Aug 29
Open letter to Adobe
2006 at 09.39 pm posted by Veerle Pieters
Yesterday Andrei Herasimchuck of Design by Fire wrote an open letter to Adobe with regard to typography on the web. The idea was since Adobe is a license holder of several classic typefaces to motivate them to release some of these into the public domain. Andrei suggested eight to twelve core fonts. Of course this would mean that Adobe loses some revenue but I also think that it wouldn’t have a significant impact on Adobe’s bottom line.
But first a thank you is in order
Abobe has such an important role in my life as a designer. My first Adobe program ever was Illustrator and I think it was Illustrator 88. It was my first introduction into the world of vectors. It was so impressive back then to do those things on a computer instead of paper. The second program was Photoshop 2.0 and if my memory serves me right it was pretty overwhelming and I took an evening class to get the hang of it. If it wouldn’t be for Adobe I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now. You have no idea how grateful I am for that.
Imagine more font options
Design is communication and as it stands now we only have very limited choices in typefaces for the web. If Adobe would do such a thing, a big “if” I know, the next step would be to get them included in the next updates of Windows and Mac OS X. I for one would love to have more options when it comes to typefaces for the web. It’s one aspect of the web that bothers me sometimes and also limits me creative wise. By doing that Adobe would surely become part of the next generation websites and this would create a huge positive message to designers world wide.
Andrei’s list
- Adobe Caslon Pro
- Adobe Jenson Pro
- Franklin Gothic
- Frutiger
- Futura
- Gill Sans
- Helvetica Neue
- Univers
- Warnock Pro
My list
Dear Adobe, this would be my preferred choice:
- Frutiger
- Myriad Pro
- Warnock Pro
- ITC Avant Garde Gothic Std 1
- ITC Galliard Std 1
- ITC Officina Sans Std
- Futura
- Gill Sans
So spread the message and set the grassroots in motion for more options in our designers arsenal. What fonts would you like to see released by Adobe?
64served
1
I would definitely love to see Myriad Pro; I can’t live without it. Warnock is pretty good too.
2
Just for a change, I agree with you Veerle. The lack of fonts for the web annoys me as well. It would be cool if Adobe could do that right! Will keep my fingers crossed!
Erika ;-)
3
What about Helvetica Rounded? There isn’t anything on PC or Mac like that and it looks really good in headers. Adobe wants $40-50 but how will someone on the web see your header unless it is in an image and then Google can’t squeeze it out.
4
Wow Veerle, those are my font-choices exactly! Add frutiger to it and that’s my list… Maybe Andrei should have made a petition out of this. I’d sign it.
5
Great idea!
I’ve forwarded this post to a colleague of mine (I work for a publishing house), who is looking into acquiring a new font-set for our all our published characters.
Can I suggest adding Garamond Pro? :)
6
It would be really great if they could release them all indeed - all 14th of them. If I had to pick at the most 5 I would want released I would take Futura, Helvetica Nue, Frutiger and ITC Avant Garde Std 1.
When we are talking about fonts, what font are you using for you headlines - is it Century Gothic perhaps?
7
I like your list better than Design by Fire. Though I’d definitely add Minion Pro to the list. Minion Pro and Myriad Pro are two of my favorite font sets. In fact, I’m a really big fan of the fonts of Robert Slimbach; he’s designed a number of my top five fonts.
I also vote for having Adobe add some fonts to public domain; or even just have them included on new Macs and PCs, like Times New Roman. Adobe still sells the professional and condensed versions of Times New Roman, but it’s still packaged on most machine.
8
Does anyone know the Kozuka font that comes with inDesign? I think it’s brilliant, both the Gothic and Std version.
9
While Andrei’s intentions are admirable, I don’t think that what he is suggesting is really a solution to the problem of type on the web. What we need isn’t another small handful of public domain fonts—sure, that would be nice, but we’ll be having this conversation again in a few years when everyone is tired of Frutiger or Caslon or whatever ends up being released.
