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'.

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?

[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!

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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:

[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.

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.

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.

Some other terms incompatible with "Microsoft"

[cmacb]

Ethics, honesty, style, humor, etc.

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: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.