Microsoft's Default Font Is at the Center Of a Government Corruption Case (thenextweb.com)

Calibri, a font that was created in 2004 and made default option on PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and WordPad by Microsoft in 2007, is currently sitting at the center of a corruption investigation involving Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. From a report: Accused of illegally profiting from his position since the 1990s, Sharif is now under investigation by the Joint Investigative Team -- a collective of Pakistani police, military, and financial regulators -- after a treasure trove of evidence surfaced with 2016's release of The Panama Papers. In a report obtained by Al Jazeera, investigators recommended a case be filed in the National Accountability Court after concluding there were "significant gap[s]" in Sharif's ability to account for his familial assets. [...] Sharif contends that neither he, nor his family, profited from his position of power, a denial that came under scrutiny today after his daughter and political heir apparent, Maryam Nawaz, produced documents from 2006 that prove her father's innocence. Unfortunately for the Nawaz family, type experts today confirmed the documents were written in Calibri, a font that wasn't available until 2007.

Comments

Well, that didn't go well

[Chris Mattern]

Just ask Dan Rather how that sort of thing plays out.

Worst Font Ever

[crow]

I despise Calibri. About half the emails I receive at work use it, and it's absolutely horrible for reading. Even comic sans would be better.

Maybe it looks alright when printed out, but who prints anymore? On my screen it's painful. Microsoft is trying to gouge my eyes out. All they care is that people use a font that is only available with their products.

Does it really prove it?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I have an ASCII file that was created back when I was in grad school. I open it in my favorite text editor and issue a print command. The default font chosen by the text editor did not exist back when I was in grad school. Does it mean the text file did not exist then?

I don't know MsOffice font handling directives saved to the file. Does MsOffice explicitly names the default font in the save document? Or it just leaves it as "default font"? If a document is saved in the default font of 2006, and I open it today, does it display it in today's default font or will it use the default font of 2006?

Please don't dismiss it some stretched speculation made just for the sake of argument. MsOffice files are very very convoluted. For a long time, changing your default printer would change the margins on the document. Every grad student who chose to write the thesis in MsWord discovered it to their consternation. Pagination and margins change randomly. If someone else using that computer changed the printer or installed a new font, the thesis file saved on disk would print differently and it would fail mechanical check in the Registrar's office.

Re:Does it really prove it?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's asking the question on how the font for a Word document is stored. Specifically, he's raising the following two scenarios, one of which is a convoluted way to suggest that the document isn't a forgery because the article only expresses that the document is from 2006 and provides no indication on whether the document may have been created in 2006 but printed only recently.

Scenario 1: When the document is saved the font for the document is saved as Word's default font.
Scenario 2: When the document is saved the font value for the document is only recorded if it was changed from Word's default font.

In the case of scenario 1, then a document saved in 2006 should have opened with the font that was the default font in 2006, in which case the document is a forgery. In the case of scenario 2 the document would up displayed as Calibri in which case there's insufficient evidence from a paper version of the document to determine whether it is a forgery. It's only suggestive that it's forgery.

Re:Was the font available in 2006?

[Guyle]

A pretty good case was made here that it was, in fact, available as early as 2005 and became part of Windows Vista in 2006, in addition to rolling out with Office 2007.