Best Of
Google Fonts: Your Questions, Answered
I think we need to distinguish unlicensed font use by people who want everything for free, so will pirate rather than purchase font licenses, from that by people who want to test drive fonts before committing to buying them. The former is a hopeless case that no amount of good will or generosity on the part of font makers will positively change; this kind of pirate was all over alt.binaries.fonts in 1993 and every warez site, forum and sinkhole since. The latter is a business opportunity that we've mostly failed to come up with a good way to address for the past twenty years: how to make it legitimate for designers to test drive fonts to the comp stage, without this being abused, while ensuring that generated value is partaken of by the people who make the fonts. This last point is important, because if a design agency uses fonts in comps to get a job, it isn't only the font they end up using for the project -- often months down the line, often not even one of the fonts used in the original bid work -- that contributes to the financial benefit they derive.
Recently, we've seen the introduction of reasonable looking test drive mechanisms, which if widely adopted by font makers would in theory completely remove the justification for any unlicensed font use in such scenarios. The problem with such mechanisms just now, though, is that the biggest of them are linked to subscription software models that may ultimately be more damaging to the livelihood of individual type designers than the unlicensed font use they aim to reduce. As with so much of the topics of speculation in this thread, WE DON'T KNOW.
Recently, we've seen the introduction of reasonable looking test drive mechanisms, which if widely adopted by font makers would in theory completely remove the justification for any unlicensed font use in such scenarios. The problem with such mechanisms just now, though, is that the biggest of them are linked to subscription software models that may ultimately be more damaging to the livelihood of individual type designers than the unlicensed font use they aim to reduce. As with so much of the topics of speculation in this thread, WE DON'T KNOW.
Social Proof and Type
Ray, I agree that pirated fonts & software can help build demand for properly licensed fonts & software, and that the RIAA's methods do not constitute a wild success we should all be emulating. But I have a hard time picturing the people who frequent pirate sites caring much about subtle, incremental enhancements of typographic quality, even if they knew (and how would they know?) that they could have a later, more refined version of the face they're about to steal, if only they were willing to pay for it.
Of course, there's the separate problem of designers who do care about their work and about typographic quality, but who think they're being good neighbors when they share the fonts they license. And maybe they would care that the new version of X has some nifty improvements. But that wouldn't stop them sharing round the old one. I don't think this is winnable. I've had earnest conversations with friends of mine who have offered me free typefaces, explaining that by so doing, they're hurting people like me. I don't think they walked away thinking, "I shouldn't share fonts anymore. It's wrong." I think they walked away thinking, "I shouldn't share fonts with Max anymore. He gets weird about it."
The only model that seem to make sense to me is to assume that a certain portion of the market for your typefaces is just not going to pay for them, and that you need to work to make your overall market big enough that you can get by on the legitimate portion. If a lot of people are stealing your fonts, that probably means a lot of them are paying for them, too.
Of course, there's the separate problem of designers who do care about their work and about typographic quality, but who think they're being good neighbors when they share the fonts they license. And maybe they would care that the new version of X has some nifty improvements. But that wouldn't stop them sharing round the old one. I don't think this is winnable. I've had earnest conversations with friends of mine who have offered me free typefaces, explaining that by so doing, they're hurting people like me. I don't think they walked away thinking, "I shouldn't share fonts anymore. It's wrong." I think they walked away thinking, "I shouldn't share fonts with Max anymore. He gets weird about it."
The only model that seem to make sense to me is to assume that a certain portion of the market for your typefaces is just not going to pay for them, and that you need to work to make your overall market big enough that you can get by on the legitimate portion. If a lot of people are stealing your fonts, that probably means a lot of them are paying for them, too.
Social Proof and Type
I'm not convinced that the sharing of fonts doesn't sometimes result in significant sales. I've seen situations where a pirated something resulted in a sale. A graphic, an application, a font, somehow makes its way into a project. Someone notices that it hasn't been purchased and it's either replaced with something else or a license is purchased.
