[HN Gopher] Where do fonts come from? This one business, mostly
___________________________________________________________________
Where do fonts come from? This one business, mostly
Author : kansaswriter
Score : 281 points
Date : 2023-08-27 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehustle.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehustle.co)
| qawwads wrote:
| A few words toward the end for the ellusive ai menace, but zero
| word for the real, already existing, open source fonts. Nowaday
| I'll consider IBM Plex, Mozilla Fira or even Google Roboto before
| Monotype Anything.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| For long text, sure.
|
| but most font are used for decorative use
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| Not least because Fira is really beautiful.
|
| Lato is another superb open licenced face.
| BLanen wrote:
| > In 1440, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press
|
| Well, it starts wrong. We've been printing for quite a while
| already and he didn't even invent removable lead type.
| hannes0 wrote:
| At least their name is well chosen
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Eye glasses & lens.
|
| Even bigger than fonts, one company has a virtual monopoly on all
| eye glasses and lens.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica
| innocenat wrote:
| I don't know. English fonts are used pretty much everywhere in
| the world. Luxottica, however, doesn't hold virtual monopoly in
| many regions.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| And Linux/Android is the most popular OS in the world and all
| of its included fonts are free (not using Monotype fonts).
|
| The article is conflating "where fonts come from" to imply
| meaning all fonts. But it's really meaning where all PAID
| fonts come from.
|
| Free fonts like Roboto, Inter, Open Sans etc are used
| significantly more than any single paid Monotype font.
|
| Back to eye glasses, I don't know anyone making free frame &
| lens at mass scale. That industry is all paid product.
| kyleyeats wrote:
| In a year you'll be able to use a custom new font for every
| project.
| jwilk wrote:
| Please don't editorialize submission titles.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| HN submitters are well-known for drilling down past official
| titles to expose the really valuable payload, reflected in
| their own title. Happens all the time. If you feel that the
| title is an egregious distortion, go ahead and flag it,
| otherwise live and let live. I personally do not have a problem
| with the current one because it drew my attention to the
| article, which helped me form an opinion.
| xeromal wrote:
| The title in it's current form tries to influence that
| opinion.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| This isn't even a title though. It'a a comment by OP. I can't
| even find the source for the claim that "one company
| basically owns every font." The title is "Where do fonts come
| from? This one business, mostly" but it does not make clear
| who actually owns the fonts on myfonts.com. I suspect that
| the creator retains the copyright, but the article does not
| say so. From the monotype website[0] it seems I'm correct. So
| not only is the title editorialized, it is wrong or at least
| misleading.
|
| [0]https://foundrysupport.monotype.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360048...
| j16sdiz wrote:
| This is against the guidelines :
|
| > Please don't do things to make titles stand out,
|
| > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize
| housemusicfan wrote:
| Sometimes people color outside the lines.
|
| Though I'm certain the hall monitors of HN have already
| reported this egregious violation, demanding swift action
| on a Sunday morning.
|
| The rest of us just keep reading. Live and let live.
| dcow wrote:
| You can live and let live while also politely pointing
| out that the title is annoying and cumbersome in its
| current form, and consequently against the guidelines.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Some headlines absolutely must be ''editorialized'' to
| give context and clarity to HN readers. To wit:
|
| https://www.alamy.com/woman-has-baby-satirical-magazine-
| priv...
|
| The guidelines are sturdy enough while also being elastic
| as needed. Live and let live.
| calmworm wrote:
| "... please use the original title, unless it is misleading
| or linkbait; don't editorialize" -- from the HN guidelines.
| The guidelines are what keeps HN from becoming ... something
| else.
| [deleted]
| replwoacause wrote:
| The site is completely unusable on iOS Safari
| kabr wrote:
| It helps to use the Reader View
| replwoacause wrote:
| Thanks, I tried that though and it just kept force reloading
| the page and wouldn't stay in Reader View for longer than a
| few seconds.
| CharlesW wrote:
| FWIW it works perfectly on iOS 17, with the caveat that I use
| 1Blocker and Rekt.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm surprised more people here haven't heard of them.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| It's definitely a TIL moment for me, and a mind-blowing one at
| that.
| strogonoff wrote:
| In the industry of big near-monopolies, let's support small indie
| type designers. I personally can't recommend enough Matthew
| Butterick's work, for example. The price is not prohibitive, the
| license is easy to understand, while fonts are very well made and
| receive occasional free updates.
| glogla wrote:
| MB is not just a knowledgeable about typography and fonts, he
| also published his online book using his own software he built
| in Racket. Definitely a true hacker!
| kstrauser wrote:
| I bought Berkeley Mono largely for that reason. First, it's a
| great font that I love using. Second, it's a passion project
| from a small shop that cares a whole awful lot for the work and
| doing it right.
| isanjay wrote:
| Can you list out the fonts you like ?
| blechinger wrote:
| I often default to one of the Iosevka variants.
| https://typeof.net/Iosevka/
| https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka
|
| I use a customized set for terminal/IDE and like Aile for
| documents. Etoile is neat. Feels typewriterish. All covered
| by the SIL Open Font License.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's not Iosevka (really, what else can come close except
| maybe Envy Code R), but I have recently discovered Victor
| Mono and think it an attractive programming font:
| https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/
| overvale wrote:
| Here are some of mine:
|
| https://mbtype.com/
|
| https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/
|
| https://tosche.net/fonts
|
| https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/
| jxf wrote:
| Not OP, but I like PragmataPro [0] by Fabrizio Schiavi and
| use it in my IDEs. I particularly appreciate his attention to
| glyphs in languages other than English, and how nice it looks
| (IMO) for console interfaces and box drawing [1].
