Registering foundry code with Microsoft

AbrahamLee

I've been contemplating whether or not this is useful and/or necessary, but I'm thinking that I ought to register a 4-char ID my foundry with Microsoft so it appears on their vendor list. Any thoughts on the matter? Is there any point in doing that?

Dave Crossland

I recommend it for people contributing fonts to Google Fonts, but honestly I don't know how useful it really is... 

Thomas Phinney

In theory, it allows for things like font management apps to display the foundry for a font very easily. How many real world things are actually using it, is another question.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Mine is three characters. Does that make me special?

AbrahamLee

@Dave Crossland”, why do you recommend doing it to contributors to Google Fonts?

@Thomas Phinney”, that’s exactly why I thought to ask the question. I was wondering what purpose, legal or otherwise, it really has.

@Hrant H. Papazian, it makes you very special The one I would prefer to use is also three letters, but someone on Microsoft’s vendor list is already using it, so I’ll have to pick a new one. And if you didn’t know, I did notice at least one vendor with a 2-letter ID lol

Belleve Invis

I think maybe you should contact @Peter Constable...

John Hudson

@SiDaniels used to look after registering vendor codes, but he's in a different team now, so I'm not sure who is currently responsible.

Peter Constable

See this page: https://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/vendorlist.aspx

Now, the page mentions an email address that is missing. I'll follow up on that.

AbrahamLee

@Peter Constable, I’m aware of the page and couldn’t find the email it said would be on the other page. Do you think that registering my foundry is a good idea, useful, or the like? Thanks for fielding my questions.

Jeff Kellem

Peter Constable said:

See this page: https://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/vendorlist.aspx

Now, the page mentions an email address that is missing. I'll follow up on that.

The mention of an email address links to the following page:
https://www.microsoft.com/typography/AboutMST.mspx
The email address is listed at the bottom, in the How to contact Microsoft Typography section, though not as a link.

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

Well, I registered just now. We'll see what happens. 

SiDaniels

There are no 3 letter codes, for vendor IDs a space is a letter. 

SiDaniels

I think the vendor IDs made more sense in the pre-Internet era, and before vendor URL fields were added to the format. Ali on the Windows font team maintains the list now. If you have trouble contacting him let me know. 

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

SiDaniels said:

There are no 3 letter codes, for vendor IDs a space is a letter. 

Now changing my foundry name to:

AbrahamLee

Thanks for the insight @SiDaniels. So the email address on the other page (not the vendor list page) is the correct one to send information to?

Deleted Account

Well yes, I see the problem we missed... thanks. With traditional Fonts, if 10 foundries supplied individual styles of one family, each one could easily be credited per style. 

So we will add this to our proposal for variations, as that is No longer possible. Should we call it the variable foundry tag, or what?

James Puckett

I’ve been using a three letter code (DTF) for years. Does the FDK just add a space when fonts are compiled?

Dave Crossland

D. Epar ted said:

Well yes, I see the problem we missed... thanks. With traditional Fonts, if 10 foundries supplied individual styles of one family, each one could easily be credited per style. 

What families have done that?

Thomas Phinney

I can't remember the family, but there is one family in the Adobe type library where the two different styles in the same family are from different (original metal) foundries! Weird but true.

I am not sure that would result in different ultimate foundry codes in the digital version, since I think they were both issued by the same digital foundry.

This would of course be easier if I could remember the family. German, early 20th century, I think?

André G. Isaak

Akzidenz Grotesk would be an example, though that hasn't been part of the Adobe library for some time. Some of the styles were from Theinhardt (which Berthold had acquired), some by Schelter & Giesecke, and others by Berthold.

Kent Lew

Does the FDK just add a space when fonts are compiled?

Yes: "makeotfexe [WARNING] <TestFont-Regular> Vendor name too short. Padded automatically to 4 characters. [features 2955]"

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

Wow, same day service!

AbrahamLee

Got mine registered, too (MTFO)! I'm official now

Shahab Siavash

I did this a few months ago and mine is also a 3 letter one, also with 2 S in it (SHS). So I think I'm very special! Less than 2 letter codes of course

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

You mean SHS␢.

Shahab Siavash

Is this happening to you or is it just me? Sometimes all the typography/font vendor section goes like this:
(This link right now: https://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/vendorlist.aspx)

George Thomas

It is down right now. I tried several different ways.

Shahab Siavash

George Thomas said:

It is down right now. I tried several different ways.

Thanks. I had seen this before a couple of times. Back then I thought they moved or removed the links, but apparently it is going to be like this forever! 

GregHitchcock

Just a quick background on why the Font Vendor Identification exists in the OS/2 table of the font.

During the implementation of TrueType into Windows 3.1, there were very few fonts available on the Windows platform. An application may request a font based on a reference in a document or to match a printer font, and it might not be available on the platform.

To help resolve this problem, several fields were added to the OS/2 table to help with matching fonts. This includes the sFamilyClass, panose, achVendID, ulUnicodeRangeN, and ulCodePageRangeN, as well as other unique metrics for the font and the typeface name. These values were not intended to be human readable, but instead to be integrated into the matching algorithm.

We added Font Vendor Identification to help the system refine matches where other metrics might be similar.

When Windows 3.1 shipped, we were pleasantly surprised at the number of fonts that quickly became available, and ultimately the need to find font matches quickly diminished.

I’m not sure of the present day value of this field, as the original intention is not a common use case, but there are possibly reasonable other uses of this value.

As Si mentioned, other values in the name table are more useful for human consumption.

AbrahamLee

Thats very interesting, @GregHitchcock! Thank you for sharing that. 

Aaron Bell

BTW, FYI for anyone trying to access the page, it has been restored.