What we really need is a new way of embedding fonts in web documents. Just like you don’t need to own a copy of Sabon to read a book that uses it, you shouldn’t need to own a copy of a font to view it on a website. Someone (browser makers? adobe? microsoft?) needs to come up with a way to embed the font information in a read-only format that designers can upload and link to like a stylesheet to embed the fonts used on a page. If this was a server-side process, it seems like it would be fairly easy to hide the raw font data from the end user in the same way that you never see php code in a site’s html source.
I really have no idea how easy or difficult this might be, but there has to be a better way than begging for handouts from adobe.
10
The idea is interesting, and I’m not sure where to stand yet. But we must keep in mind the designers of these typefaces who are paid royalties for each sale.
Fonts, as most of you know, are drawn, digitized, spaced, and technically manufactured by humans and nearly all of these fonts mentioned required several years of development.
11
Nat, you’ll note I stated in my blog entry:
Obviously, releasing a core set of fonts into the public domain is only a small part of the bigger solution. But sometimes when asking large corporations to solve large problems, the more effective startegy is to get them to do the easier things first to get the ball rolling.
12
After some testing I’ve concluded my favs are:
Sans:
- Myriad Pro
- Helvetica Neue
- Optima
Serif:
- Warnock Pro
- Adobe Jenson Pro
- Melior
13
I totally like the idea and your list. I have a faible for Gill Sans and Myriad Pro, so I would love to be able to use them in my designs without relying on images.
Unfortunately I doubt Adobe will release the fonts to public domain. All of them play a very important role especially in mass print media. (Well, at least in a Newspaper production agency I worked for, Helvetica, Frutiger and Futura were used). This means big income from licenses for Adobe. So I see a better chance for the idea of including some of them into the standard font set of operating systems.
However one thing is sure: it will take years till you can actually use these fonts for the majority of users. So I think we just have to live with the fact, that for now we are stuck with graphics and sIFR which I think is an awesome workaround for a lot of cases.
14
“Fonts, as most of you know, are drawn, digitized, spaced, and technically manufactured by humans and nearly all of these fonts mentioned required several years of development. “
heh, during my Mac days I had Fontographer and my daughter drew this wonderful font that I used all over the place. This blog is bringing back memories. Gotta go crack into that old Mac and find the font.
15
I love Myriad Pro as well, I think you can blame Apple for that, since I love Apple, and that’s what they use.
16
Adobe now makes about US$2 billion a year. The PostScript/OEM business is now around 4% of total revenue while the creative desktops apps are around 38% of revenue according to the recent earnings reports.
If you think 10 fonts (out of a library of around 400 or so) respresents big money for Adobe, I’d have to disagree with you.
17
That reminded me of some guys that did a flash object which will render the html on the page in additional fonts without messing up accessability. How nice is that. Cant find the link though.
18
Funny, I was just thinking about the lack of font choices for web today. Adobe should get their hands in on such a large step forward that is overdue in the web world and it could mean a lot of good in the long run; for Adobe and designers - as well as the most important aspect: the user’s experience.
19
Nice to see you both chose Gill Sans - although that is already installed on MacOS X by default, I think. I know I’d be using it on many more websites if it was included on Windows as well.
20
The technique is called Sifr. Great for SEO but slow loading?
See
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/.
Mike is hardcore!
21
Hello…
Here you have a very, very handy tool. You can see what’s default on PC and MAC and what the safe list is…
TYPETESTER
But maybe you already knew…
By the way, your topic about smoking was… smoking!
22
Well, I for another, don’t agree with you, for the same reason again, the problem isn’t too little fonts available now, the “problem” is being able to properly embed custom fonts on a webpage…
As long as you think that ís a problem, of course. I think we’re doing quite well for now. The headers-(accessibility-SEO-)problem has been solved: using a stylesheet-hidden H1-tag and using a stylesheet defined header background image to display your custom font. The second problem isn’t that much of a problem for me. The best readable fonts on the web still are Trebuchet MS, Verdana or Arial. Why should that have to change? Just because some people have a need for change? I personally think that’s quite a selfish thought…
23
@ Xavez
Every website we design has a CMS. I’m no programmer but a designer and sometimes it’s very irritating that headers, subtitels, whatever,… can’t follow the corporate identity of a company.