File sharing is part of the natural flow that's developed over the last couple of decades. It's not something that happens despite of the system, it's part of the system. Part of your earnings comes as a result of file sharing. True, part of your earnings may be lost as well, but it's the circle of life ... like in the Little Mermaid or whatever.
I've seen a situation where an expensive, application plugin spread through an office, became part of the workflow and resulted in a lot of sales that probably wouldn't have been approved otherwise. I think that's just reality. The last thing I want to do is follow in the footsteps of the movie and music industry. At least customers don't despise the font industry and I think we should keep it that way. File sharing is old; it's established. People know there's a legitimate way to get movies and music and they quire aware which method they've chosen. Why inform people about something they already know? Redirect that effort and give people a reason to buy. Then you don't come across as condescending. Even if your efforts to discourage sharing don;t turn off everyone, they'll at least turn off someone.
I think there's enough hate for the RIAA & MPAA that any anti-sharing effort might attract some of that stink. These efforts have, in the past, turned into objects of ridicule. Home taping is killing fonts.
Perhaps a way to encourage purchases is regular updates. Maybe someone can torrent the 2006 version of the font. Perhaps the 2013 version with old-style numerals and contextual swashes contemporary auto-hinting hasn't made the rounds. The only convenient way to get the new version is to buy it. The flow of old data, encouraging the sale of new data. It's beautiful, man.
Jeez, I can't really go around telling people that there are good reasons to purchase my fonts. Really? Like what? I'm never going to "go after" someone for using a pirated font. They're easy to get, cost nothing. They're digital copies, just as good as the real thing. Instead of making up reasons for buying fonts, isn't it better to actually make reasons? Keep improving them and making the old versions obsolete.
File sharing is part of the natural flow that's developed over the last couple of decades. It's not something that happens despite of the system, it's part of the system. Part of your earnings comes as a result of file sharing. True, part of your earnings may be lost as well, but it's the circle of life ... like in the Little Mermaid or whatever.
I've seen a situation where an expensive, application plugin spread through an office, became part of the workflow and resulted in a lot of sales that probably wouldn't have been approved otherwise. I think that's just reality. The last thing I want to do is follow in the footsteps of the movie and music industry. At least customers don't despise the font industry and I think we should keep it that way. File sharing is old; it's established. People know there's a legitimate way to get movies and music and they quire aware which method they've chosen. Why inform people about something they already know? Redirect that effort and give people a reason to buy. Then you don't come across as condescending. Even if your efforts to discourage sharing don;t turn off everyone, they'll at least turn off someone.
I think there's enough hate for the RIAA & MPAA that any anti-sharing effort might attract some of that stink. These efforts have, in the past, turned into objects of ridicule. Home taping is killing fonts.
Perhaps a way to encourage purchases is regular updates. Maybe someone can torrent the 2006 version of the font. Perhaps the 2013 version with old-style numerals and contextual swashes contemporary auto-hinting hasn't made the rounds. The only convenient way to get the new version is to buy it. The flow of old data, encouraging the sale of new data. It's beautiful, man.
Jeez, I can't really go around telling people that there are good reasons to purchase my fonts. Really? Like what? I'm never going to "go after" someone for using a pirated font. They're easy to get, cost nothing. They're digital copies, just as good as the real thing. Instead of making up reasons for buying fonts, isn't it better to actually make reasons? Keep improving them and making the old versions obsolete.
Google Fonts: Your Questions, Answered
Dave:
Pablo:
You are saying that if someone's font doesn't get famous, then people should take matters into their own hands and steal it for them. What if the thieves make a mistake, or decide not to follow the rules defining obscurity. :)Obscurity is a bigger problem then convincing people to pay.
Have you ever been part of even one of those? You must then have data that shows unlicensed user suits are a great business model.And unlicensed users are a great business model, you sue them.
Pablo:
But does the entire consumer society's planned obsolescence "beat" has anything whatsoever to do with type? Take Helvetica......entire consumer society is dancing to the "planned obsolescence" beat, and this planned obsolescence is key to keep the factories open
can someone explain the origin of the os/2 table's name?
