Font Folio 10: Pay More For Less

The whole Font Folio concept is a bad deal to begin with. Practically speaking, most people use one or two fonts/weights per project. Why pay so much for something you'll never fully use? Reminds me of those unlimited cellular calling plans. It's a great scam for the phone company since they know that only 1 percent of the buyers will actually make enough calls to get their money's worth.

BTW, aren't you the one who claimed Jean-François Porchez copied Times New Roman for Le Monde Journal? Were those allegations ever substantiated? I'm just curious if his fame and notarity are justly deserved.

Well . . . service bureaus need complete libraries, though in this case, I imagine most would be better off with FF 8. I found FF 8 very handy when I was writing a lot about type. Believe me, when you're on deadline and need some obscure, God-forsaken type from the Adobe library to make a point, you don't have the time to make a separate request for that font or go through that insane Type On Call process; you just need the font. I expect, also, that large ad and design agencies do need to have instant access to these libraries.

That said, if I had a choice between FF8 and FF"10", I'd choose 8 anyday. And if I was a book designer with a lot of work to do, I'd gladly exchange the entire Adobe Library for Matthew Carter's Miller family.

Regarding Porchez, check out www.letimes.com (the cite that _celebrates_ type piracy) in a few weeks and the story on Porchez will be there in full -- along with some rather surprising new stuff. There's nothing on the site right now. I don't think I stated that Porchez "copied" Times for his Le Times font. What I think the screen shots I published a while back showed pretty conclusively, though, was that Porchez used the outlines in a unique cut of Times that Adobe distributed, for example, with Illustrator 6. In any case, there's no point talking about it til the screen shots are up again.

"Justly deserved"? Believe me, in the mid-90s, Porchez was telling everyone who would listen that he ripped off the Adobe outlines. This was even included in an interview in the ATypI daily from 1995, I think. The Dutch were all deeply shocked but I doubt if anyone else was.

But is it necessary to bring it up again? I'm sure Porchez is hot enough as it is.

Wait wait... lets back up here... digital signatures?? restrictive licensing??

As has been explained dozens of times on the aforementioned OpenType list, digital signatures provide zero copy protection. They are simply a means of determining whether a font has been modified by someone other than the originator. You can copy a file as many times as you want, signature or no signature.

Microsoft has periodically hinted that a future OS revision will disallow unsigned fonts (and executables, scripts and other types of files in general) or at least provide the machine's administrator with the option of doing so. I was skeptical previously of how popular such an option would be, but after the MSBLAST festivities this weekend it seems that the MS crew might be on to something. I doubt dig-sigs will ever be compulsory in Windows. It would sell lots of Macs if they were.

Were those allegations ever substantiated?

Nope.

The Dutch were all deeply shocked but I doubt if anyone else was.

Typophile has a script that can perfectly simulate Bill Troop. I don't know if this is the real Bill posting this, or the script.

Bill, it's a shame anything you ever say about Adobe is tainted by a total lack of objectivity. Some valid points are mostly lost in the quicksand.

hhp

Here is some more info on digital signatures in fonts and in general.

Has anybody noticed that the "Ads by Google" on this page seems to be following the discussion? I guess that's how it's supposed to work. Just a little bit freaky, though.

John, I hope you realize that the "official party line" is even more tainted than Bill's opinion of Adobe.

hhp

Are you talking about digital signatures, Hrant? If so, exactly what are MS &or Adobe saying about digital signatures that isn't true?

I'm talking about anything a corporation will say to deceive people into trusting them, in order to take their money away more easily. And often, the partial presentation of "facts" serves to deepen the deception. If we were to engage in a detailed technical discussion of what's "true", that would of course distract us from seeing the big sordid picture.

hhp

OK, so what are they not saying?

Why did Adobe change the licensing of the fonts? Won't that throw off existing customers?

Why did Adobe change the licensing of the fonts?

Because of this, I suspect.

> so what are they not saying?

That they will use things like digital signatures to milk you to their stockholders' satisfaction, of course.

BTW, I didn't mean to dismiss "factual" discussion in my previous post. If you could show that DigSigs simply cannot be used towards copy protection, that would be different.
But saying something like MS/Apple/Global-Tetrahedron doesn't intend to use DigSigs that way (because they said so in a press release!) holds no water.

hhp

Well, fantastic.
Fortunately, most of us live in free countries where we have the freedom to buy from other sources. Garamond 3? This is 2003, so let's move forward.

The Typophile foundry links list should get things started.

Sorry, I'm in a mood today.

> Garamond 3?

Indeed. Fart Folio 10. Masterworks like Kinesis-MM notwithstanding.

hhp

On the one hand, a few scholars and print professionals can really use the breadth of OpenType for multiple languages, or optional characters (built-in old style figures, ligatures, small caps, more fractions, etc.). I do not in any way deny these benefits.

However, for the vast majority of font users, Open Type is merely an undisguised step in cooperating corporations' self-serving attempt to ...

(1) make all the compact face files you've paid for seem old fashioned, obsolete, ... and probably unusable, one or two O.S. revisions from now.

(2) make us all covet bloatware fonts which more than a few amateur founders won't have the skills, or free or cheap software, to create, thereby competing with the big boys for the hearts and minds and coinage of the fonting public ... and

(3) Force us all to buy new versions of what we've already got in T1 or TT -- at monopoly pricing.