|
| [0] https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/
|
| [1] https://fsd.it/wp-content/uploads/diagram.png.webp
| candiddevmike wrote:
| What's the difference between app and website aside from
| the huge price increase?
| jxf wrote:
| You'd have to ask Fabrizio. I assume desktop is the
| cheapest because it's just you, and app/website is more
| expensive because there's some nontrivial risk you expose
| the font files in a way that others can get them for
| free.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Of course you'll expose them. It's not a risk, it's how
| things work.
| caesil wrote:
| MyFonts is a very convenient marketplace. Perhaps the indie
| designers should band together and create something like that
| of their own.
| CharlesW wrote:
| MyFonts sells typefaces by hundreds of foundries and
| thousands of independent type designers.
|
| https://foundrysupport.monotype.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360028...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is a great and virtuous cycle, to name and do business
| with small publishers and artisans (!)
|
| reality check - do not expect to survive financially yourself
| in the tornado of modernity without a small niche to fit
| somewhere and security from elsewhere
| sph wrote:
| My experience with commercial fonts is not great: I have had
| PragmataPro in my wishlist for a decade. I then bought it, to
| discover, for some reason, KDE doesn't render it correctly and
| it's twice as bold as it should be. In GTK4 apps it is decent,
| but everywhere else it is not the same look of the official
| screenshots.
|
| Same with Berkeley Mono, which I got the free trial version and
| it is a little blurry in Emacs, that kind of peculiar
| blurriness of fonts that have never been tested on other OSes.
| Most fonts are perfect on Linux, so those commercial ones might
| require some tweaks to be compatible with other engines, and I
| don't see any font designer taking the time to test on Linux.
|
| So while I would want to support indie font designers, because
| of my "weird" environment, I should probably stick to the free
| ones that I can just swap out if they don't render correctly.
|
| It sucks to have spent EUR150 for a font that doesn't render
| well. I don't want to ask for a refund because it might one day
| work on my system and ages ago I used the pirated version,
| which incidentally worked just fine on Linux at the time.
|
| (Before anyone mentions my font stack is broken, I assure you
| it ain't, and it the closest to macOS': hidpi monitor, 2x
| scaling, grayscale aa, no hinting. Everything looks gorgeous,
| except those two commercial fonts)
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I have had PragmataPro in my wishlist for a decade. [...]
| KDE doesn 't render it correctly and it's twice as bold as it
| should be. In GTK4 apps it is decent, but everywhere else it
| is not the same look of the official screenshots._
|
| The typeface designer can't fix broken/inconsistent OS
| rendering. Still, I would've asked for a refund so the
| creator is aware and could avoid other potential customers.
| cschmidt wrote:
| Yes. If you ever find yourself buying a webfont for your latest
| website or logo, always see if you can buy it direct from the
| designer. Monotype takes a huge (like >50%) cut if I remember
| correctly.
|
| For example, my last project I used MD System from Mass Driver
| for the web fonts (https://mass-driver.com/typefaces/md-system)
| and Denton from Peregrin Studio
| (https://peregrinstudio.com/work/denton) for my logo.
| housemusicfan wrote:
| Are we supposed to be upset by this? That we're all slaves to Big
| Font?
|
| It happens that many of the free fonts are crap, and part of the
| reason Linux on the desktop never took hold was lack of good
| bundled fonts. As it turns out, good fonts cost money.
| Sunspark wrote:
| There are plenty of good free fonts.
|
| What was part of the problem was patent-encumbered rendering
| engines for a long time.
|
| Fonts weren't what held the desktop back, what held it back was
| that it just didn't have the resources that commercial
| enterprises were and are able to pour into their own efforts.
|
| With commercial, you have a manager in the boardroom that says
| here are the whiteboards of how it should look, now go make it
| and have it done by next week so marketing can tell everyone
| this is what they wanted. With open, you have a bunch of
| introverts who have to agree to talk to each other and not hate
| the other guy's idea too much.
| klodolph wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| Although I think part of the problem is just how much of a
| nightmare Fontconfig is. I dealt with fonts on Windows and
| macOS, and there were a ton of hoops you have to jump through
| if you want tight control over how you display text on-screen.
| But Linux was in a whole other realm altogether--you used
| Fontconfig to select your font, and Fontconfig is truly, truly
| awful.
|
| Yeah, I know what its capabilities are. But the best software
| which uses fonts on Linux tends to do so bypassing Fontconfig.
|
| It was slow, slow, slow getting good font rendering on Linux.
| pupppet wrote:
| Whenever I consider Linux, I notice the shitty fonts and wonder
| what are its other glaring omissions. Probably an ignorant
| thought, but I can't be alone.
| II2II wrote:
| Personally, my use of fonts are more utilitarian. In that
| context, the fonts shipped with a typical Linux distribution
| are perfectly usable and far from shitty. While I would
| expect someone who has more of an eye for design to have more
| discerning tastes, I would be surprised if many people shared
| an opinion as extreme as yours or mine. (I suspect that they
| would be more inclined to notice the quality of font
| rendering or missing favorite fonts than anything else.)
