macOS/Monotype Baskerville

André G. Isaak
André G. Isaak Posts: 632
in Type Business
I just noticed something very odd while poking around Big Sur. While this might not be new, it was the first time that I’d noticed that the version of Monotype Baskerville included with macOS includes support for Roman, Greek, Cyrillic, and Deseret.

This last one has me genuinely perplexed. If someone says "we've got Latin, Greek and Cyrillic, let's pick one more" what would possess someone to pick Deseret? From a cost/benefit standpoint this simply makes no sense to me....

Possible explanations?

Comments

  • George Thomas
    George Thomas Posts: 645
    Because Microsoft did it?

    From Wikipedia: "All computers running Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system or newer can display the entire Deseret alphabet Unicode range as the glyphs are included in the Segoe UI Symbol font."


  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 632
    But Apple Symbols already contained Deseret, and that was introduced six years before Windows 7.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,992
    My guess is that Monotype was commissioned to expand Monotype Baskerville to cover Deseret for books on the early history of LDS. And Apple licensed the Deseret because Apple likes spending money on type licenses.
  • JoyceKetterer
    JoyceKetterer Posts: 812
    edited December 2020
    @James Puckett I've seen apple's contract for font licenses.  They pay very little by any large company standard – even for internal use.  For this pittance they expect to own the fonts in all but name (they want to be able to modify at will and use them in any and all platforms).  They also do all this while insisting on their own contract "so you don't need to hire a lawyer" and have a clause in the contract stating that you participated in the drafting.  Everything about the process with apple is exploitive and bad for the font industry.
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 632
    Wow. I'd fortunately only looked at the regular. Not at the algorithmically generated, overlaps not removed, bold weights!

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