The client can adjust everything they want, in a certain way, so we have to take a safe font.
We could turn this all into images but then again the client can’t adjust their website…
I say I am no programmer. If there’s a solution I like to know.
24
Alexander Berglund said:
Yes it is :)
xavez said:
Instead of first trying to solve the bigger issue this would help us on the way until more rock solid solutions like embedding fonts are in place. That could take ages until all hurdles are overcome. You obviously didn’t see the part where that was already stated in comment number 11.
Are you serious? If everybody thinks with that kind of attitude we would get nowhere. Change is what makes things happen, nobody has benefits from the status quo.
25
Adobe has been changing since its merge with Macromedia, and I’m afraid it would never be the same.
26
Is Century Gothic a safe fond? Or are you using tricks?
It is a system fond on my mac but it appears not to be in any list on TYPETESTER.
I’m a bit confused here…
27
Rubinered said
Century Gothic is a font that comes with Office so it’s pretty common and if not you fall back on Trebuchet instead. That’s why we use more then 1 font family in our stylesheet.
28
http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-CombinedResults.shtml :)
29
Definitely Futura and Myriad Pro
30
At this point I am not picky - I am so sick of using the same fonts over and over again that if they release 5-10 decent typefaces that would be great (provided they are not comic-san’s equivilents).
But I love Futura and Myriad
31
good idea!
32
I think those fonts will never become public because of their popularity. Why share the things that can be sold. Anyway I hope Adobe will consider webmasters’ opinions and draw a conclusion.
Prefer to use Futura, Myriad and Tahoma.
33
well, maybe I was wrong with the big money ;) Thanks for corecting me.
I think Jeff Croft points out some really good thoughts on the discussion: What is the only way to get all kinds of typography on the web without using images - Flash (or PDF) ;)
As Adobe owns both of these technologies, I doubt they will be very keen on making it easier for us to achieve similar results with plain HTML/CSS :(
I think his suggestion to ask Appleto license the new Windows Vista display fonts (Link to PDF: http://praegnanz.de/file_download/46) is a good and pragmatic approach and would at least give us 6 more fairly nice fonts. However in the long run we will simply need a robust font embedding technology for the web. For now I stick with sIFR.
34
Four quick points:
1. Yes, we definitely need font embedding. That’s the real solution. But we all know this isn’t going to happen anytime soon. So, suggestions like those Andrei and I have offered are pragmatic, practical approaches to bridging the gap, not be-all-end-all solutions.
2. Someone making free fonts available is only a very small piece of the puzzle. There are thousands of free fonts available right now (true, most of them suck, but that’s not the point). The real issue is distribution. The only way any font will ever be reliable on the web is if it’s distributed with the major operating systems. Anything short of that won’t do.
3. Adobe will never make Myriad Pro free. It’s one of their corporate typefaces, and any designer knows that’s important to its identity and turning it into the next Arial wouldn’t be in their best interest. And I imagine a little company in Cupertino wouldn’t be too pleased about it, either.
4. Microsoft’s Vista fonts are the best chance we have at more choice. Sure, it’s only six fonts and they’re not exactly classics, but they are quite nice overall, they’re designed fore the screen, they’re optimized for anti-aliasing, and most importantly—they will be distributed with the most widely used OS in the world. All we have to do is get Appleto license them and they’ll be usable as our primary web typefaces. And, I think this is reasonable—Apple already licenses Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Trebuchet, and the rest of the tired old fonts Microsoft offers for web, so it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think they could license these, too.
35
What a great idea! I like Adobe Garamond Pro, and another one not very well known called Waters Titling Pro, which probably would never become use Tahoma a lot in my HTML, since it is web-safe. Also Trebuchet, according to your list earlier this summer, Veerle was one that was found frequently on many computers.
I often resort to creating graphic headers myself. Also, not everyone realizes why websites can’t have choices of many fonts, either - which is annoying to have to explain a lot those non-computer people who think websites should look just like printed brochures.
36
This is a very enlightening discussion. I had not read all of the postings, before my last post, but have learned a lot from reading them now, and the whole discussion about Adobe and whether or not they should make the fonts available, as well as the issue of whether or not they can be embedded.
