Re: Whatever happened to w3 fonts?

Looks like we can rely on Lee to kick this group off again:-)


>I think what happened to w3 fonts is that Netscape gave up waiting and
>licenced Bitstream TrueDoc and that's the end of OpenType.
>Microsoft will clearly have to use TrueDoc if they are not to fall
>behind again, and why would they then use two technologies?

One may as well ask why support bitmaps in Win95 TT fonts?

I don't think that's anywhere near the end of OpenType, I think MS would be 
incredibly foolish to only support TrueDoc as an embedding standard, unless they 
see the US as their only market. Perhaps their lawyers need a little workout, 
European copyright law should prove to be a formidable foe.


>I hope we don't get OpenType, since it seems to be a recipe for unlimited
>font piracy hiding behind Microsoft's meaningless platitudes about the
>OS/2 embedding bits and signatures, which will be ignored by all existing
>software and hence irrelevant -- except as a reason for not moving to
>Windows 97 perhaps :-)

Does it matter that they are ignored by existing software, not if the format is 
such that existing software cannot read it. MS have already commited themselves 
to supporting the digital signatures at a system level, one would imagine that 
Apple would concur. 

The fundamental difference between the two formats is that one, OpenType, is 
trying to define protection for a new era in intellectual property law, it may 
fall short of what is required by many, but it is a first step. On the other 
hand TrueDoc is doing its best not to enforce law, but to circumvent it, we've 
all heard the big tales of the impossible to decode format, but it only took 30 
minutes for me to figure it out, and I wasn't trying that hard.

The real thing that I hate about TrueDoc, is not that it is insecure (while 
claiming the opposite), not that it munges my lovingly crafted ouitlines, but, 
that it doesn't give me a choice in the matter, I cannot program a font so that 
TrueDoc spits it out. While with Acrobat and/or use of embedding permissions in 
OpenType I can.

Owners of intellectual property should have control of that property, not 
software companies of dubious morals.


-- Clive

Received on Monday, 17 February 1997 15:30:28 UTC