Re: Public Domain Fonts for the Web

Michael Emmel wrote at 24/02/98 6:31 pm

>I  have ranted  once on this issue but the important thing is not so much
>free fonts
>as a good set of standard fonts that are universally available.
>The natural conclusion is that they mush be free.  If there is another way to
>answer this that
>is acceptable to the font industry it would be nice.

The way to answer this that is "acceptable to the font industry" is the 
way it is already done. Individuals may decide to freely distribute their 
work, OS or hardware manufacturers may decide to licence and distribute 
faces with their products, or MS may decide it's philanthropy week and 
here are another bunch of free fonts.

That's it.

I might also address the implication of the "font industry" as some 
lumbering giant, it isn't, I'd be surpirsed if more than 500 people were 
employed in design and production of type *world wide*.

>
>Plus from what I can tell there is no motivation in  the font industry to
>allow such standardization.

End users don't want standardisation, they want all the fonts in the 
world.

>
>And one last comment on "free" software and the font industry crying about
>hard  it is to make good fonts.
>
>Guess how many man hours have gone into linux and other free projects  for
>the benefit
>of the computer industry. Free software cost's its creators a lot of time and
>effort and money.
>I hope that everyone in the font industry that cries about the hard work put
>into font design uses no free
>software.  This would include X windows.

Was that free work put in by corporations, or by individuals?

As most people working in the "type industry" will be using Macs or PCs 
they certainly won't be using too many pieces of "free" software (ie 
where the source code is available), and I doubt that many of them have 
much of an idea about what X windows may be (the X-Files screen saver 
perhaps?)

>
>The  reluctance  of the font industry to contribute  because of the work
>involved in font creation  is nonsense. With this attitude there would be no
>gcc linux emacs X11 or  Unix as we know it today.

It isn't just the work involved (in the technology), there's also the 
design factor, type doesn't grow on trees, someone has to design it. That 
could well be a lengthy process in itself.

>
>Having said this the font industries vigorous attempts to keep font
>technology  closed smacks of simple attempts to maintain the current status
>quo.

Mike, get a life, the formats of every popular font format on the planet 
are freely available, how the hell does that keep font technology closed?

If you want free fonts, you go make them.

I think Todd also made some very good points on this issue.


-- Clive

Received on Tuesday, 24 February 1998 14:47:32 UTC