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

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'.

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?

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: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: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!