I think people have a point in suggesting that making the designer fonts more widely available would cause them to lose their value and make them too common. I think I would have to agree with that. Also I think it is kind of interesting to see how web designers can work around the font issues and create things for the web that look original without having all the fonts available. Then again, it might be nice to have some of them more widely available, too…
37
Your idea is GREAT but: Adobe licenses many of those typefaces from other sources like ITC. So they don’t own the full rights themselves and thus can’t release them into the public domain.
38
How on earth can Adobe give away fonts that they don’t own? They certainly can give away their own fonts but the other fonts are owned by their respective rights holders.
How many people who replied have Bitstream Vera installed on their machines?
Nuff said…
39
Rubinred
Headers: use your <h1>-tags (as you should, always) within a <div id=“header”>-tag. Use your (external, of course!) CSS file to hide the H1-tag and define a background-image for your div, with whatever custom font you want for your header. Problem 1 solved.
sIFR is an ideal solution for subtitles… And my personal opinion is, that body-text shouldn’t have too many different fonts all over the web. When properly used, Times, Verdana, Arial or Trebuchet MS are all great, neutral webfonts. I really don’t see the use of using another 10 fonts for body-text.
Veerle
I actually did read all of the comments before posting anything myself :). Though I must say I personally think that remark makes no sense at all. Making fonts available and making designers able to properly embed them are two completely different things, which makes it pointless to first release fonts and then starting to work on an embedding solution.
Dead serious. Change is indeed what makes things happen, but no change is what gets the creative minds thinking for a nice solution. I think that’s far more important than change oriented from a big corp.
40
I agree with Jeff about those 6 new MS fonts. They are quite nice and they’re optimized for screen. I think both Jenson and Caslon would look horrible on screen, esp. in small sizes.
I don’t like Gill Sans much, but Franklin Gothic would be nice. Or perhaps Trade Gothic. Helvetica is way overused already, so no thanks.
41
I’d be happy if they just released Helvetica Neue for a start!
42
Helvetica is not an Adobe font, and neither are many of the other names being bandied about.
43
Exactly. The fact that o one has Bitstream Vera installed is precisely why it’s completely useless as a web font. And the reason no one has it installed is that it’s doesn’t come with their OS. Anything less than distribution with the Major OSes is useless to us.
And also, Bitstream Vera is ugly. :)
I hope this is a joke. You’re dreaming if you believe that image replacement or sIFR are anything but hacks. They’re clever hacks, and they work in certain cases, but they’re just as much a hack as using tables for layout is (that was clever and worked well at the time, also).
A hack isn’t good enough. We need real support for great typography, just like exists in print design apps (InDesign, Quark, et. al). Part of that (but only part) is unlimited typeface selection. Until we have that, we’re not there yet.
44
Xavez said:
The problem is not solved because the client needs photoshop which he doesn’t have in many cases and if he does he has to do this for every title. The question was about clients that use a CMS and want to use their corporate font as titles. To my knowledge there aren’t any affordable CMS’s that do this H1 trick out of the box. You can’t ask a client to play with CSS, in my experience they already have a problem understand a simple element as “strong”.
What Jeff is saying is exactly what I mean. A hack is still a hack how creative the solution even is. We need real support because hacking is something we have being doing long enough to circumvent browser issues. These creative solutions aren’t also bulletproof you know. Releasing those fonts until we have embedded support is. Sorry but embedded support is years off, too many licenses issues and organizations that have to agree.
45
So my problem isn’t solved yet…
Oh wait… Once I saw a programmer I worked with do this:
Al the headers in his website were little peaces of Flash. So If you embed the desired font in your SWF and with a little hocus pocus you link this to your CMS, you should be able to use custom fonts and update.
Come on then and mess up this solution! ;-)
I know it’s no pure html or whatever but it’s working!
But indeed a better solution would be handy.
46
Jeff
Name one reason why those should be considered hacks? Comparing them to a tables-lay-out actually hurts me as a webdeveloper. sIFR and Image replacement are perfectly accessible (tables are not), quite light overall (tables are not) and they’re semanticly correct (tables are not).
