Comments on: Comments on 19123

Post number 19123

kirkaracha — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:05:02 -0800

"Microsoft's TrueType core fonts for the Web are no longer available for download" [via kottke] This is going to disappoint The Official Women of Wrestling.

By: stevengarrity

stevengarrity — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:20:43 -0800

Is it because they are shipping all of these fonts with every OS by default now? What about IE on Mac OSX - do you have Verdana, Georgia, Arial Black, etc?

By: Fabulon7

Fabulon7 — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:27:42 -0800

With every OS? Do you mean with every copy of Internet Explorer?
I can't help but wonder if they planned this all along--release a bunch of fonts for free, tell everyone to design websites with them because they look so nice on screen and they're free and now, suddenly, surprise, it seems you have to have Internet Explorer to get them...and people that don't use IE are gonna be looking at some weird looking sites.
Jerks.

By: briank

briank — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:29:28 -0800

Seems to me these fonts have been included with Windows for some time now (I recall them being standard with the first release of Windows 98). It's not a browser thing at all.

By: insomnyuk

insomnyuk — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:30:44 -0800

and people that don't use IE are gonna be looking at some weird looking sites. Not if you use CSS.

By: sawks

sawks — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:31:13 -0800

they ship with windows and mac os, both of which have ie as the default browser its the open source crowd who are being cut off by this move, and i think it sucks about as much as the fonts are good (they're great)

By: bobo123

bobo123 — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:40:31 -0800

Funny, I thought fonts weren't copywritable, couldn't anyone distribute them? Then I looked around google and read that this didn't apply to scalable fonts, which are technically software. Bit-maps are okay to distribute though.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:40:40 -0800

heh. owow. comic sans. heh.

By: nicwolff

nicwolff — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:44:12 -0800

Microsoft is not worried about open-source desktops. More likely, this is Microsoft's first strike at Apple. Will Mac OS X 10.2 come with these fonts, or not? Not if Apple's default browser isn't IE, I bet... Apple's been demoing the XServe management tool using Mozilla — this is Microsoft saying "Hey! Cut that out!" Of course, we designers shouldn't be relying on any particular fonts, but let's face it, Verdana is the best-looking, most legible face for Web body text. And if many Web pages no longer look as good under Mac OS X as under Windows, users won't care whose fault it is.

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:49:14 -0800

I'm betting Microsoft just got cheezed off by utilities that would automatically download the fonts from the Microsoft website and install them on a Linux machine. These utilities are handy, but I agree that they are rather rude. In my opinion, Microsoft is just being rude back. (Secretly, I loathe the Georgia and Verdana fonts...)

By: quonsar

quonsar — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:58:08 -0800

tahoma rocks!

By: jkaczor

jkaczor — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:00:43 -0800

I love Verdana. As someone who tries to read everything on-screen, I try to not "print" materials. A laptop with Windows XP, ClearType and Verdana is about the ultimate in readability. However, I'm sure these fonts will continue to ship with IE, and Office on whichever platforms IE supports... Hmmm, the "unix utility" automatically downloading and installing them could be a big reason for their removal, it was my understanding that TrueType was completely locked up, and actually using TrueType on a non-licensed system was problematic ... Nope, I was wrong, it's Apple that owns the various TrueType patents, and TrueType is ok as long as you don't use embedded hinting, but... oh well... typical Microsoft, there fonts for god's sake, freely available for years, now gone...

By: Fabulon7

Fabulon7 — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:01:15 -0800

Georgia is one of the worst fonts ever. I don't much like Verdana either, but at least with these things being free and readily accessible and available to everyone, you could half predict what stuff would look like without having to go the evil hardcoded font route...mind you I guess linux users with dual boot can get these fonts off their Win partition. Unless the EULA says that the fonts can only be used in conjunction with a MS OS.
zsazsa: What's wrong with a utility that auto-downloads and installs something that MS is giving away? That's how they want you to upgrade your OS and software--auto-installing 4GB service packs and critical updates from microsoft.com

By: boardman

boardman — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:03:49 -0800

An interesting sidebar to this is that the new Quartz rendering technology in OS X makes Verdana look like Arial and Georgia look like Times in IE 5.2. This kind of makes designing with these Microsoft-crafted fonts seem kind of dumb when viewing them through their lens.

By: VulcanMike

VulcanMike — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:12:23 -0800

The real question is how the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling will feel about this development.

By: Danelope

Danelope — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:32:50 -0800

Fabulon7: Georgia is one of the worst fonts ever. Good Christ, man. Have you been paying attention to the fonts that exist in the world? Fonts like this, this, and this are being distributed on the Net, and you're worried about a fairly readable serif font? Eesh. (Images via Fontastic)

By: devbrain

devbrain — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:44:00 -0800

:-( # dpkg --purge msttcorefonts

By: Fabulon7

Fabulon7 — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 11:14:50 -0800

Danelope: okay, okay, I give.