This being a type-loving forum; to the extent my analysis is all or partly true, some readers are probably aghast, while others are licking their lips and savoring this darling idea.

For all but a few users (and the self-serving promotors), Open Type is mainly a solution in search of a problem. Driven by marketing, not design. For the most, there will be no problem with current formats unless the conspiracy succeeds in eliminating support for them in favored applications.

If you haven't read it elsewhere, you read it here in August 2003

You're right, but you're not the first to say it! :-)

> Driven by marketing, not design.

Yes, the foundation of contemporary society.

hhp

On the other hand:
Now that OT is in place, we might as well as use it to the max.

hhp

The embedding issue is interesting. From my recollection Adobe originally limited embedding to read-only/print and preview when they were still making Type 1 fonts. So by offering their own library with editable embedding they're making things less restrictive, no?

This old font licensing FAQ (coughed up by Google) seems to back this up - http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/licenseqa.html, as does the fact that the TrueType fonts they shipped a while back had embedding bits set to P&P, not editable.

Cheers, Si

Whether you want to buy the new Font Folio is up to you.

If you have a previous version, the licence you obtained then will still be valid. I have Berthold face that I obtained from Adobe years ago. Berthold no longer has an agreement with them, but my fonts are still valid and legal.

So, for upgrades, you lose nothing. If the latest version isn't of interest, just don't buy it!

Adobe WANTS the other foundries to allow full use with PDFs - all Adobe fonts allow embedding in editable docs. Remember, they make Acrobat! Why would they want it crippled?

Nobody's forced to use OpenType, all major apps support Type one, of course. But, if you want to change languages without changing fonts, or compose arbitrary fractions, or have a series of contextual alternates in a script face, or set smallcaps easily, or...

Well, I don't think it's a nefarious plot.

From section 2.6.5 of the Font Folio 8 End User Licensing Agreement: You may embed the font software, or outlines of the font software, in your electronic documents to the extent that the font vendor copyright owner allows for such embedding. The fonts contained in this package may contain both Adobe and non-Adobe owned fonts. You may fully embed any font owned by Adobe. Refer to the font sample or font information file to determine font ownership.

I can't find anything in any font samples or font information files mentioning embedding restrictions. This is the first time I have seen or heard about a Font Folio Embedding Permissions List anywhere. Nothing of the kind is on the Font Folio 8 media.

Over the past few months we have been wondering if we should switch to InDesign and Open Type, but now I'm too afraid to consider it. Embedding is too important for our workflow to make such a move.

I agree with Mr Nolan: I don't believe that Adobe is up to anything nefarious. What we're seeing is the result of several things, most of them technical, some of them legal.

When early license agreements were assembled by lawyers for Adobe and other foundries, the Portable Document Format was just a gleam in (some other division of) Adobe's eye. As Acrobat advanced and grew capable of more stuff, some foundries realised (a little late) that their code was being embedded in files in such a way that they could be pulled out by those interested in doing so. And they added new stipulations to their license agreements to protect their code / design / intellectual property.

OpenType, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the changes to the license agreements. Coincidence is what it is.

Adobe and Microsoft have done typography and typographers an immense service in developing the OpenType format; it is so much more capable than TrueType or Type 1 formats, and the fact that these two companies are behemoths means that the format will stick. (Unlike TrueType GX and Multiple Master.)

Will it take a while for other foundries to jump on board? Of course. There is a learning curve involved in developing new fonts in OT format - not to mention the extra time required to make several sets of figures and accented characters. It also takes time and effort to update old fonts to work as OT format.

But is it worth it? Not if you insist upon using QuarkXPress, which is still OpenType-negligent. But if you are using InDesign or PhotoShop (and future versions of these software programmes will doubtless be even more OT-aware) then you can avail yourself of many great and smart features of well-made OT fonts.

Wading through muddy waters,
c

I will be releasing my first opentype font in a few days and I found it really easy to do using the newest version of fontlab. My plan is to offer it free when you purchase the tt & ps versions. I think opentype is going to make fonts so much cooler and I'm really excited by it.

Please Eric Olson (and Hrant), try to keep your tastes in type out of this kind of discussion. Garamond 3 has nothing to do with the observations over Adobe's FontFolio, ethics and policies.
You have all the freedom you want to be disgusted by it, but I'd never say this seriously of your work.
I have no problem in "hate lists". I find funny doing them, but they are not meant to be "serious" (and even less critical).

Probably the italics of Jannon are absolutely my favorites (even more than the original Garamond ones). I'm not sure of the digitization quality of "Garamond 3" (which is a Jannon-based type).
I really was attracted into reading light-years before developing an interest on type by the Jannon faces. His italics are just great. You may be surprised but Peter Bilak loves them as well, and was inspired by them (conceptually, not graphically) for the italics of Fedra Serif. But I have no intention to suggest you should like them. Just try to leave out the "taste" element in a discussion which has nothing to do with your own tastes.

You may not like it, but here we are not talking of Comic Sans, c'mon. I may even end up trying to write a short piece on why Revue is good (Revue makes me vomit but I realize its value, even if mostly in historical perspective).

Jess,
you go girl/guy! Using FontLab's OT Panel to encode your OT features is pretty easy. One word of advice: all of the sexy glyphs that you are adding outside of the 256 basics...