Unlimited typeface selection is what I call dreaming. Have fun licensing that.
Veerle
One word: maintenance contract. Second: I don’t think you quite understand. Image replacement on an H1-tag is a beautiful solution: why on earth would a client suddenly completely change the name of his website, without changing the lay-out or font or anything else? Simple: they don’t and they won’t and they wouldn’t and shouldn’t want to. sIFR is perfectly adjustable to a CMS. Just have a look at the NetLash website.
Why on earth are you speaking of hacks? An example of a hack is the (in)famous CSS html-star-hack in IE, hacks are not crossbrowser compatible, techniques like these most definitely are!
Releasing those fonts isn’t bulletproof either. Asking for adobe to release them to the world and at the same time asking Microsoft, Apple and any Linux distribution to embed them is just as bulletproof as any of the previous solutions.
47
Ok sorry, I meant of course subheaders, not header 1 my typo mistake here. I guess that should have been obvious I was talking about subhearders since these titles change all the time and a lot of clients want these in a corporate font. You got a point that you could solve all this with sIFR, but you still need javascript and Flash to view it and to make it work (and font rendering is just as it should be in version 8, not ugly blurry anymore as it was in previous versions and not everyone has this plugin already). Also, in my experience if you use sIFR for every title on a page and there are a lot of titles on the same page, it slows the loading down. Like I said, sIFR is beautiful but isn’t a magic bullet. With Adobe releasing Flash you don’t need all that. And about the maintenance contract: I don’t force my clients into these. The reason why they use a CMS in the first place it that they can maintain their site without our help.
Well of course, isn’t a hack in the strict sense of the meaning of that word (I’m not stupid), but it’s a workaround. Meaning, you have to do extra effort to make something work that isn’t built-in. I guess you understand what you mean here. Hack, workaround whatever.
If Microsoft, Adobe, and Linux release these fonts, you won’t need Javascript, you won’t need Flash you won’t need sIFR. That’s what I call bulletproof. Every situation is covered, with sIFR it’s almost bulletproof. Mike did a great job on that, but you can’t argue that sIFR is as rock solid as releasing fonts that are available on everybody’s machines.
48
Xavez, I agree with Veerle here. sIFR is nice, but not ideal for extensive use.
It tends to slow a site down, and it is not a good solution for exotic browser/people without JS & Flash.
I do like sIFR for the occasional headline. But we will not be using it again in the new version of the Netlash site.
49
Veerle
First have a look at the flash penetration charts. Considering JavaScript has a penetration somewhere in the 90%-95% category, you really can’t use that as an argument anymore. Especially not when considering your (or Jeff’s) proposal. How long do you think it will take before everyone has those fonts installed on her/his system? People are still using windows 98, windows 2000, windows ME and a lot of unpatched windows XP systems. You will never reach such high penetration rates as the javascript/flash combination within this and - considering the past - 7 years.
Concerning sIFR slowing things down: how much does downloading a font slow down a website, you think (This is the case when you’re talking about embedding them)? Once the sIFR flash-file is cached, it doesn’t slow things down even a jiffy on any modern computer+browser with a decent connection (ISDN, ADSL, Cable or a wifi connection). On machines like handhelds, screenreaders and such, javascript doesn’t work and stylesheets do neither (unless you specified a handheld-specific stylesheet). Which makes it really easy not to load any of the flash/javascript functions. Still slowing things down?
And last but not least on this quote: show me one webpage in (x)HTML that has more than 6-7 header titles.
I think there’s a big difference between hacks (making things work that don’t work when treated as described in certain guidelines) and workarounds (making special - sometimes superfluous - things work on systems that aren’t designed to do those kinds of things). I know what you’re trying to say here, but it’s just not true, you can’t compare those two at all.
What’s so bulletproof about waiting 7 years untill everyone can enjoy a new font - which you are probably sick of by the time the penetration rate even nears 90%?
50
Considering the releasing of the fonts by Adobe as unlikely we should demand from the existing fonts (and future browsers) the support for all weights permitted by CSS (from 100 to 900). The support right now is very poor (regular, bold, bolder is all we’ve got - I am right?). Using different weights often makes for all the difference.