Microsoft and Apple cross-licensed TrueType and TrueImage in mid-1989, with the public announcement in September 1989 at the Seybold Conference. In 1989, Apple was still refining much of what was to be called TrueType (it was codenamed Royal at the time.) Microsoft had a significant amount of input that we provided to Apple before we both shipped—Apple in late 1991 and Microsoft in April of 1992 (Windows 3.1).
In the 1989 timeframe, Microsoft was fully committed to developing OS/2. I was working on the fonts for OS/2 at the time, and we initially got Royal running on OS/2. Right when we started working with Apple, the metadata—mostly in the hhea table—was targeted for Mac OS 6. One of my first tasks with Royal was to figure out how the metadata we needed for OS/2 and Windows could be mapped to the Macintosh values. Ultimately we couldn’t map them all, so we notified Apple that we planned to add two additional tables to the Royal spec—OS/2 and WIN (Microsoft had to capitalize the names of our tables.) Because the design of fonts between OS/2 and Windows was very similar (the same folks at Microsoft did most of the graphics for both OS/2 and Windows—with some input from IBM based on their FOCA values) we decided to consolidate the OS/2 and WIN tables into just one table—OS/2. This is why the spec says “…a set of metrics that are required by OS/2 and Windows.” The parting with IBM occurred later in 1990. Microsoft had already made enough fonts using the OS/2 table that we decided it would be too expensive to rename the table to the WIN table. At this point we ported the TrueType code to the Windows 3.0 codebase, and we eventually shipped it as Windows 3.1.
Incidentally, in this same timeframe (late 80’s), IBM made the decision that they would not be supporting TrueType in their version of OS/2, instead they would be using Adobe’s ATM. Also, the original motivation of FreeType, as I understand it, was to bring TrueType to the OS/2 platform.
Ultimately the OS/2 table has become somewhat of a catch-all for additional bits of data, which is why we are now on the 6th version of the table.
In the 1989 timeframe, Microsoft was fully committed to developing OS/2. I was working on the fonts for OS/2 at the time, and we initially got Royal running on OS/2. Right when we started working with Apple, the metadata—mostly in the hhea table—was targeted for Mac OS 6. One of my first tasks with Royal was to figure out how the metadata we needed for OS/2 and Windows could be mapped to the Macintosh values. Ultimately we couldn’t map them all, so we notified Apple that we planned to add two additional tables to the Royal spec—OS/2 and WIN (Microsoft had to capitalize the names of our tables.) Because the design of fonts between OS/2 and Windows was very similar (the same folks at Microsoft did most of the graphics for both OS/2 and Windows—with some input from IBM based on their FOCA values) we decided to consolidate the OS/2 and WIN tables into just one table—OS/2. This is why the spec says “…a set of metrics that are required by OS/2 and Windows.” The parting with IBM occurred later in 1990. Microsoft had already made enough fonts using the OS/2 table that we decided it would be too expensive to rename the table to the WIN table. At this point we ported the TrueType code to the Windows 3.0 codebase, and we eventually shipped it as Windows 3.1.
Incidentally, in this same timeframe (late 80’s), IBM made the decision that they would not be supporting TrueType in their version of OS/2, instead they would be using Adobe’s ATM. Also, the original motivation of FreeType, as I understand it, was to bring TrueType to the OS/2 platform.
Ultimately the OS/2 table has become somewhat of a catch-all for additional bits of data, which is why we are now on the 6th version of the table.
Font Aid VII: The Philippines
Grant, would you be able to share numbers about how much money the various font aids have raised for their respective causes? I've always been curious about the balance between the work/marketing side of these projects and the actual good brought to a cause. Would it be worth it for me to spend a hour designing a glyph or just to donate an hour of my rate directly to a charity.
Social Proof and Type
I stopped buying movies in part because I got sick of the insulting warnings at the beginning telling me to not pirate the movie I just paid for. This idea is even worse warnings; it pressures paying customers to identify themselves so that they aren’t assumed to be pirates. That’s not going to stimulate positive feelings toward the type industry. And it’s not going to discourage piracy any more than Monotype’s lame comic books have, because it’s just as ugly and ham-handed.
