RE: Public Domain Fonts for the Web

Thus spake Clive Bruton:

> The problem is that it takes *a lot* of work to produce good fonts,
> that's why there aren't many high quality freeware text fonts.

Todd Fahrner replied:

>I also think this is the crux of the matter. There's not only the
>considerable aesthetic exertion of designing a high-quality original
>typeface suitable for copy, there's the format question for online use.
>Type 1 fonts cannot be hinted as extensively as required for best results
>at screen resolutions, and there is no cross-platform bitmap format. >Even
>if you were to embrace a little redundancy, Windows bitmaps - FON 
>resources
>- lack many very basic facilities like kerning, so no real italics are
>possible. This partly explains why even Adobe has released its Web >fonts 
in
>TrueType format. So why not just select "TrueType" in Fontographer? 
>Because
>the results will not be suitable for screen resolution. The art of 
TrueType
>hinting is, by all accounts, rare, excruciatingly tedious, and poorly
>supported in tools. Tom Rickner, are you listening?

I couldn't have said it better myself. It took man months to hint the 
Georgia and Verdana fonts which Microsoft is giving away. We couldn't have 
afforded to do that for free. And that doesn't even count the time which 
Matthew Carter spent drawing the faces.

As for charity, I'll gladly spend a weekend or two designing a logo for my 
church, or making a special version of one of my own faces for a good 
friend. But don't ask me to work for a year without pay so that 
multi-million dollar corporations have one less technology headache to 
worry about. Fonts are the only way I make a living. As a colleague of mine 
once said, I'll give my fonts away when my grocer gives out food and the 
gas & electric company stops sending me bills.

Thomas Rickner
Monotype Typography

Received on Tuesday, 24 February 1998 17:12:07 UTC