51
Releasing these fonts into the open is a pipe dream (I’m not trying to be confrontational or anything, so don’t judge me by my choice of words. I respect you completely, Veerle :D. Adobe doesn’t own most of the fonts being requested. The only way is to write a letter campaign to each type foundry and hope beyond hope they’d release these into the open. Say it did happen. You’d now have 10 devalued typefaces that will eventually become nothing more than another Arial or Times. After you would have to hope that at least Microsoft or Apple will include them in new versions of their OS or in OS updates. If they don’t you will have to expect the common public to download those fonts because they’re free. Well, the common public thinks fonts that are whacky and hard to read are the greatest things coming, so adding another font in their minds that looks like Times or Arial is quite hard to do. I work for a screen printer, so more than often I get to see the average clueless person. I still have a harassing phone call yesterday in my head from someone who was giving me hell because I didn’t have ActionIs on my computer. I felt like telling her, “No I try to avoid cheap and poorly designed fonts like I do the plague.” I came really close to doing it. I did hand the phone over to someone else so I could at least get some work done that day than hearing a rant from some clueless nitwit that knows nothing about typography.
My apologies to the developers, but sIFR is becoming more and more a bad alternative. IE requires now that you tell it manually to start flash on default. Most people using the browser will never know how to turn that off (if there even is a way). Also flash can be disabled in security settings, by a Firefox extetnsion, or telling Opera to turn it off in the menus. Flash is installed on nearly all computers, but when the big guy has made it hard to view flash sites (I guess they fail to see that ActiveX, not Flash is the problem oh well) sIFR gets added to the mix as well.
Images aren’t the greatest alternative to use, either. Without considerable programming experience it’s hard to write a server-side function to handle generating images for you. I have done this on my website, but creating the images by hand each time for the common person would be a taxing and ridiculous venture.
The best would be to start an angry mob and force the W3C to put font embedding into CSS3. It’s better in my opinion to expect developers to implement it than it is to get people to manually download fonts that they don’t care for. It’s a slow process, especially hoping Microsoft will implement it one day in IE, but it’s a better solution in the end than getting quite a few font foundries to release 10 fonts into the open.
Dave Shea did some great slides before (I’m guessing for a presentation. I don’t remember what they were for) that sort of outlines the problem here.
52
http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/
53
Comment threads like this are a clear example of why I removed comments from DxF. Having to deal with the likes of Xavez on issues like this became tiresome.
As for Dustin:
I wonder why I didn’t think of that! I mean really… a guy like me, who personally worked on InDesign which is rich in typography features. A guy like me who worked just a few floors above where some of the world’s most reknown typographers are employed today… I wish you luck while you wait another fifteen years for embedded fonts in browsers to happen, while in the meantime Arial becomes even more cemented into the design aesthetic of the Internet at large.
I’m always somewhat amazed that even when I attempt to put credibility into my posts, since people usually don’t know who I am—in this case, the fact I worked at Adobe and have been involved with discussions like embedded type in browsers—that people seem to let what I’m trying to communicate still woosh right over their heads.
Of course embedded fonts are the answer. Wonder why that hasn’t happened yet?
Clue: It has little to do with engineers not wanting to put the feature into their browsers. Engineers would add that feature in a heartbeat.
54
Ha-ha, interesting letter. I’m resound praises on smb.
55
@Andrei: Let’s get something straight here. I could care less if you worked as a garbage collector in Timbuktu much less as some lackey at Adobe. I’m no better than you are and vice versa. I could care less if you perceive yourself as being smarter or better than everyone else here. I am fully aware who you are and your background having been to your site before. I thoroughly enjoy InDesign and use it daily. Thanks for working on it and helping make it a great application. I never replied to you. I was making a comment to Veerle. There’s no sense in getting angry or insulting other people. I stated what I thought. You’re welcome to reply to what I say, but please don’t insult me in the process. I could be wrong. That’s fine by me, but prove me wrong without resorting to insults. That’s the first mark of ignorance.