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > far from shitty
|
| In a world where Arial Illegible is the standard, I don't
| think we can complain too much.
|
| FOSS doesn't as a whole pay much attention to visual
| aspects, one reason so much of the software just doesn't
| look nice. E.g., GIMP.
| serf wrote:
| my experience migrating from win98/2k to linux was totally
| the opposite.
|
| linux distros were some of the first to use proper LCD
| hinting and anti-aliasing on the fonts, so they always looked
| buttery smooth and polished when compared to the Microsoft
| offering at the time.
|
| Funny how things shift around.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Especially in the past, but even also today, most Linux
| distributions have indeed installed by default shitty free
| fonts, which were the main reason why the GUI of a default
| Linux installation looked much uglier than that of a default
| Windows installation or of a default Mac OS installation.
|
| Nevertheless, the default fonts can be deleted and replaced
| with nice fonts, which can make any Linux look better than
| Windows or Mac OS.
|
| I have been using for the last 20 years only Linux on all my
| desktops and laptops, but since the very beginning I have
| never used the default Linux fonts, but I have always
| replaced them immediately with beautiful fonts.
|
| When I have started using Linux, it was much more difficult
| than today to find good free fonts, so I have bought many
| good typefaces from companies like Linotype, which no longer
| exists, because as mentioned in this article it has been
| bought by Monotype, or from Adobe, which appears to be the
| last big commercial vendor of typefaces which has not been
| bought yet by Monotype.
|
| Nowadays, it is much easier to find good free fonts.
| Especially for programming and CLI windows there are a lot of
| very good free fonts from which to choose.
|
| For proportional typefaces, it can be a little more difficult
| to find good free fonts, though there is always the solution
| to grab some fonts from Windows or Mac OS. I have stopped
| using Mac OS more than a decade ago, but I have still kept
| from it a Japanese typeface that I have liked and then I have
| continued to use on Linux, while from my last Windows I have
| kept Palatino Linotype for polytonic Greek.
|
| So if some people use shitty fonts on Linux, that is their
| fault, not of Linux, because it cannot be expected for a free
| product to include good licensed typefaces, like those whose
| price is included in that of a Windows license or Mac OS
| license.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Huh, well that's a new one. I use linux all the time, so I
| guess I don't know what non-shitty fonts look like?
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| The Ubuntu font for example is definitely not shitty -- it
| was designed at Dalton Maag and it is a considered piece of
| work that a lot of typographers rather like.
|
| It's definitely rather idiosyncratic, mind you.
|
| So I don't personally use it on Linux. I use Google's
| Roboto, which is close enough to Apple's later San
| Francisco (which shares some common heritage and some
| common modern touches) that I don't go insane when
| switching between the two!
|
| Roboto is again a considered bit of work by a highly
| competent designer.
|
| I don't have problems with either. If I did, I could use
| the Fira suite, which is lovely.
| benzin wrote:
| This is actually on my current todo list - replacing textedit
| with Helvetica to make notes on MacOS, with Featherpad and ???
| font on Debian. Didn't seem important but the default is so
| damn ugly.
| dfee wrote:
| I'm going to complain about cookie pop-ups, but _see_ me out:
| https://veed.io/view/1a675b8d-cbc2-4c24-b10f-f91f7a0b8cfe
|
| That stuttering is me trying to scroll. When I finally can, I've
| been subject to a 10s penalty.
| wredue wrote:
| That's not cookie pop ups. That's functional programming
| strategies poisoning the brains of developers causing them to
| believe that rewriting their page on every request is
| preferable because otherwise they have to think about "70,000
| page states".
|
| They're trading user experience for a mythical silver bullet of
| programming that some dude on medium told them was the holy
| grail and proved it using simple, horribly contrived anecdotes.
| poorlyknit wrote:
| > rewriting their page on every request
|
| That's not how virtual DOM works.
|
| EDIT: Also the concept of "virtual DOM" is way older than
| shitty websites themselves (was applied to native GUI stuff
| before JS was even a thing). What you're seeing is just a
| shitty website.
| gedy wrote:
| That page does not use React afaict, if that is what you are
| getting at.
| pwg wrote:
| With Ublock Origin set to block all the Javascript, there are
| no cookie popups and no scroll breakage.
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| Switching to reader view fixes this kind of thing, although
| some sites seem to be able to block it now.
| [deleted]
| dawnerd wrote:
| The site constantly reloads for me in iOS and is unusable.
| darinpantley wrote:
| I saw the same behavior in iOS, but switching to the desktop
| version of the site worked normally.
| terminous wrote:
| CTRL-F for "open source", no hits.
|
| What a glaring omission. There are tons of open, freely licensed
| fonts: https://fontesk.com/license/ofl-gpl/
| conkeisterdoor wrote:
| Iosevka is a fantastic open-source font that's fully
| customizable. I have replaced the fixed font on all of my
| devices and apps to a custom Iosevka build I made, and I don't
| think I'll ever turn back.
|
| https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka
| [deleted]
| rapnie wrote:
| Ha. Nice touch, this one: https://fontesk.com/x-company-font/
| marc_io wrote:
| Downloading and using fonts available on Fontesk can be a huge
| trap. Read it's "Licensing" page. It's simply not safe to use
| fonts downloaded there, one should really use it only for
| discovery, at best.
| hgs3 wrote:
| Google has an entire catalog of open source fonts [1].
|
| [1] https://developers.google.com/fonts
| tptacek wrote:
| The right title for this post is "Where do fonts come from? This
| one business, mostly".