Using the Properties panel: Give each glyph a name, preferably the correct Unicode name*, get the Unicode number, set what kind of glyph it is ("Simple", "Ligature", etc.) Then "Apply". Very important to "Apply", or nothing sticks.

Good luck. Look after the trees and the forest will look after itself,
c

*Use this: http://partners.adobe.com/asn/tech/type/aglfn13.txt

> they are not meant to be "serious"

I'm always serious.

BTW:
1) It's not that Garamond 3 is as bad as CS, but it's just too affected and too old for most contemporary jobs.
2) The italic looks less affected because it's an italic.

Over the past few months I've been working with metal ATF Garamond (the predecessor to the #3), and although I might appreciate how nicely it conveyed the spirit of its time, its true value to me is the technical mastery in its optical scaling (due to Benton, not Jannon, or even the IN). But of course the #3 has none of that.

hhp

I designed a typeface for Headliners, which sold typesetting by the word at their chain of (40+, international) franchises, and I was paid my royalty on a per word basis. That was in the early 1980s.

No-one knows precisely where this technology is all headed, but many of us have positive general belief in things like Unicode, Open Type, and possibly Digital Signatures.

The future possibilities for automated payment systems based on Dig Sig documents are mind-boggling.

For instance, every time a graphic file is opened, the content creators could receive a royalty. Surely this kind of automation is being worked on. Isn't the iDisk concept heading that way?

It's a small step from incremental payments based on "click-throughs", to incremental payment based on "double clicks".

In principle, it's no different than when all those who have "points" in a movie get payment based on number of showings of the movie.

The trick is to make sure that if your work is involved in a project, you get paid percentage points. So it's a power play to decide what warrants that. Fonts may not be very obvious candidates, but they are always on the first wave of new technologies.

I still don't get why foundries are so against font embedding in PDFs. As far as I'm concerned, a PDF is a final-output format...just like paper. The whole point of PDF is to have an electronic copy of what the paper version should be.

Yea, I know Adobe claims PDF to be much, much more, and maybe that's what some of the foundries are against, but still, what's the point of having a typeface if you can't use it in PDFs you create?

Because:
1) Fonts can be extracted from PDFs.
2) They can sue Adobe and get a settlement.

hhp

I'm pretty sick of Bill Troop trotting out this tale of piracy by JFP based on, at best, hearsay.

Bill's happy to say "in the ATypI daily it says blah..."

To the best of my knowledge Bill has never claimed to have been at the presentation JFP gave in Barcelona, or even at the ATypI conference in Barcelona at all.

I was at both, and here's exactly what happened.

I didn't know Jean-Francois at the time, I was hanging out in the TypeLab and JFP was about to give a lecture about Le Monde in the small lecture theatre there, it only seated about 50 and i don't remember there being much room to spare.

JFP tells the story of how he developed the font, at one stage he show Times on a separate layer to Le Monde to compare the two.

What you have to remember here is that you have a Frenchman who's English is pretty good, but he's going to use not quite the right term now and then. Giving a lecture in English to a mixed audience of native English speakers and those that, like JFP, speak it as a second language.

Got to be some confusion going on.

JFP certainly implied that he had copied the Times outlines from what he was saying, and "whoops" says I in the back of the room.

He finishes, and being the rabid anti-pirate that I am, and not really caring if I upset him (because I didn't know him at the time anyway), I asked him directly if he copied and manipulated the Times outlines. His explanation was that no, he had not, he had studied Times on prints to learn the craft of making a newspaper type. It seemed to me that the pasting the fonts into the background was something he'd done for the presentation - because he was talking about how a face for a French newspaper should differ from that of an English one.

He may have used the digital outlines for reference in his own development, I don't know for certain either way, but he certainly denied manipulating the Times outlines to create Le Monde.

You can imagine then that someone hasn't quite understood what has been said, and writes an article in English (not their native language) which implies something that didn't actually happen.

And years later you still have Bill repeating this hearsay.

So, can we please put this myth to bed?

Le Clive, the internet's hearsay bobby, writes: "I'm pretty sick of Bill Troop trotting out this tale of piracy by JFP based on, at best, hearsay." -- missing the point as always. (1) I did not bring the matter up, someone else did. (2) I did not merely repeat some vague allegations. I rigorously compared LeTimes to every significant digitization of Times and came to the inescapable conclusion that LeTimes had been point-pirated from a specific Adobe cut of Times. I published these findings with enough screen shots to make the point. Where were you, Clive, typonaut, accountanaut, when all of this was going on? In any case, as soon as possible, I will put the content back up on LeTimes.com, the site intended to _celebrate_ type piracy. Let us please have no rancorous posturing when discussing these high matters! What is it I said? "The only un-pirate is the pirate you love..." ? And may I say this is frightfully off-topic?

Oh no, the two berserkers are here simultaneously.

> I don't know for certain either way

> can we please put this myth to bed?

First, make up your mind.

hhp

oh for godssake

Hrant it's pretty clear, Bill's stated on more than one occasion that JFP manipulated the outlines from Times. His reference is something that appeared in a newssheet at the Barcelona conference, reviewing JFPs presentation - Bill was not even there. I was, and asked JFP specifically if that's what he did, and he said "no".

So there's the myth. Bill's claim that JFP said this in Barcelona is a lie. And, like Tony Blair's 45 minutes, it doesn't get any truer just because it gets repeated.