By: Hjorth

Hjorth — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 11:29:05 -0800

If it means fewer people using the devastatingly horrid MS Comic Sans, I say amen. My resentment for this typeface is of an almost neurotic character; in fact, being on the high school board, I insisted on switching my school's official choice of font from Comic Sans to the many times more appealing Georgia. I hate you, Comic Sans.

By: Dark Messiah

Dark Messiah — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 11:33:42 -0800

You guys take your fonts way too seriously. You're scaring the children. Take a freakin' walk once-in-a-while. *sheesh*

By: shmeggy

shmeggy — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 12:03:05 -0800

Perhaps most horrifying are the instances in which MS Comic Sans finds its way into what is supposed to be professional communication (corporate newsletters, PowerPoint presentations and such). How did a font that, at best, belongs in a luncheonette menu or on a wall of first-grade projects gain such acceptance? I mean, really. At least go for Hattenschweiler.

By: metrocake

metrocake — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 12:11:54 -0800

I beg to differ about Verdana. I like Verdana, but on a Mac, it looks like ass in CSS with a pixel size of 12 and above. Here, have a look... (And this site section is a pretty groovy resource, as well, type hounds!)

By: Danelope

Danelope — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 12:22:29 -0800

Hjorth: I agree. I would shed no tears were someone to write an e-mail worm whose sole purpose were to delete Comic Sans MS and all variants from every infected PC.

By: D.C.

D.C. — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 12:48:09 -0800

Bobo123, all font files are covered by copyright, even bitmaps. But, under US law, the look or style is not. A competing font house can hire a designer to recreate a font from scratch, using print samples of the original font as a visual reference. I suppose in the days of metal type they could also look at cast originals, so as long as they weren't pirating the font by making molds from those pieces. To protect their designs, some companies have taken out patents. I just read Counterpunch: Making Type in the Sixteenth Century, Designing Typefaces Now, which I recommend to anyone interested in designing their own. There are many books on using type (many quite formula and boring), but very few really talk about the design process. Most abusers of Comic Sans are using Windows with it pre-installed, so its disappearance as a download won't help much. It's a shame that Trebuchet is down, though. It's my favorite MS product. I like it better than Verdana, especially when printed.

By: Down10

Down10 — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 12:50:06 -0800

Yes, I hate Comic Sans and Arial and Impact as much as the rest of you, but I found that page to be an invaluable resource to guiding users to get the latest versions of the now standard Web fonts like Verdana and Georgia (some of the best fonts ever designed for both screen and print use) for multiple OSes. It's actions like these that fuel my spite for Microsoft and their unfriendly business tactics.

By: Eamon

Eamon — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 13:16:07 -0800

MS was already making things difficult for the OS crowd by only offering their fonts as either a "self-extracting executable" or stuffit archive. I could probably get by without Georgia, Verdana, et. al., but I would really miss Andale Mono. It's a shame that it's so difficult to create fonts that look good *at small sizes.* I would definitely like to see an open source project reproduce these fonts and make them really free. As far as I know, it's not illegal to reproduce a font as long as the "data points" and other information in the font file aren't duplicated. The only thing preventing anyone from reproducing these fonts is the effort involved. Thank goodness I already have these installed. Time to burn my fonts directory!

By: lotsofno

lotsofno — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 13:23:43 -0800

now, i know no one here just badmouthed my boy, Georgia.

By: Tacodog

Tacodog — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 13:41:39 -0800

At my last job, the support manuals for the software we sold were written in Comic Sans. This is in 2000 mind you. And our prices started at $10,000. The mind boggles.

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 14:09:54 -0800

I just emailed them to politely express my disappointment, and received an almost immediate response from a real person who said he was collecting feedback to send to his bosses. Details here. Send messages folks, they might change their minds. (And yes, I use that msttcorefonts package on Debian too).

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 14:24:37 -0800

Also, I must be a man of great influence, because they appear to have turned it back on...

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 14:32:47 -0800

They took it away again. Hmmm, something very screwy going on there.

By: fnord_prefect

fnord_prefect — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 15:01:46 -0800

down10: wtf is wrong with impact? it may be overused by imbeciles, but it's not even in the same class of horrible as comic sans.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 15:44:17 -0800

Even Comic Sans has its place ... which should only be in headline and display uses. When continuous type is set in Comic Sans, somebody is not using their mind. It's very simple. Do not use a display or decorative font for body text. They are not built for that. Indeed, the design impact of a display font is enhanced by its restrained use. It is certainly not the fault of the typeface that it is being mis-used.