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jxf wrote:
| I love when searches are also answers.
| zeroimpl wrote:
| Interesting. I use fonts.com which apparently is also Monotype.
| The illusion of a competitive market.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Much of their earnings go back to Monotype, which takes a 50%
| cut of every sale on its site. (Creative Market similarly takes a
| 50% commission fee, while Etsy charges 20 cents per listing and
| takes a 6.5% fee for every sale.) _
|
| This is an aspect of one (if not "the") major issue for
| capitalist economies in this century. A functioning capitalist
| market _must_ have effective and fit-for-purpose anti-
| monopolistic measures. In the era of the web, this means:
|
| - separating content distribution (i.e. stores) from platform
| development (i.e. OSes, but also font-making tools, etc) and
| content itself (i.e. apps, fonts, movies)
|
| - capping distribution fees. Anything above 10% is obscene.
|
| Businesses should _not_ be allowed to turn content-acquisition
| sprees or platform development into market-making distribution
| channels that result into self-reinforcing monopolies. Businesses
| should _not_ be allowed to arbitrarily held entire production
| sectors effectively to ransom, imposing fees that in every other
| sector would be called exploitative and illegal.
|
| Amazon, Google, Apple, Monotype - they are all aspects of the
| same problem. Anyone serious about ensuring a lively competitive
| landscape in modern economies should try to fix this problem.
| Otherwise, by 2050 the economic landscape will be dominated by
| immovable rent-extracting giants that will hoover every cent and
| limit innovation.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I've never really thought about this. Perhaps I missed it from
| the article and maybe this is a dumb question but is there a font
| that is truly open source, royalty free _and_ recognized /
| built-in to browsers? Is there such a thing as a royalty free
| font family that the popular browsers would all recognize by
| name? Could that even become a legal battle?
|
| _Monotype owns most major fonts: Arial, Helvetica, Gotham, Times
| New Roman._ font-family:Open Sans,Arial
| font-family:monospace
|
| If I use any of those in HTML can someone claim royalties on my
| text? Should this concept itself become a font family? e.g. font-
| family:royalty-free and let the client decide on their favorites
| royalty-free fonts?
| nickisnoble wrote:
| No because the point of system fonts is that whoever made your
| operating system has already paid the license fee to be able to
| render text using that typeface.
|
| Monotype has such deals across the board.
| tomxor wrote:
| > Is there such a thing as a royalty free font family that the
| popular browsers would all recognize by name?
|
| Yes "Liberation Fonts" [0]
|
| > [...] compatible with the most popular fonts on the Microsoft
| Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office software
| package (Monotype Corporation's Arial, Arial Narrow, Times New
| Roman and Courier New, respectively), for which Liberation is
| intended as a free substitute.
|
| e.g The Debian package is here, which I you need to install to
| get sites to not look wonkey in the official Firefox package:
| https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/fonts-liberation.
|
| I suspect packaged linux browsers through snap, flatpak, and
| the windows/macos equivalents, also bundle liberation fonts to
| avoid MS license issues.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| No. The OS platforms have broad system licences for those
| fonts; your readers will also have those licences.
|
| The royalty is being paid in the OS licence attached to the
| viewer's computer, basically.
|
| There are meta-font-families for system fonts, and you can
| effectively use "monospace", "serif", and "sans serif" and the
| system is going to choose the typeface that best meets those
| requirements.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Interesting. That has activated more questions in my noggin.
| Now I am more curious than anything how much each of the OS
| and browser vendors are paying in royalties. Beyond that of
| course there are browser forks usually managed by a handful
| of developers volunteering their time. Are those forks a
| legal ticking time bomb? I would be surprised if they strip
| out the code for the non system fonts.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| The browser will generally be relying on the system font
| renderer, so they kick that particular can down the road.
|
| For a time, Microsoft had a package of "core fonts for the
| web" that they made some deal with Monotype for:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web
|
| Those are still out there because the licence for those
| specific files remains legitimate, though a 21 year old
| typeface is not necessarily a useful thing anymore.
|
| That package was used as the basis of "nonfree" packages in
| various distributions, that would download the MS archive
| file and unpack/install it.
|
| I also wonder about how much Monotype charges Microsoft.
|
| Ubuntu of course paid for their own system faces to be
| designed (which I like but not enough to use on my
| desktop). And Firefox has its own core font family (Fira),
| for example, that it can use in its own products as an
| alternate (I think it was designed for the late not-much-
| lamented Firefox OS)
| pakyr wrote:
| > The royalty is being paid in the OS licence attached to the
| viewer's computer, basically.
|
| So who is paying for Linux? Or is Linux using open source
| alternatives to these fonts?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Linux uses free fonts like Open Sans, Roboto, etc.
| ars wrote:
| Microsoft is. They actually made them available for anyone
| to use everywhere because they wanted them to be standard
| on the web.
|
| See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web
| adrian_b wrote:
| Most of those fonts donated by Microsoft are only among
| the fonts owned by Microsoft, e.g. Georgia and Verdana.
|
| They have included only a few fonts licensed from
| Monotype, e.g. Arial.
|
| Besides the fonts donated by Microsoft, there are many
| other free fonts that have been donated by big companies
| like Google, Adobe, Intel, URW, Bitstream, JetBrains and
| others.
|
| There are also many free fonts donated by individual
| creators.
| [deleted]
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| The fonts in that package were not donated, but licensed
| -- it had an EULA.
|
| But the versions of the font files in that package are
| rusting at this point; there's no compelling reason to
| use them anywhere, IMO.
| adrian_b wrote:
| You are right that perhaps the word "donate" is not the
| most appropriate, because for typefaces, like for
| programs, the author does not normally transfer ownership
| but only grants certain rights for using the typeface.
