On Jul 13, 2009, at 3:54 AM, dhbailey wrote:
That agreement between Microsoft and Ascender may be why the
license with Microsoft Office is so restrictive.
Wait, wait. So far we have not established that the license *is*
restrictive. Someone speculated that it might be, but no one has
actually checked yet. (I can't, because I don't have the fonts.)
I did shoot an email to my friend, who is (literally) in the business
of knowing these things. He tells me: "Short version: You can use
the fonts with any apps on Windows." I'm still waiting on the long
answer.
Ascender is not a subsidiary of Microsoft, though one of the partners
has close ties with Microsoft and has worked closely with them for
many years. Ascender was licensed by Microsoft to develop and
distribute a ClearType engine for non-Vista operating systems.
ClearType is a specific method of type definition*, developed and
owned by Microsoft, introduced with Vista. The purpose of ClearType
was to enhance screen readability. (You can read all the details on
Wikipedia.) By default, the fonts fall back on older definitions, so
they still work on other systems, but they don't take advantage of
the special screen-rendering technology without ClearType software.
The six fonts I mentioned were commissioned by Microsoft to be
introduced along with ClearType. Ascender is licensed to distribute
those fonts, along with its rendering engines. Other type
distributors also have licenses to distribute some or all of the fonts.
mdl
* A font is a collection of little programs, one for each character,
which instructs the computer on how to draw that character. These
programs must have a programming language, and there have been
several standard ones over the years -- PostScript, TrueType,
OpenType, etc. Many of you may remember the days of having different
versions of the same font**; that was because you had the same
typeface in two different languages, which may have behaved
differently in different software. ClearType is a new such language.
Like any language, standard, or protocol, a method of font definition
is only going to survive if (1) operating systems and apps have the
software to read it and (2) type designers choose to write it. With
the muscle of Microsoft behind it, there is little doubt that
ClearType is here to stay.
** Technically, they were not the same font. They were different
fonts of the same typeface. People commonly use the word "font" as if
it were synonymous with typeface. Technically, the typeface is the
design itself, and the font is the program that renders it. Type
geeks are careful to maintain the distinction.
It derives from a similar pre-computer distinction in which the
typeface was the design and the font was the collection of lead bits
that would print it. In the old days, each font was a specific size
as well. That changed with computers, when fonts became scalable.
(That actually preceded digital fonts by a decade or two, during
which fonts were filmstrip negatives which could be sized by lenses
in the machine that were programmed to move to an fro.)
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