Slashdot Mirror
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."
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'.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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?
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.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
"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.
Man...the Apple one looks nice...if that's the result of not renewing a license I hope Microsoft 'forgets' to renew :P.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
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!
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
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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."
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.
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.