|
| By "donate" I have meant that the typeface owners have
| forsaken the revenues corresponding to the licensing fees
| that they have stopped demanding, allowing the free use
| of those typefaces. It can be said that they have donated
| the value of the work that was needed to create those
| typefaces.
|
| You are also right that now this Corefonts package is
| mostly of historical interest, because the included fonts
| are very old. Unlike these, the corresponding Windows
| fonts have been maintained, by fixing bugs and adding new
| Unicode characters.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Some Linux users buy themselves whatever fonts they like,
| e.g. from one of the many on-line stores.
|
| Most Linux users use only free fonts, some of which are
| metrically equivalent with the more popular Windows fonts,
| so they will substitute those in documents and Web pages.
|
| Some Linux users, like also some of the users of other
| operating systems, may use unlicensed copies of some
| popular fonts.
| divs1210 wrote:
| what about linux?
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| Answered elsewhere I think. But basically there are open
| source fonts now (Roboto, Open Sans, Liberation, Adobe's
| Source family) as well as distinctive fonts like Ubuntu,
| and a legacy way to get the core fonts.
|
| Linux can (with quite a bit of pain) use font alternatives
| to swap in Liberation Sans for Arial or whatever (at least
| I assume that is what is happening)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| The more I think about this and based on the really good
| answers to my silly question it feels like there is a giant gap
| here. _Feels..._ It feels like there should be a universally
| open source, royalty free sans-like and monospace-like font
| that has been optimized for screen readers for vision impaired
| as well as developers to spend hours /days coding in and
| contributed to the internet for all devices to use. I have no
| evidence to back this up, it's just a feeling.
|
| Not a font to download or embed but rather a set of fonts that
| is already embedded in _all the things_ so anyone could just
| reference it. So in CSS something like: font-
| family:open-free-monospace font-family:open-free-serif
|
| Rather than providing a URL to download the fonts, everything
| already has the fonts preinstalled. OS, IoT, toasters, cars,
| phones. All the things. Surely there must be a set of highly
| artistic altruistic people that might wish to contribute such a
| thing to humanity.
| II2II wrote:
| It appears as though the real problem is address near the end of
| the article under a heading that has nothing to do it: Monotype
| is switching to a subscription model that will likely weigh
| strongly in their own favor, and there is little that anyone can
| do about it since they are essentially a monopoly.
|
| Most of that was buried under a heading about AI.
|
| While the handful of sentences addressing AI were dismissive, my
| initial thoughts were directed towards the opening paragraphs of
| the article. They were describing a case where the creator
| received $12 in royalties for a font used in a major film. The
| irony is the font emulated handwriting, which is the sort of font
| that would benefit from all too human variation even if that
| human variation is emulated by a machine (e.g. using AI).
| Animats wrote:
| > Monotype is switching to a subscription model
|
| That's big news. You have to pay a font bill for your site
| every year?
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| Making a font from one's own handwriting is an intriguing
| experience even if you don't go for cursive.
|
| I decided I wanted my own (rather idiosyncratic) handwriting to
| use in some training materials, and an evening spent with a
| cheap and cheerful iPad app gained me a font to use for labels
| and captions. It's slightly eerie to see it.
| thechao wrote:
| Would you mind saying which app? I've always wanted to do
| this!
|
| EDIT: especially if it supports ligatures. I have some whacky
| ligatures that are distinctive to my handwriting.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Not OP, but a quick search found this, which is apparently
| not free: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fontmaker-font-
| keyboard-app/id...
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| It was absolutely ages ago now, it might not still be
| around (I have a feeling it is one of the apps that didn't
| make it to 64 bit iOS).
|
| Can't remember if it did ligatures.
|
| I will look through my purchases shortly and edit
| this/comment again...
|
| Edit: it was iFontMaker. And it's still around! I might
| have to have another go with this, because I last used it
| so long ago that I was using one of those rubber-tipped
| Wacom passive stylus things...
| tptacek wrote:
| Speaking as a type nerd: there is nothing in the universe less
| essential than a couture typeface. So what if Monotype obtains a
| monopoly on all of them?
| op00to wrote:
| Article was unreadable on iOS, constantly reloading.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| This is, frankly, why one should approach all the "why should you
| use commercial, licensed fonts?" blog posts with a jaded eye.
|
| There are so many "they may have missing glyphs", "free fonts may
| breach copyright", "there's no support" stories. And they amount
| to FUD from blog sites that don't talk openly about being on
| commission from commercial exchanges.
|
| If you want great results on a website in particular, you could
| use a system font stack (which is often kinder on your users) or
| a common readable open font for body text, and then consider
| paying a brand designer with experience designing fonts to design
| a caption/headline typeface paired with it just for your own use.
| Or you could pair a system font with an existing font from an
| indie designer that does not use a font-serving CDN or have per-
| view licensing rules.
|
| But there are high quality fonts in Google fonts that you can
| easily extract (the Create Block Theme plugin for Wordpress will
| now install Google fonts locally) and there are font-pairing
| tools that can help you make good decisions.
|
| This is one of those things that has just moved on. There are so
| many ways to do this that don't involve stolen fonts.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| There are plenty of excellent open source fonts with full glyph
| support and perfect kerning etc. But many are overused. If you
| use something like Raleway or other popular fonts, visitors
| will have a subconscious sense of familiarity and associations
| which you may or may not like. If you want something
| distinctive it's hard to avoid commercial fonts.
| [deleted]
| FireInsight wrote:
| Talk about overused, anyone else seeing Space Grotesk
| absolutely everywhere?