The reason prices are dropping is that the number of people designing type is growing faster than the demand for type. No amount of social proof will shrink the number of typefaces on sale. Facebook badges won’t convince design clients to pay high prices for specialty licenses or custom type when they can use cheaper alternatives.More and more we are moving towards the possibility of the App Store type devaluation. There's a lot of reasons for this, but one is because there is not any social proof that people are actually purchasing fonts and that they value them, our ability to request prices that we feel are acceptable for our work or are acceptable to remain in business will no longer remain.
Richard: A Dutch text face
Jasper, I wish you wouldn't quote me to Nick when I'm actually trying to make a point similar to his.
I personally don't agree with James P. that Sensato Serif and Sans are "ripoffs"; I think that's much too strong a word, and I don't believe that's your intent. But while it's easy to find small points of difference with Lexicon—larger counters in a & e and bigger loop in the g; deeper departures, longer descenders, open juncture in the k, and so on—it's equally easy to see that the overall proportions, rhythms, and color are very, very similar. And, while I think it's very nicely drawn, I just don't see any sort of new idea here that makes it your own. I'm not calling you a thief. But I'm saying that what you've got here is a slight variation on a classic face by a living designer, and that it doesn't seem to add anything individual, anything particular to you, to justify its existence. I think that's what a lot of us are saying. And you don't seem inclined to listen.
I personally don't agree with James P. that Sensato Serif and Sans are "ripoffs"; I think that's much too strong a word, and I don't believe that's your intent. But while it's easy to find small points of difference with Lexicon—larger counters in a & e and bigger loop in the g; deeper departures, longer descenders, open juncture in the k, and so on—it's equally easy to see that the overall proportions, rhythms, and color are very, very similar. And, while I think it's very nicely drawn, I just don't see any sort of new idea here that makes it your own. I'm not calling you a thief. But I'm saying that what you've got here is a slight variation on a classic face by a living designer, and that it doesn't seem to add anything individual, anything particular to you, to justify its existence. I think that's what a lot of us are saying. And you don't seem inclined to listen.
Questions re. generating ttf in Fontlab
It would be difficult to interpret the first line of Apple’s documentation on the subject, “The 'hdmx' table is used only with fonts intended for use on the Macintosh platform”, as if it was 'added to the TT spec by MS.' Perhaps, they decided to adopt it along with the rest of the TT spec?
A truer history of HDMX goes thus: in 1986 I was having trouble getting hinting to work at Bitstream until I figured out I was trying to do the impossible. One can hint from the outside in (from edges to center of glpyh), to preserve linearitity. But any x-symetrical glyph with a central feature is at risk of assymetry. A, T, V and many others will assymetrically render or, the glyph will not balance in its width. The smaller the Latin ppm size, the more Latin type torture…
So I did an experiment (on Times), where I changed the hierarchies from hinting outside-in to left-right hinting, or whatever was best for each glyph, busting the programers pinkies to allow my last hint to move that set width to whatever pixel I hinted it to be on at each and every size in each and every glyph. When the proofs came out, the fighting started because no one had seen a jagged waterfall in 20 years, (which I don’t have time to explain).
The fonts hinted left to right read better on the screen, I knew wysiwyg was not the end of bitmaps, so I knew I was right, but I lost. The hinting heirarchies were to be linear and an army of bitmap editors were recruited to edit the resulting bitmaps to client orders.
In 1990 I didn’t have an army behind me to hint the first TT production fonts, and there were to be no bitmaps embedded. I was given a manual and a hinting tool, a mistake in itself, but Apple also told me to make the best bitmaps possible from these TT outlines. Once in the tool, I couldn’t find index points for origin and set width.
“Yes I want to hint them,” I said quietly. There was no fighting, the index numbers in TT, for origin and set width, were added there for me. I hinted both ways (on Times again), and showed in fledgling OS7, how one could get "perfect" aliased screen fonts — or linearity. Two sets of hints were impossible at the time. They chose wisely and the HDMX table was added by Apple as a result of a need I proved and proofed, before MS was even disclosed as far as I know.
Around 2004, after ClearType was done, I got a new version of VTT to do some hint experimentation. I found hinting of the advance width disabled and took it was a sign to give up on x, entirely:) But I asked anyway...