Whether JFP pasted Times in another FOG layer for comparing characters as he was designing, I don't know. But even if he did that's still not manipulating the Times data.

And either way no one knows, especially not Bill Troop.

Bill, you want to claim "off topic" but still repeat the same old lies.

I think you repeating things I've said as if they're something insighful is truly hilarious - keep it up.

Back on topic.

The Adobe Font Folio is a funny old beast, 35 of 500 or so packages actually having features or extended character sets, only three of those supporting greek and only two cyrillic.

So there's your multi-lingual effort.

JLT, put an apostrophe in it.

Hey, look at that, I've even got a copy of the "Gaczeta" with the article in question.

Martin Majoor writes about a presentation that JFP gave, seems to be the same one I went to because a quick glance through the programme doesnt show two.

Martin writes it as if really JFP had copied the outlines from Times. Like I already wrote this was the impression JFP had given. But as I wrote I put this down to his use of English, rather than really what he meant.

Martin seems to not recall in his article that JFP was asked for clarification on this issue - and said "no" he did not copy/manipulate the outlines from Times.

In the "bag-o-stuff" I have from Barcelona there is an info sheet about Le Monde. It again makes comparisons to Times and shows the two fonts overlayed (they appear quite different to me). Martin's article also makes the point that Times was the face of Le Monde before JFP's new work - so I think it's logical to show that comparison.

As far as outline comparison goes, that is comparing points on specific faces, you're really on a losing track if you can't literally overlay the fonts and show that at least 50% of the points are identical. When you have two faces that have similar constructions and purposes the logical and "correct" placement of control points is going to lead to a good deal of similarity - real derivation is actually pretty difficult to distinguish.

I've done a few adaptions from faces myself (paying the appropriate licence fees), and even where it is known that one started off from a certain point, it is all but impossible to see the derivation - even though to lay person the fonts look the "same".

So, when Bill gets his PhD in forensic type digitisation, we can all sit up and take note. Until then it's hearsay at best, and outright lies at worst.

a backroom whoops alerts jfp to the booboo he made during the presentation then a freak incident sneaking past many multilevel linguistic fauxpas end up in a daring article published at the atypi daily. the intrigue! the suspense! the thrill! what a friggin epic! i want movie rights with none other than pacino starring and no less than michael mann directing!

Well, ask Bill nicely and he'll write the screenplay for you.

Clive, not that I agree with Bill's stance, but you obviously have only a fraction of the information if you think JFP's "admission" is the whole basis for this. Although I wouldn't expect (or want) you to change your stance, you should really wait for Bill's site (or dig through the Type Design list archives, assuming the links still work).

> I've done a few adaptions from faces myself (paying the appropriate licence fees)

That's funny, I would think a stalwart (to use a tactful qualifier) protectionist like you would side with those who feel that a groveling request for written permission is more important than the money. Not to mention full public credit.

hhp

So in essence you are saying that Martin Majoor wrote falsehoods about Jean-Francois Porchez in the ATypI Gaczeta publication. Incredible! The Gaczeta editors let the story run and published it with the full knowledge that Porchez had denied his initial self-misrepresentation? Did Porchez request and obtain an apology or a correction of stance from Majoor or ATypI? I see Porchez now holds a high position on the ATypI board, so is it safe to presume that a proper public rectification of the error was made by Majoor or ATypI?

I remember when fonts were a key thing in selling drawing programs. I would argue this in one thing Corel has been able to use in whacking Freehand and Illustrator over the head mercilessly (along with a much much faster screen refresh --I don't care how much of an AI or FH snob anyone might be, both are pathetically slow in their current versions).

Anyway, Adobe Illustrator 4.0 sucked big time. The only reason I bought it back in the early 1990's was for the wealth of Berthold fonts that came included with it. In later versions they slapped AI users in the face with Image Club knockoffs. Macromedia has stuck with the same, tired 500 URW fonts for several years now without any sign of update.

As far as font value with drawing programs go, Corel is king with their mix of 1000 fonts from Bitstream, ITC and others.

Font Folio 10? I don't care if it is OpenType or not. Withtout the Berthold stuff and their disavowment of Multiple Master format has me saying "no sale" big time.

I'm going to keep a couple old computers alive and well so I can keep using the MM fonts I paid too much money for! Screw that "we're not supporting them anymore" garbage. I won't give up on Penumbra.

Hrant, I don't know what other "evidence" Bill has, I've just seen him repeat this thing about Barcelona several times, and again here. Here's the first hand witness account - it's a lie.

As to adaptions of fonts, yes, of course, I've always gone to the foundry and asked permission. Sometimes that's been a bit difficult - but not because they want to protect their fonts, but because they want to do the work themselves (ie they want the client directly). But we get there in the end.

And yes of course, always give credit to the original.

Nick, you place far too much formality on the nature of the gaczeta, or any of the newssheets produced at ATypI conferences. The "editors" just take the material they are given at face value, happy to have something to fill up a blank page. Much of it is somewhat less than serious.

I suppose I am saying that Martin's report was false, or at least he too misunderstood what JFP had said. But I also understand that Martin and JFP are good friends and have a running joke about "stealing from the old blokes", or standing on the shoulders of giants if you like. While it's a bit difficult for me to read a joke into Martin's article, perhaps that is what e meant?

Either way, as I've stated a couple of times now, I asked JFP for clarification at the end of the presentation - from the back of the room, so everyone there should have understood the point – and he said "no".