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| Not in the UK... but maybe now I will see it everywhere!
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _There are plenty of excellent open source fonts with full
| glyph support and perfect kerning etc._
|
| that's not the problem, the problem is that there are 100x as
| many which are not excellent, have terrible kerning, etc. and
| sorting between them is really time consuming. Not to mention
| the category of "90% of the way there" knockoffs where you
| can't (because you're not an expert) tell till later that
| you're working with something really lame. If you're not a
| graphic designer, it's really difficult to navigate.
|
| (and don't read that as an endorsement of graphic designers,
| hire those and you've just added a lot of form bathwater, out
| from which the function baby will be thrown :)
| tptacek wrote:
| Or you can just assume that distinctive letter shapes are not
| a problem you need to go out of your way to solve, and move
| on with your life, right?
|
| I think it's good to remember that there is a species of
| online person call "the font nerd" (I know because I am one
| and have font nerd friends), and font nerds would very much
| like it to be important to select interesting type
| combinations, and many are not above rationalizing urgencies
| for that hobby. But I doubt anybody in the real world
| actually cares. Look at the site we're on!
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| A wide variety of people in the real world -- designers,
| brand designers, accessibility designers, book publishers,
| teachers, avid readers -- absolutely care about this.
|
| I am often surprised by how much considered opinion non-
| professionals have about font choices, about readability
| etc.
|
| The site we're on: I don't think we are going to agree that
| this is the real world... ;-)
|
| (Ask anyone with dyslexia about typefaces and they can tell
| you a lot about what they like and don't like. Tell them
| about typefaces designed with dyslexia in mind and they may
| love you forever. I totally changed someone's life by
| introducing her to OpenDyslexic.)
| thereisnojesus wrote:
| You sound like an artist and not a professional designer.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| I don't know what this means.
|
| Are you saying professional designers _don 't_ care about
| this stuff?
|
| I'm a developer with front-end skills; I've spent a lot
| of time around professional designers for 27 years and I
| usually implement people's style guides.
|
| (I'm also a photographer, which should disqualify me from
| claiming to be an artist)
| tptacek wrote:
| So: professional font nerds care. And there are
| pathologically bad choices to make that make pages
| unreadable to people with reading difficulties. I think
| my argument admits both of those amendments without
| really bending all that much.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| > So: professional font nerds care.
|
| I think I listed a broad enough constituency to rebut
| that claim. But I would agree that bad font choices (as
| well as bad colour contrasts) are a significant downside
| of all the flexibility.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just because this is fun:
|
| "designers, brand designers, accessibility designers,
| book publishers" are all professional font nerds.
|
| Teachers and "avid readers" might not be, but I dispute
| that either of those groups cares as much about font
| selection as font nerds wish they did.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The average person may not notice but they are being
| influenced. Fonts convey meaning and emotion like a
| picture.
| tptacek wrote:
| I disagree with your implication that this is really
| meaningful.
| saltcured wrote:
| We could argue for purely functional, utilitarian
| priorities. But it seems a large fraction of humanity is
| very susceptible to form over function. Pretending that I
| think this is testable, I would wager that most people who
| "care" about fonts in the general population are driven by
| the same fashion mechanisms as in clothing and other
| product consumption.
|
| And I don't mean that they have to be aware they are bound
| like this... many are driven subconsciously by fashion
| concerns even when they construct other rationalization for
| their preferences. Humans are intensely social and can turn
| nearly any kind of visible behavior or marking into a
| social signal.
|
| A very small number might actually be concerned with actual
| usability/human factors of fonts, but most are in it for
| the tribal aspects of associating font usage with other
| "brand" or tribal identities. For the amateur producers,
| this can lead to cargo-cult emulation of the producers they
| admire. Even dissent here can fall into the same trap---
| consider how many times you've seen a LaTex document from a
| student who wants to be an author of a computer science
| paper, but doesn't really have anything to say (yet?)...
| tptacek wrote:
| Don't get me wrong. As I said, I'm a font nerd. My old
| blog has fonts I paid actual money for, which was
| otherwise exchangeable for goods and services in the real
| world.
|
| I like fonts. I get why people like fonts. I just don't
| think they matter.
|
| Now, if Computer Modern was an important professional
| signal, and it was the case that Monotype owned its
| copyright and rapaciously charged for its use, that would
| matter quite a bit. But that's not the case; ironically,
| the one font we can think of that has professional
| implications is under an open license.
|
| There is a battery of commonly-used fonts (the Microsoft
| fonts, we might as well call them) that are
| professionally important. But they're also universally
| available; they argue against the idea that font
| licensing is all that meaningful, as well.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| > If you want something distinctive it's hard to avoid
| commercial fonts.
|
| I get what you mean -- Lobster is _everywhere_ in the summer,
| and it is cute but now noticeably cheap.
|
| But again I tend towards thinking that this is an over-egged
| pudding, because truly distinctive commercial fonts are as
| likely to have negative associations, surely? Unless you're
| buying something that nobody else uses, and that has the same
| support issues as these blogs try to scare people with.
|
| If you want something truly distinctive, you can pay for
| someone to make a font suite for you, and you can consider
| your own needs.
|
| The BBC have for example been transitioning their sites for
| years over to their "Reith" font family, which has enhanced
| readability and rather fewer confusable pairs. ITV (the
| original and largest commercial TV channel in the UK) has
| their own typeface, "Reem", which is rather nice work
| (classier than most of their TV content).