A truer history of HDMX goes thus: in 1986 I was having trouble getting hinting to work at Bitstream until I figured out I was trying to do the impossible. One can hint from the outside in (from edges to center of glpyh), to preserve linearitity. But any x-symetrical glyph with a central feature is at risk of assymetry. A, T, V and many others will assymetrically render or, the glyph will not balance in its width. The smaller the Latin ppm size, the more Latin type torture…
So I did an experiment (on Times), where I changed the hierarchies from hinting outside-in to left-right hinting, or whatever was best for each glyph, busting the programers pinkies to allow my last hint to move that set width to whatever pixel I hinted it to be on at each and every size in each and every glyph. When the proofs came out, the fighting started because no one had seen a jagged waterfall in 20 years, (which I don’t have time to explain).
The fonts hinted left to right read better on the screen, I knew wysiwyg was not the end of bitmaps, so I knew I was right, but I lost. The hinting heirarchies were to be linear and an army of bitmap editors were recruited to edit the resulting bitmaps to client orders.
In 1990 I didn’t have an army behind me to hint the first TT production fonts, and there were to be no bitmaps embedded. I was given a manual and a hinting tool, a mistake in itself, but Apple also told me to make the best bitmaps possible from these TT outlines. Once in the tool, I couldn’t find index points for origin and set width.
“Yes I want to hint them,” I said quietly. There was no fighting, the index numbers in TT, for origin and set width, were added there for me. I hinted both ways (on Times again), and showed in fledgling OS7, how one could get "perfect" aliased screen fonts — or linearity. Two sets of hints were impossible at the time. They chose wisely and the HDMX table was added by Apple as a result of a need I proved and proofed, before MS was even disclosed as far as I know.
Around 2004, after ClearType was done, I got a new version of VTT to do some hint experimentation. I found hinting of the advance width disabled and took it was a sign to give up on x, entirely:) But I asked anyway...
The state of Typedrawers
Things seem to be working well at TypeDrawers. Last fall you (the users) chipped in $1,025 to keep the site running. $390 of that was spent to modify the backend to handle real names. The rest has since been spent on hosting fees. If you feel that your donation was well spent please chip in again this year. Donations can be sent via Paypal to james.puckett@gmail.com. If you would rather send a check contact me directly and I will give you my address.
Vanilla seems to be working well as a hosting provider. The site runs well most of the time. Vanilla does not have some of the flashy features that other forum platforms offer, but it also doesn’t go down as often as other platforms. There were some short outages a few months ago when Vanilla was hit with a massive DDOS attack, but that was fixed with a change of IP address.
Spam is not a problem. Several spambots register every day, but between Askimet and my own reviews of the user logs I’m able to ban them all. Monitoring the spambots rarely takes me more than five minutes a day—sometimes I spend an extra five adding a wildcard ban for some obscure free email service in China or Russia.
The one thing I want to fix is that the mobile version of the theme does not currently use the web fonts donated by Webtype, Okay Type, and Bold Monday. This is something they have to do and I have asked them for a quote on the cost of copy/pasting all six lines of CSS code to make it happen. If anybody has any requests for other changes and features now is the time to bring it up.
Vanilla seems to be working well as a hosting provider. The site runs well most of the time. Vanilla does not have some of the flashy features that other forum platforms offer, but it also doesn’t go down as often as other platforms. There were some short outages a few months ago when Vanilla was hit with a massive DDOS attack, but that was fixed with a change of IP address.
Spam is not a problem. Several spambots register every day, but between Askimet and my own reviews of the user logs I’m able to ban them all. Monitoring the spambots rarely takes me more than five minutes a day—sometimes I spend an extra five adding a wildcard ban for some obscure free email service in China or Russia.
The one thing I want to fix is that the mobile version of the theme does not currently use the web fonts donated by Webtype, Okay Type, and Bold Monday. This is something they have to do and I have asked them for a quote on the cost of copy/pasting all six lines of CSS code to make it happen. If anybody has any requests for other changes and features now is the time to bring it up.