I need to stress that the whole thrust of the presentation was somewhat forensic in nature, comparing the detais of Times to Le Monde, why and how those differnces came about.

I'm not saying that Times wasn't a big influence on JFP, it was undoubtably his main reference point for Le Monde (for all the reasons stated already). But that it's a definitive "no" on stealing the point data.

> I don't know what other "evidence" Bill has

Yes, that was my point.

> perhaps that is what e meant?

Don't you realize how lopsided your "benefit of the doubt" is?

> he said "no".

But maybe that's when the language barrier kicked in? Why would something he told you off the cuff in semi-private be more reliable than something he said during a prepared public presentation, perhaps as a subsequent "correction" of sorts?

Again, just to be clear, this isn't a partisanship with Bill on this (his hamartia is too strong to make him reliable), just an attempt at uncovering bias.

hhp

> From: Hrant
> Because:
> 1) Fonts can be extracted from PDFs.

To do what, set a headline?
Plus most of those pdf-embedding restrictions are for large amounts of pdfs for big corps. which use the same fonts anyway for 90% of the time. So I don't think this can be a reason.

> From: Darrel
> As far as I'm concerned, a PDF is a final-output format...just like paper

True and therefor distributors shouldn't have such stupid licenses. It doens't make sense. When you print a book - do you pay for every copy that rolls of the presses? It's the same thing in these days.

As far as OT goes; it's great and it sure makes Type1 fonts look "old". No more buying two copies for PC/Mac (or creating your own version for the other platform)..
With FontFolio you get all the standard fonts most agencies want anyway and you'll probably get new Adobe OTs with the new release of FOntFolio as well - which is great.
At least academies should have it so student have enough choice.

> To do what, set a headline?

No, dude. You can save out a font from FontLab.

hhp

> Yes, that was my point.

Well, I think I know he has no other evidence from Barcelona, and that's the only thing I'm commenting on.

>Don't you realize how lopsided your "benefit of the doubt" is?

I'm not sure who you think I'm giving that benefit too? Not to JFP, because I know what he said. I was leaving it open Martin was making a joke.

Thing to do here is ask Martin what his recollection of Barcelona eight years ago was - I know what mine is - and that's as clear as if it were yesterday.

>But maybe that's when the language barrier kicked in?
>Why would something he told you off the cuff in
>semi-private be more reliable than something he
>said during a prepared public presentation, perhaps
>as a subsequent "correction" of sorts?

You see the problem here is that you're reading more into this than actually exists, or has been stated.

First, this was more of an informal presentation. Yes JFP came prepared to show some work on Le Monde, but it was part of TypeLab, not the main conference, people were just turning up and talking - it wasn't a formal lecture.

JFP's style during the presentation was informal. As someone on site listening to it I say that what he said implied that he'd open the outlines to work on them, because of what he was also showing - ie here's Le Monde, then in the background you see Times.

When I asked him it wasn't "semi-private", it was in the course of answering questions about the presentation. There's no way you can construct that one part of this has more weight than the other.

Now you're going to think, "but that's exactly what you're doing". Right, but I'm applying more weight to the answer to a direct question than to something that was merely implied in the presentation.

If I had been sure of what he'd meant in the presentation there would have been no need to ask the question.

>Again, just to be clear, this isn't a partisanship with
>Bill on this (his hamartia is too strong to make him
>reliable), just an attempt at uncovering bias.

There's no bias on my part, as I stated previously I did not know JFP at the time, I'm just giving a true account of what happened during that presentation. I don't really have anything against Bill, I just think it's ridiculous that he keeps repeating something that he only heard/read second hand, especially when I know that's not the way things actually happened.

In fact, if you think about it, my bias would be more likely to run against JFP, if he had not reassured me back then that he had not "pirated the points" from Times. No?

Rolf:
>No more buying two copies for PC/Mac

But the FontFolio always came with fonts for both platforms anyway!? So no advantage here.

> that's the only thing I'm commenting on.

No you're not.

> I know what he said.

Which one?

> There's no way you can construct that one part of this has more weight than the other.

Then neither can you.

> No?

Who knows? We know now how you feel about people (like Bill, and me) who tolerate piracy when it's mild. It's just not a full moon at the moment.

hhp

Hrant, usual problem, you read what you want to read and ignore the rest.

Assemble a grand jury and I'll happily appear before it and tell exactly what I saw and heard. But I don't see the point in arguing it with you because you weren't there and neither was anyone else contributing to this thread (except, obviously, me).

Awooooooooo.

They may have Whirling Dervishes, we have a Spinning Lycanthrope.

hhp

Hrant;
I meant what's the use of extracting a font from a pdf - aside from looking/admiring it. I mean w/ the kerning setting a heading is probably the only useful thing.
and running some quick auto kerning is not the way either if you really plan to use an extract font for much text.

all i'm saying is that having restrictive licenses for pdf embedding is kind of weird to me.. :)

Clive:
But the FontFolio always came with fonts for both platforms anyway!? So no advantage here.

---

Sure, but just in the OT spirit that I'm all up for. Even without the extra features that OT has the fact that it is cross platform is a blessing, and already worth it :)

As far as FontFolio I would never get it, too expensive of course and not made for a one-man business. I do however think it's a useful library when you have a bigger agency and the money for it (or for academies).
OT is the future, not using it is like keep on using Photoshop 4 and Illustrator 6 (especially in about 2 years I think).. And the OT Pro versions of Adobe type faces are a well worth addition to Font Folio. I don't know how many *new* additions there are to the new FontFolio.....

