- From: Rohit Khare <khare@pest.w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 28 Feb 96 12:30:58 -0500
- To: www-font@w3.org, FoRK@xent.w3.org
.Web font war: What it means On the heels of a similar Web font announcement yesterday by Adobe, Apple and Netscape, ..Microsoft Corp.. said it will expand support for TrueType fonts in its Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft rolled out forty companies--including Hewlett-Packard, Macromedia and Oracle, as well as a good supply of smaller font houses--to support its efforts. Microsoft and .Netscape. already support a basic sub-set of TrueType fonts in their browsers, but the goal of both groups is to basically allow Web authors to use any font they want when authoring Web pages. The key difference between the two announcements is that while Microsoft and friends are supporting TrueType fonts only, the Adobe/Apple/Netscape group is supporting both TrueType and Type 1, the latter being a class of Adobe-created fonts that are widely used today by print publishers. .Adobe. believes Web authors--who often do work or have a background in print medium--are demanding support for Type 1 fonts. The Adobe-led group is working on Type 1 font technology to support new capabilities such as support anti-aliasing, which creates sharper on-screen display; embedded, compressed fonts, which will let users download fonts they need on-the-fly; and progressively rendered fonts that will flow in like compressed GIF images, said Pierre Bedard, Adobe's OEM business manager. "Frankly, I believe publishers are more interested in Type 1 fonts," said Bedard. "For hard-core publishers, people who do this professionally, Type 1 fonts are what they use." Microsoft counters that TrueType fonts are much more widely used than Type 1, especially for on-screen display. TrueType ships on all Windows platforms as well as on the Apple Macintosh, said Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft's program manager, Internet Platform Tools division. "I would characterize [Adobe's press release] as a preemptive, reactive release," Fitzgerald said. "TrueType fonts are in use all over the place, and it is the best technology for on-screen display." In addition, Fitzgerald said, TrueType already supports most of the features, such as anti-aliasing, that are just now being built-in to Type 1. "Adobe made the trade off to optimize Type 1 for print. We are a generation ahead in on-screen display. Type 1 is playing catch-up." For Web authors, the big question is: will this schism lead to more fracturing of the Web? The answer, it appears, is yes and no. It is likely that both Netscape and Microsoft will implement downloadable fonts using the W3 Consortium's proposed style sheets feature. But if one browser supports Type 1 and the other doesn't, Web authors could be faced with the same old difficult decision regarding which browser extensions to support. You can read more about Microsoft's TrueType plans at .http://www.microsoft.com/truetype.. --Richard Karpinski
Received on Wednesday, 28 February 1996 12:29:54 UTC