that showed the differences, but I haven't gotten around to getting a browsercam account.

Not exactly on topic, but maybe someone will find it useful.

Sans and serif, people, not Arial and Times

[zevans]

"allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers. "

And here was thinking the whole point of the Web is that it SHOULD be displayed differently on different computers. On my computer, it's displayed the way -I- like to see it, thank you.

Sadly this site is one of the worst offenders - there's just no sensible way to read it on an HTC size device... yet it's a good old fashioned text-lead forum. How can this be right?

Full Unicode fonts for Windows

[smurfsurf]

The funny thing is, Windows XP does not come with a font that has a decent Unicode glyph range. You need Office for that.

I noticed that when I used some filled/empty diamond shapes and checks in a web application. Now I wonder if I have to replace them with images. But then, they will not scale well with the user's choosen fontsize... Bah.

Re:Full Unicode fonts for Windows

[FLEB]

Just a thought-- give it a try and see if it works, I suppose.

Make the checkboxes and whatnot as images, very high-resolution black-and-white (2-color) images, and put them into the document, rescaled via CSS using ems instead of pixel heights.

Because of windows users?

[closer2it]

Just a thought:

Could this move by Apple be because of more "complains" by an increasing number of (ex)Windows users trying the Mac OS X?

Is it possible?

SDL

The exact terms are unclear

[yosch]

Even on Apple's website, the press release doesn't say precisely which fonts are covered.
It only talks about "the latest version of core Windows fonts" and "popular Windows fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana".

Flaming fonts rendered

[Coolhand2120]

When a self proclaimed vocabulary expert uses an obscure vernacular while talking to his laymen friend to arrogantly show off his language skill, he's missing the point of talking: to communicate an idea.

So to does Apple's font rendering miss the point of rendering a font, it may be technically sound, it represents the target typeface on the screen while maintaining a contiguous high contrast mesh grid thingy, and I'm sure Johannes Gutenberg would be quite impressed. But it's hard to read, and isn't that the whole damn point of reading?

A common set of open fonts for the freedesktop

[yosch]

The dependency on restricted non-modifiable fonts for web and print needs to be reduced....
Every script should have a free as in freedom working implementation.

Thankfully there are efforts underway to create a common open font set for the free desktop:
Check out the growing collection of open fonts released on the Unifont fontguide and the OFL font catalog". The freedesktop wiki lists the beginnings of a common open font set . The page needs updating though as some fonts have been released/freed since the last change.

We now have the community-approved license for fonts: the Open Font License , a growing community of open font designers a community of distribution packagers and a growing toolkit to do font design collaboratively.

Let's see what happens.

I've never had a problem with fonts

[SCHecklerX]

Bitstream Vera Sans displays fine on every page I look at....

How insulting

[hellfire]

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.

I resent your implication here.

Gay men, sheep, and gerbils wouldn't want to have sex with him either, as such statements are equally annoying to all species.

Or are you saying only lesbians don't bother with pedantic distinctions?

Re:How insulting

[Anonymous Coward]

nope he was probably implying that he was not wasting his time on small bs like this! somehow sex is more important to me then the intricacies of typefaces/fonts what ever the phuck they are!
tr

Parallels with religion

[pestie]

Heh... This reminds me of the Jesus freaks here in the US who think that "freedom of religion" means "you're free to be any kind of Christian you like."

Re:Parallels with religion

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of the Jesus freaks here in the US who think that "freedom of religion" means "you're free to be any kind of Christian you like."

"...as long as you agree with us that gays are evil and God hates Palestinians."

Baby Jesus cries when he sees what people do in his name.

Re:That would not be so horrible, and is available

[Anonymous Coward]

So instead of it being merely trivial, you want Microsoft to hand you their property on a fucking plate so you don't have to make any effort? Entitlement issues, much?

And I thought being able to use things cross-platform was a fundamental freedom, not a chore. Which is it?

Verdana

[behindthewall]

An interesting, informative article about Verdana:

http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Verdana.htm

and a comment I made on some previous thread about Verdana:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171165&c id=14256548

I find Verdana by far one of the easiest fonts to read on a screen. I've continued to maintain mis-trust of the world's (and especially the non-MS world's) continuing access to it. Yes, I have the "free font pack" saved off, somewhere, but I can't expect/guarantee other users of my stuff to 1) Have access to it themselves; 2) Be able to and/or willing to install it manually.

Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean on a vt100 terminal using Lynx?

Re:Arial and Helvetica (was Re:You aren't a design

[prockcore]

There's an excellent article here on the Arial/MS font bastardization issue.

That article's main problem with Arial seems to be "it's a helvetica clone". i.e. their issue with Arial more moral than technical.

Just what I needed...

[Anonymous Coward]

A guarantee that typographically illiterate web designers will continue to force their dipshit decisions on me.

Wer R FOSSie Funts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Were r teh FOSSie fonts? Cuz we all no FOSS is teh bom, n M$$$$$$ is teh sux0rzez.

Jes kant unrstadn why teh FOSSie nvr maked teh fontses. FOSS fontses wud be bettar, cuz all FOSS is teh bettar, lik teh lunix!!!!

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

Try telling that to the people who make the GPL. They obviously believe otherwise.

Freedom is easy.

[twitter]

A silly AC taunts:

instead of it being merely trivial, you want Microsoft to hand you their property on a fucking plate so you don't have to make any effort? Entitlement issues, much? ... And I thought being able to use things cross-platform was a fundamental freedom, not a chore. Which is it?

If it was really free it would be a deb and RPM package already. M$ would have to do nothing more than release it and the community would quickly do the rest. It's not free so each and every person who would use these inferior fonts have to crawl through M$'s binary anus. The process is not much easier for Windoze users but they have to live in the anus.

Extraterritoriality?

[tepples]

No, you have to wait until the period set out in the appropriate statute of limitations has passed, and even that may not help you if you were subjected to a John Doe case in absentia. The rules about that vary by federal circuit. Citation needed for U.S. patents restricting actions taken off U.S. soil. Unlike copyrights, patents are not automatically international; they have to be applied for in specific countries or sets of countries.