> >No more buying two copies for PC/Mac
>But the FontFolio always came with fonts
>for both platforms anyway!? So no advantage here.

Au contraire, mon ami Clive...

Amongst the loveliest things about OpenType is the fact that a (correctly-made) OTF works perfectly on both platforms. The very same file, not two different sets of files à la PostScript Type 1, or two different files à la TrueType.

So, one Unicode-stuffed OTF file will be equally happy and perform correctly on either Mac or Wintel machine.

As for the (side) discussion of Le Monde versus Times... I was not at that ATypI presentation either, so will take your word for what JFP said. I will throw my two centimes into the thread and state that Jean François Porchez is one of the most talented, intellectually rigorous, and original type designers alive. I cannot believe that he would plagiarise anyone or anything. It only makes sense that he might have compared his work on Le Monde against Times as he developed the face, to better understand the things that he was seeing in his tests.

And if he made presentation visuals which compared the forms of Le Monde and Times? So what! It's often illuminating to create such comparitive illustrations. Gerard Unger made a very convincing argument for his Gulliver typeface by comparing its text-fitting abilities with those of Times. Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones show a comparison of the old WSJ stock list font, Helvetica Condensed, with the new font they developed, Retina Agate. We do the same thing at Thirstype; we compare and contrast, giving examples. It helps us demonstrate how our designs differ from already-published work, and it allows us to beat our chests with a marketing spin. ("Our new sans serif has 10% more calcium than the leading nation brand!")

With best regards,
c

>Au contraire, mon ami Clive...

Nothing contrary there, I know how OpenType works, but what I'm saying is you got (separate) fonts for both platforms anyway. It's not like suddenly you're buying the Mac version of FontFolio and getting Windows compatibility thrown in.

On the other matter, I think you have about the correct measure of it.

As Si points out, I think our licensing is less restrictive with Font Folio OpenType Edition. What the new EULA says is that some fonts, such as all of the Adobe Originals fonts, are set for the less restrictive "Editable" embedding. We just wanted to make it clearer for customers.

I can also think of a number of advantages of OpenType. Yes, you used to get both platforms in FF9, but did you ever try to move documents across platforms even with the same fonts installed. Not always successful. Also, if you are on a PC do you know what PBO____.PFB is? (Palatino Bold). Finally, there is the whole issue of Unicode. To me this is the most important long-term benefit of OT.

Cheers,
Harold
Adobe Systems

Hang on a minute, Harold. Less restrictive?
As I understand it, if I open a new document in Illustrator 11 beta, and type in a few words in your new, improved, opentype Dante STD, then try to save as a PDF, Illustrator won't let me embed the font. Is my understanding correct?

Regarding Clive and this off-topic discussion of Porchez and Le Times Roman: Clive, the Barcelona story was never important to me, and I don't recall commenting on it except in the most cursory manner. My comments, and the associated web pages, which you evidently missed, were based on a rigorous comparison of Le Times and Times, showing in total over 100 glyphs that were absolutely identical, point for point. Given that, there can be no argument that Porchez point-pirated the 1993 Adobe Times. (You know, sometimes, I wonder if I'm the only person in the online type community who actually examines type in Fog.)

Whether Le Times is a valid design statement, I am not competent to judge, as I have not looked at the type from the standpoint of usage. In any event, I think that question has been adequately answered by Le Monde's use of it.

It is also unquestionable that Porchez has later modified his design considerably, and has had it completely redigitized by a competent technician who was aware of the problems. We are only speaking of ancient history here. I suspect -- I don't know for a fact because I have not examined the latest data for Le Times -- that the latest version is non-infringing.

Two or three years later, in Canada, Porchez was still boasting about point-pirating Le Times, confirming what he told Majoor. But I am not interested in these stories. My opinion is based on my published examination of the data.

C'est un tangled web ou quoi?

Bill, I can't really see that the "Barcelona incident" is a minor point to you, since it's the only issue I've seen you raise and the only evidence you gave here.

I don't think JFP said anything different to Martin than he did to anyone else present at the presentation - that's what Martin's article is about.

JFP's statement, as the result of a direct question, was that he did not work into the Times outlines, he only studied the face for reference.

At what event was JFP "boasting" of this alleged point piracy?

I don't know what source you have for stating that JFP had someone else fix the outlines, AFAIK he's always digitised his own work.

I also find it very unlikely that, even if he had used the data, you could find 100 identical characters in a font given that the widths, cap and x-height are quite different.

I also don't really understand your comments about it being "unquestionable" that Le Monde has been modified over time. The implication being that this has been to disguise it as being "son of Times". I've samples from '95, and the distinction is clear enough there.

My recollection is that the face only went into production use earlier that year.

All I see here are "grassy knoll" conspiracy theories.

I now invite the both of you to take the Le Monde discussion to private email where it will enjoy a small audience, similiar to its current count of 2 or 3.

I would like to hear more from people about
Open Type and embedding.

>As I understand it, if I open a new document in Illustrator 11 beta, and type in a few words in your new, improved, opentype Dante STD, then try to save as a PDF, Illustrator won't let me embed the font. Is my understanding correct?