By: thunder

thunder — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 16:50:31 -0800

It's a shame that Trebuchet is down, though. It's my favorite MS product. I like it better than Verdana, especially when printed. Love Trebuchet - not just because my site uses it, but because my friends and I actually built one in our yard out of scrap lumber - LOL - can shoot an old head of lettuce about 30 feet over our fence. Anyway - it's an interesting that these fonts are pretty much standards on the web - will this change things or will MS relent?

By: Monk

Monk — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 17:12:33 -0800

I noticed this earlier today when I realised my machine at work didn't have Andale Mono installed. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, especially when I saw this flashing at the bottom of the screen:

By: teem

teem — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 17:30:14 -0800

I agree with D.C. though - Trebuchet is definitely superior to most fonts, especially since it can be used for both headings and body text without too many problems. Excuse my lack of expertise, but is 'Gill Sans' among Microsoft's core font pack? 'Cause I'd hate to see that go...

By: Monk

Monk — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 17:37:54 -0800

teem: Nope. Gill Sans was never part of the core font pack, nor does it ship with Windows. Unlike OS X.

By: Down10

Down10 — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 17:55:33 -0800

I never said there was anything wrong with Impact, I'm just not particularly fond of it in use on Web sites. There's still no excuse for Comic Sans, though. It looks like ass in any form.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 19:45:12 -0800

You can still download the fonts here.

By: dg

dg — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:05:45 -0800

Fonts are still available as of now. My favourite font is Verdana also. It is one of the few fonts that can be used at almost any size without looking weird.

By: Lionfire

Lionfire — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:48:10 -0800

Erm... dg, would you mind telling us where they are "still available as of now", since the site still quite clearly states "Microsoft's TrueType core fonts for the Web are no longer available for download from www.microsoft.com", the files are missing from the download directory, and their license forbids unauthorised distribution?

By: dg

dg — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 00:34:10 -0800

I downloaded one of them earlier this afternoon from here (link obtained from iconomy's site) Otherwise, you could just follow the link three comments up ;-)

By: Lionfire

Lionfire — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 01:01:44 -0800

Yes, except those are older version of the fonts, and are also not able to be distributed "in any form that adds value to commercial products". This means they won't be able to be distibuted with any other operating system, including Linux. This wasn't a problem until Microsoft removed the ability for these people to download the fonts. The instant Microsoft contact The Internet Archive and have those files removed or they put up a robots.txt, you'll find you have a bunch of fonts that no future non-Microsoft users will have.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 01:11:49 -0800

dg, it's probably not wise to have a comment follow-up to a previous comment's title tag.

By: Cowboy_X

Cowboy_X — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 02:56:12 -0800

Blah blah, so the fonts are gone. I doubt they'll stop shipping with OS X any time soon (these MS/Apple relations rumors are totally overblown), and the open source kiddies always make do with something. There's a far more interesting topic that we're all overlooking: What happened to embedding fonts within web pages? Back in 99-ish, Netscape and MS introduced two incompatible methods of embedding fonts. The MS method still works, does Mozilla support the old Netscape 4 method or the MS method at all? Does the W3C have anything up their sleeve? Are we doomed to a future of Arial, Times, Verdana and a couple others? P.S. I think Comic Sans MS looks pretty decent at ultra small sizes; I like to use it as the typeface for inputs.

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 03:46:38 -0800

I think you would be hard-put to describe Debian linux as a "commercial" product - it's produced by volunteers for a not-for-profit, and given away.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 03:57:28 -0800

Someone should create Metafilter Verdana.

By: glenwood

glenwood — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 07:17:25 -0800

There is a strip mall here, with one of those signs that names the strip mall and lists all 10-odd stores within. It's gigantic, it's lit up, and it's in Comic Sans. And it makes me want to steer my car into a telephone pole and just end it all when I drive by it.

By: luriete

luriete — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 08:53:05 -0800

There is excellent continuing coverage of this issue (including the official word back from Microsoft legal & type departments) at Typographi.ca.

By: dg

dg — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 16:30:02 -0800

... won't be able to be distibuted with any other operating system, including Linux. Far be it from me to defend Microsoft, but don't they own the fonts? In that case, don't they have every right to choose where they are used, including the right to stop competing products using them for commercial gain? ... bunch of fonts that no future non-Microsoft users will have. Anyone can have and use them, they just can't use them for commercial gain any more.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:27:46 -0800

The fonts are still available (for now) at ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/drg/TrueType/ (via Zeldman).

By: Lionfire

Lionfire — Thu, 15 Aug 2002 20:58:17 -0800

Nope, the fonts can't be distributed with Debian, because their license is incompatible with DSFG. However, so long as they remain legally available for download, Debian users can use the msttcorefonts package to get and install them. And yes, Microsoft do own the fonts and it is their right to remove them from download. It's also my right to stop using them. Microsoft always pushed them as being the "core fonts for the web", but if they aren't easily available, they're not going to be a part of my contributions to the Interwebnet. I'm sure I won't be the only person rethinking the "core" of the web.