|
| A pragmatic approach for many producers would be to pick a
| well-considered open-licensed sans or serif face and get a
| font designer to produce something distinctive (that need not
| be a truly complete face) to pair with it for captions,
| logotype, alternates etc.
| scoofy wrote:
| I wish someone would just use ML to pump out more fonts than we
| could ever need, none missing any characters because they could
| be constantly added to, and none of them would have copyright
| because they are ML created.
|
| I would buy that person a beer.
| irrational wrote:
| > Monotype endured financial difficulties and restructurings,
| eventually being acquired by the Boston private equity firm TA
| Associates in 2004
|
| > In 2019, private equity firm HGGC bought Monotype for $825m,
| acquiring its roster of typefaces and setting it up for even more
| acquisitions.
|
| Can we just make private equity firms illegal?
|
| I enjoy playing board games. There is a company called Asmodee
| that was bought by a private equity firm, went on a series of
| acquisitions and mergers, sold to a different private equity firm
| (who are currently looking for a new private equity firm to sell
| to). So many things have gone downhill for boardgaming since
| private equity got involved. Prices went up, they made it more
| difficult to get replacement parts, they killed off many products
| and made a shell of formerly beloved companies like FFG and so
| much more. Is there actually an example of private equity being a
| good thing (I mean, other than for the rich people that benefit
| from the private equity)?
| voisin wrote:
| > Can we just make private equity firms illegal?
|
| Not without upending capitalism (which, to be clear, I'd be ok
| with). The thing you are against isn't private money buying
| entities, it is that our capitalist system does not align
| interests among stakeholders and instead is focused 100% on
| shareholder returns. We need better consumer, employee,
| environmental protection and to get money out of politics.
| Easier said than done...
| fsloth wrote:
| "Private equity" in general may just mean some familys wealth
| -that may be managed in some unified manner.
|
| I don't think you can outlaw buying stuff in the genral sense.
| Ofc there is specific legsilation to defend the market at large
| from monopolies.
|
| But the fact is some people collect stamps ... other collect
| companies.
|
| In general the whole point of ownership is that you can buy and
| sell things.
|
| There is nothing to stop a new owner destroying a beloved IP.
| [deleted]
| wcerfgba wrote:
| Every major brand is owned by a minority of multinational
| conglomerates. 90% of the money we spend in shops and online goes
| to a number of companies you could count on one hand. This issue
| is not restricted to fonts.
| hannob wrote:
| I find this misleading.
|
| Today, most fonts in practical use are open source fonts. When
| someone chooses a font for a web project, they typically pick
| something from Google fonts, which are all open source licensed.
| Android, the most common OS, uses open source fonts like Roboto
| by default which are also open source.
|
| The article does not mention open source at all, it has one
| mention of Google Fonts which is kinda misleading ("the latter of
| which gives away fonts for free" - well, not really, many of
| these fonts are not from google and were already free, google is
| just providing a font hosting service).
|
| An accurate statement would be one company dominates the
| proprietary font market, which is however only a small share of
| overall font use.
| somsak2 wrote:
| I think your comment is misleading. Most fonts in use on the
| web today are actually proprietary and not open source.
| https://jichu4n.com/posts/the-most-popular-fonts-on-the-web-...
| -- Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Georgia, Helvetica are all
| proprietary.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Proprietary, but also free because they are bundled with our
| OS.
|
| The topic at hand is fonts you have to buy a lenience to use
| from Monotype, and fonts you can use freely.
| omnimus wrote:
| This is not true. We would have to define "practical use" but
| if you are looking at most used typefaces - things people see
| in around them the most it is dominated by commercial
| typefaces. It will be Helveticas, Arials, Times New Romans of
| the world. What people use in Word and Windows - all
| proprietary typefaces. Anything Apple - proprietary. Anything
| branded - brands usually typeface and that typeface is going to
| be proprietary - even on web.
|
| Only platform that uses open-source typeface is Android with
| roboto/noto. If you are looking at webapps not marketing sites
| then yes you might get lot of Inter but trend is moving towards
| using system-ui font stack which is proprietary (except
| linux/android).
|
| So no open-source typefaces are definitely not most used in
| practical use. Btw majority of the super popular ones are owned
| by Monotype the company this article is about.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > things people see in around them the most it is dominated
| by commercial typefaces
|
| I agree, but I think that says more about how the market for
| OS-software evolved (with the assumption that the OS should
| provide core fonts "for free") as opposed to an indication of
| monopoly or lock-in.
|
| The average person probably doesn't notice (nor care) about
| the subtle differences between those major (OS-company
| supplied) fonts versus open-source equivalents or their
| competitors' proprietary ones.
| bitwize wrote:
| Do you know anyone who works in design?
|
| I do.
|
| And quite franky, all of them would laugh in your face if
| you told them that fonts are something that ought to be
| provided "for free". Fonts come from designers, designers
| work hard and should be paid for their work. Accordingly,
| real professional designers pay for fonts -- by the
| hundreds or thousands, sometimes, so many fonts their
| computers slow down if they don't use special software to
| manage them all.
|
| This is also why the strongest, healthiest software
| ecosystem exists on macOS. Because macOS still has that
| cultural creative core of its user base, a culture which
| believes that people who create things should be paid for
| their efforts. Accordingly, you can still release a
| commercial proprietary program on macOS and expect to make
| significant money -- even from a small user base. That's
| certainly not true on Linux and it increasingly isn't true
| on Windows -- except, maybe, for gaming.