I might be wrong about wanting to resort to font embedding, but the methods that are being worked on in CSS3 look quite promising. Who knows when it will be implemented if ever, but I don’t see how asking Adobe to release fonts to the public that they do not own to be a better solution. I’m all for it; if even a small amount of well-designed fonts get added that would make it much better for designers to have better choice in good type. I might be wrong thinking that a group of well-designed fonts would suffer the same fate that Arial has. Arial was never a well-designed font from the get go, but Helvetica was. Arial became the new Helvetica. We’ll just have to see.
@Veerle: I apologize for this comment. I probably shouldn’t make it here, but I don’t think I or anyone else should be insulted for honest threads in your blog. Furthermore thanks for letting us comment in your blog, voice our opinions, and get feedback from you (if you feel it necessary). I won’t make another comment for this post or read any subsequent comments as I don’t want to get caught up in a inevitable argument that I neither have time nor any desire to get caught up in.
56
<blockquote> That’s fine by me, but prove me wrong without resorting to insults. That’s the first mark of ignorance.</blokquote>
Where I come from, starting a comment with the line “[insert idea here] into the open is a pipe dream” is generally percieved as a passive aggressive insult towards the person who stated the idea in the first place. Where I come from, people who propose “pipe dreams” aren’t all that bright.
You should consider re-reading your own initial comment to see why I might possibly react the way I did.
57
I’m not sure if Adobe actually has the ability to do this with some of the fonts mentioned.
I have to agree with Dustin, an open letter regarding embedded fonts may be a more practical solution.
58
I disagree: font-embedding can not be considered equal to a real solution, that is (whatever new) fonts to be shipped to different OS (and i understand Andrei getting angry here, if people do know so little about how their computers work… why do shipped fonts need installation?). If the companies to whom these open letters are addressed choose such fonts, they’ll probably need to adjust the licenses. that would be the consequence and not initial to what this discussion is about.
The problem i see with embedded fonts via CSS3 is that this will take another 10 years until IE8 will provide this feature (how does it read in jeffs article? “please prove me wrong”). furthermore there was unneccessary bandwidth needed, making this technique useless for lower bandwidths - do you know a browser-detection that tells the visitors bandwidth?
But your (embedding) approach is not totally wrong: Sites that currently use Image Replacement techniques could as well combine IR with WEFT (the proprietary MS-Tool for embedding fonts) which in a lot of cases would help to cut bandwidth-usage.
But imho thats just another wrong way to do, what shipped fonts (and let it be Dejavu/Vera/etc.) would make possible without _any_ disadvantages.
I hope Webdesigners get a fast and clearly affirmative statement on these “Open letters” as we all know how long it could take until there finally is action…
No more “Yippie there will be new Vista Fonts” all over in the blogosphere until its clear everyone (even a XP-user) will have them - not just beeing able to download them somewhere somewhen.
59
Myriad Pro and Adobe Garamond… no doubt about it!
60
Wow, great discussion. It really got heated there for a bit. Anyway, after reading the first few comments I thought to myself, yeah adding some new fonts would be nice but that can’t be the answer. Then I saw Nat’s response (#9) and thought that was getting closer to a real solution. A solution is needed that is the same as how PDF’s changed the printing/publishing industry back in the 90’s. All Fonts should be portable/embeddable. Anywho.
61
@nat (#9) and @ Jeff(#60). Sorry that i have to say that but: You are wrong.
Microsoft already tried your “idea” of a read-only font format: that is embedding .eot-files (created with WEFT).
Why did it fail? Well i wouldn’t say it completely failed, but in comparison to Microsofts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web the second way (making fonts freely available) was a hundred times more successful - as this is the typography you see on every webpage today.
In contrast to this, WEFT is too complex and has disadvantages - probably the reason why no one uses it (?!). This should in fact encourage these companies to think ahead.
62
Well…
I’ll add to the list:
- Avenir
- Clarendon
- Eurostile
- Prima
- Rotis
- Vectora
63
Too many people want too many things for free these days.
Its a culture born out of mp3 piracy and software theft.
Here’s a thought - why dont you and your friend make fonts as good and then give them out to the public for free?
64
@ian: i have no problems with making priorities. but, wait a minute, do i get you right? are we talking about open-source operating systems here? i don’t think so.
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