Hmmm, this doesn't make much sense. The AMT fonts are set to 'print and preview', the Adobe fonts are 'editable' - both are embeddable. The difference should only come into play when you try to 'edit' the document in which the font is embedded.

What you're describing is what I'd expect from a 'no embedding' font.

Si

...However if the app is not able to stop a user for editing text set in a P&P font it should not let you embed it. But that's an implementation issue related to the app - not the font license's fault.

Convert to curves?

> it's the only issue I've seen you raise

The pivotal word there being "I".

hhp

>I would like to hear more from people about Open Type and embedding.

Embedding...

PostScript Type 1 - a section in a hard to understand written license which probably doesn't relate to today's reality of PDF, Flash etc.,

TrueType & OpenType - a section in a hard to understand written license, also embedding permissions encoded within the font that should match the written license.

The license may also be included within the font file iteself along with a URL that links to online information about the font's license.

Hrant dispays his awesome omniscience yet again.

Si: From my recollection Adobe originally limited embedding to read-only/print and preview when they were still making Type 1 fonts

You mean in the OpenType fonts they offered?

I'm sure you know there are no embedding bits in Type 1. There is a control you can put in a PS font for Acrobat Distiller which prevents it being embedded in PDF though.

Oh, and as stated, there's no copy protection in a DSIG.

If you want some clues as to where big software vendors are going with copy protection take a look at the new install procedures for XPress 6.0 and the methods Adobe is testing in Australia.

>I now invite the both of you to take the Le Monde discussion to private email where it will enjoy a small audience, similiar to its current count of 2 or 3.

Greeeaaat! Stephen!!!
We really need more your (or someone else's) moderation. There was a point where there were at least two simultaneous discussion (not thread-related) going on. This is absurd.

My small viewpoint(s) on embedding:

1) I think a typeface stripped of its metrics has little or no value. Automatic kerning or whatever will never be able to replicate a visual approach;

2) Assumed you've extracted a weight (with no metrics), applied an "autokerning" or whatever, you'll still need to adjust it manually each time for headlines;

3) If you don't feel the need to do as per point 2) you are not really a professional, and neither a "collector" (the grey figure standing between the pirate, the junkie and the type historian);

4) If you are not a professional or a "collector", it's very unlikely you are able to use FontLab to output a really satisfying version of an extracted set of outlines. It could be good just to have the outlines as a reference, but I can't see real piracy as long as the typeface is not duplicated, hacked or actually used without a license.

5) There is a 1% of people which would still be willing (in their ignorance) to buy a hacked collection of typefaces. They are used by amateurs and in the end they vanish.

6) Real pirates and "collectors" are disgusted by hacked faces. They crave for the originals.

What do you think? (especially Adobe)

P.S.
Stephen, could you remove all that [crap] about Porchez, LeMonde, Times, whatever?
It has nothing to do with this discussion and it makes the whole thread hard to read.

> Automatic kerning or whatever will never be able to replicate a visual approach

In theory, a human will indeed do a better job than InDesign's optical spacing. But that assumes some key ingredients: talent, skill, motivation, time, etc... It's not surprising that in practice Indy does a better job than like 90% of type designers.

> you'll still need to adjust it manually each time for headlines

Not at all.

And what makes you think metric information is lost? Or do you mean just kerning. Anyway, do you realize how little kerning some very highly valuable (correction: valued) fonts have?

> it's very unlikely you are able to use FontLab to output a really satisfying version

Satisfying to whom? Most people would in fact be happy to get a free copy of a highly prized font no matter if it's a bit degraded. In fact, I would say that having inferior versions of a font floating around is more aggravating to a designer!

--

> could you remove all that [crap] about .... it makes the whole thread hard to read.

Is that the real reason you want it removed?

hhp

I agree with Harold Grey's comment that one of the great benefits of OpenType is Unicode support.

While only Adobe originals are the only "Pro" fonts is also understandable as Adobe owns the IP rights. The amount of work involved is not justified for other foundries fonts. And if Adobe permits the editing of their fonts while other foundries do not what is wrong in that?

If Adobe's motive with OpenType is to induce customers into purchasing InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator then that is their right. Quark does not even support Unicode?

From the foundries included in Font Folio 8 neither Agfa, Berthold, ITC, Linotype (they market the Adobe otf fonts) or Monotype have released a commercial OpenType font. Why?

Currently with a Type 1 font the customer has to purchase a license for the Mac and Windows platforms as well as foreign language versions. One single OpenType font does not compare in revenue.

Clive ...

>You mean in the OpenType fonts they offered?

No I was talking about the written license for their Type 1 fonts.

Si

OpenType crushes Type 1 single master, easily and decisively. My only problem with it is not with OpenType itself but with the combination of other factors that serve to confuse a type buyer.

Adobe sells OpenType versions of Joanna and Officina, but they don't contain the SC+OsF present in the Monotype and ITC versions, because those glyphs weren't included when Adobe did the original cross-licensing agreements. For Officina they might not even have been drawn yet. Both are called "Std." How is the type buyer supposed to know this, and how is Adobe supposed to explain it concisely and coherently?