|
| As for the average person, we're not even talking about the
| digital world. Everything in print, everything written on
| television, uses fonts. And if they employ professional
| designers, those are going to be commercial fonts. The real
| deal, the ones that were first set in hot type by Swiss or
| Austrian guys a hundred years ago or more. Open source
| substitutes are no substitute at all.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > > how the market for OS-software evolved (with the
| assumption that the OS should provide core fonts "for
| free")
|
| > [designers] would laugh in your face if you told them
| that fonts are something that ought to be provided "for
| free"
|
| That's a big *whoosh*, or else you just felt like
| constructing a strawman.
|
| I'm referring to how operating systems do _not_ ship with
| just a couple system-fonts, but instead bundle dozens,
| and no average consumer is expected to spend money
| gaining the ability to see Greek math symbols or pseudo-
| handwriting or whatever.
|
| It isn't the 1990s anymore, we're past stuff like
| Microsoft TrueType Font Pack For Windows [3.x].
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Internet trolls work hard and they deserve to be paid for
| their work.
| creata wrote:
| > This is also why the strongest, healthiest software
| ecosystem exists on macOS.
|
| What do you mean by "strongest" and "healthiest"?
|
| In my experience, most software is very cross-platform
| these days, and most platform-exclusive software is
| Windows-only.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Modern business strategy: buy up the competition, until you are
| effectively a monopoly. After that, start milking you position
| for all its worth.
|
| This is what antitrust legislation is supposed to prevent. But
| the regulators and politicians are asleep (or bought off).
| gorgoiler wrote:
| How come these old typefaces like Helvetica and Gill Sans not in
| the public domain? The article mentions Helvetica being rolled in
| with one of Monotype's purchases yet Helvetica is from the 1940s?
|
| Hard copies of Shakespeare have individual copyright because of
| their unique prefaces. Are these typefaces in copyright still
| because of the individual numerical descriptions being the work
| under protection, rather than the actual shape?
|
| Is it something similar to How X's recording of Bach's Y concerto
| with The Z Ensemble is in copyright, but the musical score itself
| is in the public domain?
| kstrauser wrote:
| That last bit is my understanding: the typefaces are public
| domain, but the font files that describe them are protected.
| pakyr wrote:
| It looks like[0] as of the start of this year, only works made
| in 1927 or earlier are in the public domain. Copyright terms
| have regularly been extended by Congress and they are
| astoundingly long now.
|
| [0]https://copyrightlately.com/public-domain-day-2023/
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Also known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
|
| Thanks to Disney, this aspect of our economy and culture is
| completely broken.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Cher gets a good chunk of the blame too
| fsckboy wrote:
| Sonny gets blame for the copyright extension act, but
| Cher's royalties lawsuit is not unreasonable or copying
| rights related... or did I misunderstand or miss
| something?
| tptacek wrote:
| The font files themselves are copyrighted. The underlying
| typeface --- the shapes of the letters themselves --- are not,
| so you could I suppose draw your own Helvetica. But you
| wouldn't be able to call it "Helvetica", because that's a
| trademark.
| harles wrote:
| IANAL, but this is what design patents are for. They're much
| shorter though - 15 years it looks like for fonts [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/my-word-design-
| patents-on-...
| crazygringo wrote:
| I've still never entirely understood why nobody's written a
| program to rasterize paid fonts at 10000 dpi and then run the
| bitmap through an automatic vectorization tool to create a
| legally free and redistributable version that is visually
| indistinguishable from the original (literally off by
| rounding errors).
|
| The only thing missing would be hinting, but on retina
| displays and modern laser printers that's much less important
| than it used to be -- and you can always implement automatic
| hinting. And it's easy to extract kerning pairs as well.
|
| I'm not saying this would be good for font creators or
| society. I'm just wondering why it hasn't become a common
| thing, when it doesn't seem like it's actually illegal.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just a guess here:
|
| (1) It's a lot of work.
|
| (2) You'd get sued anyways and then have to explain to a
| jury the distinction between your vectorized raster and the
| original vectors --- I agree that a graphical
| interpretation of, effectively, a photograph of a curve is
| not the same thing as that curve, but it's a subtle point.
|
| (3) Most importantly: it just doesn't matter enough.
| Universally "important" fonts (Helvetica, say) have widely-
| used liberally-licensed alternatives, but if you want
| Hoefler Whitney, you want _the real Hoefler Whitney_ , for
| the same non-pragmatic reason that you'd want a real pair
| of D&G Daymasters.
| [deleted]
| asmor wrote:
| Because you're not buying Helvetica, but a digital variant of
| it. It's like a performance of classical music. Also Helvetica
| specifically is from 1957, so it may not in the public domain
| yet (depending on location).
|
| There are actually several variants all named Helvetica, which
| is why it's a really bad font to put into your CSS font stack
| if you're not delivering it yourself. Newer variants tend to
| use other names (e.g. Neue Haas Grotesk).
| gadders wrote:
| Eric Gill is another of those situations where you need to
| separate the art from the artist:
| https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/apr/09/eric-gi...
| sgc wrote:
| To specify about your Shakespeare example, the hard copies are
| most definitely not under copyright as a whole. At least in the
| US, only the new, copyrightable material in them can be
| copyrighted. If it is not novel enough to be copyrightable on
| its own (like page numbers, titles, etc), it can't be
| copyrighted.
|
| Frankly there are a lot of things that people and companies
| claim copyright on, and other people pay them for, that are not
| legally under copyright at all. But it is survival of the
| richest out there...
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