Re: Font license vs. conversion between font formats

> It may be trivial but it's still unnecessary extra work for no gain.

The gain is that at least many font vendors are willing to license
their fonts under these terms, but not as raw desktop fonts on web
servers.

> I'm asking again: why have a new format instead of raw TTF/OTF if honest
> people are going to pay in any case and dishonest people aren't going to
> pay in any case?

The answer to that has been given, repeatedly. You may not accept that
answer, but ultimately that doesn't matter. Foundries have heard these
arguments you're making over and over, and most have rejected the
arguments (or decided they just won't license for web use at all!).

What's the objective of this discussion? I'm thinking it is to get web
authors the access to retail fonts which they say they require (per
polling info), in a way that both browser makers and font vendors can
live with. In the end, anything that is utterly unacceptable to either
group isn't going to fly.

Sometimes one group (A) wants to reject or question some of the
other's (B's) premises or logic about what B requires. Where this
comes down to a technical discussion that's fine and useful (hey, I
don't think you understand what CORS does, it doesn't work like that).
But other than those cases, I think such discussions have proved to be
a huge waste of time. Each group can decide for itself what it
requires.

Cheers,

T

Received on Thursday, 9 July 2009 15:20:46 UTC