- From: <glen@met.bitstream.com>
- Date: Wed, 04 Apr 96 18:33:02 est
- To: www-font@w3.org
To clear up any mis-information associated with Bitstream stance on font transport technology we wish to clarify: Intellectual property rights have to be protected on the internet. Bitstream TrueDoc technology is the ONLY font technology that protects those rights while expressing the image that the fonts were intended to produce. We have the support of many font designers expressing their support for TrueDoc. TrueDoc has been also accepted as a standard font fidelity process for Portable Docs such as ENVOY and HUMMINGBIRD software. Hint especially fall under copyright law as ruled by the Adobe & Bitstream litigation brought against SWFTE. Any technology for the internet that does not consider the intellectual property rights of designers is not a viable solution. Further more it places OEMs and ISVs in jeopardy. As far as quality, TrueDoc provides indistinguishable quality or better in the case of poorly designed fonts. Also it provides anti aliasing for all devices. Glen Rippel ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: Why TrueDoc? Author: www-font@w3.org at huxleypo Date: 3/30/96 5:50 PM As a font and font technology vendor, AGFA supports embedding and subsetting of fonts in Web documents for viewing/printing purposes. We feel that our intellectual property rights are adequately protected under current embedding schemes. It should be the font vendors' decision whether or not a font is embeddable in a Web page. TrueDoc does not give the type designer this option. With TrueDoc, the font design is "embedded" whether or not the font developer has given permission. In addition, this new version of the font no longer contains the original type designer produced scaling instructions, but rather, TrueDoc hints generated by automated algorithms. The screen quality of the font will suffer. Chuck Rowe New Media Design Support Agfa Division, Bayer Corp. chuck_rowe@agfa-type.com ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Why TrueDoc? Author: www-font@w3.org at Internet Date: 3/29/96 5:55 PM Bitstream is committed to honoring all legitimate rights of type designers and foundries throughout the world. The following influenced the rock solid design of TrueDoc and positions it as the premier font technology choice for internet developers. Bitstream and Adobe were the key players in persuading the US copyright office in 1991 to change its position from one in which fonts had no protection into the current position in which font programs enjoy the same protection as any other software programs. Bitstream and Adobe led the lawsuit against Swfte for copyright infringement of their font software programs. As part of the settlement, Swfte acknowledged its acceptance and agreement with the U.S. Copyright Office rulings permitting the registration of copyright in certain programs used in the generation of digitized representations of typeface designs in the same manner as other programs. Bitstream has designed TrueDoc to provide publishers with identical font capabilities when publishing electronic documents that they have always enjoyed when publishing documents on paper. This makes fonts just as useful in the emerging "distribute-and-print" world as they were in the old "print-and-distribute" one and hence creates new opportunities for font vendors. TrueDoc accomplishes this without embedding fonts, or subsets of fonts, into electronic documents. It doesn't even access the original font files themselves. Instead, TrueDoc captures the character shapes that result from executing the fonts -- just like what happens when printing the document on paper. Storing these compressed character shapes with an electronic document guarantees that it can be viewed or printed on any platform, anywhere in the world. If the original fonts happen to be available at the viewing/printing end, they are of course used. If not, the character shapes stored in the document by TrueDoc provide a high fidelity alternative. All of this is accomplished without risk to the font designer's intellectual property -- which never leaves the point where it was legitimately installed. Because the TrueDoc approach is the electronic equivalent of printing first and distributing second, it automatically gives publishers of electronic documents the same rights and responsibilities in the use of fonts as if they were distributing paper documents. Bitstream is alarmed, therefore, at the prospect of the wholesale embedding of fonts into portable documents, with or without the owner's permission, that seems to be implied by recent web font announcements.
Received on Thursday, 4 April 1996 18:54:36 UTC