But some fonts with names ending in "Std" can and do have features. In fact, the main criterion differentiating "Std" and "Pro" is whether or not it supports the whole Adobe Western character set. The only thing that the "Pro" suffix tells you for sure is that it supports CE and a few other codepages. Some "Pro" fonts contain Greek, others Cyrillic, and still others both. They don't have a uniform set of features because they can't (e.g. what's the point in a Trajan swash, etc.)

> My only problem with it is ....

While some of us have a problem with the actual raison-d'être of OT (even if we think it's technically wonderful). The less you look at the source of things the more you'll be manipulated.

hhp

John, your're right about that one. Clearly Adobe (in this case, but distributors/foundries in general) should provide *clear* info on what is exactly in the package when you buy it. Especially with smaller foundries you can easily write a mail if it's not listed and you'll get answers pretty quick. Don't know how long you have to wait till Adobe, ITC, URW++ or Linotype would take to answer the mail (and therefor should mention it online clearly).
I think Adobe made a good attempt in that direction already though, with the icons that state "all the fonts in this package include"...

Claudio, I agree with you totally on the embedding issue. Plus I can't even think about people that are selling extracted fonts with auto. kerning as the real thing? Haha, hilarious, plus the buyers are in that case pretty stupid.. I mean if you're going to buy type you know what you must look for not? And sure you will pick out fakes or don't trust cheesy looking home-burned cd's at discount stores at the corner of your street which has "ADOBE Fonts" on its cover ;)).

Hrant, I've never see of heard about anyone using extracted unkerned fonts for real jobs. Perhaps - like I earlier mentioned - some headlines on a flyer or poster..

But I don't think the issue (as far as the embedding restrictions) is extracting, I mean how many are there really that are being used or even been sold [haha] as real versions to dumb people? No, it's about font publishers/foundries that don't allow embedding in a pdf which you're going to mail out to 2000 people. And I really don't see a problem with that or understand why you need to pay more for font in that occassion. If the big corp. would print 4000 annuals you don't hear the foundry/publisher/distributor.. but when it's a PDF they want money. What if I print it and also want to put it online for other people? I don't understand it...

> I've never see of heard about anyone using extracted unkerned fonts for real jobs.

What's real? Is fake smallcaps real? They're used by the biggest players in the field!

If you mean that certain types of piracy don't in fact affect font house profits, then I agree.

On the other hand, many fonts people pay a lot of money for have lousy or non-existent kerning.

BTW, I don't think many extracted fonts are sold, just distributed.

hhp

To me, the OpenType font collection by Adobe is a seriously higher standard in many cases. The "Pro" fonts are awesome. They have been reworked, cleaned up, many new glyphs have been added, and some completely new designs have been created. The power of automatic contextual ligature substitution in fonts such as Caflisch Script Pro actually make the font usable in productive work.

Imagine using a font with over 500 ligatures when it were split into several expert sets, and having to type "fake" keystrokes to get some particular ligature. Without OpenType, to get the word "offices" set with Caflisch Script using the glyphs o_f_f_i + c + e_s, I'd probably have to type something like "McG" and switch the font twice.

I should mention that the Pro fonts actually make it possible to get good typography in Polish, Czech, Hungarian and other languages that had been trated "stepmotherly" so far. Adobe helpd users in Central and Eastern Europe to fill the decades-long gap between their own typographic quality and that of the Western world.

But note that many of the "Std" fonts also are much more that pure conversions. The kerning sets have been expanded to really support all accented glyphs even in large fonts (thank you class kerning). And, in some cases, long-awaited revisions have been made (for example, in addition to the long-tailed "R" in Bembo -- that many hate --, there is also an alternate short-tailed "R").

Adobe's OpenTypes rock. Although I will still miss the Bertholds, I completely agree that Adobe has done the right thing to remove these fonts from sale. One thing I'll greatly miss greatly are the Multiple Master fonts. But none of them ever contained aogonek anyway, so what... ;)

Adam

The Adobe versions of the Berthold typefaces ae still available, just not from Adobe.

And what about Rotis series, where is the OpenType version?

While some of us have a problem with the actual raison-d’être of OT (even if we think it’s technically wonderful). The less you look at the source of things the more you’ll be manipulated.

I'm sorry, Hrant, but could you possibly be more vague?

Yes, but work with that one first.

hhp

What's the problem, Hrant? Put up or shut up already.

Embedding.

I had a conversation with friend of mine a few days ago. He gave me the best reason, why we should look sceptical at embedding:

People tend to look at things the way they are at the moment. You should not forget about the possibillities the PDF format will offer in the future.
Imagine a re-editable PDF document which is used by your customers. He or she will send it to someone else, who will work with it. And so on.
This means, that the typeface, which has been imbedded, will be used over and over again by people, who never paid for it or even know they have to.

One could think of much more possible future PDF functionallity, but it should be enough to get the point.

---Jacques

PS: Paul v. d. L., thanks

Jacques,

This is exactly why Adobe and Microsoft (primarily application vendors) prefer 'editable' fonts, these make our apps more useful.

And it's exactly why Agfa Monotype and others who primarily sell fonts prefer 'print & preview' embedding.

If I were a font vendor I'd make 'no embedding' fonts, and sell upgrades on request.

If I were buying fonts for my own use I'd only license editable fonts.

Cheers, Si

> Put up or shut up already.

John, you don't have to agree, but I know you're not dense. Plus now I'm confused if I should be more abstract or less. ;-)

hhp

While only Adobe originals are the only "Pro" fonts is also understandable as Adobe owns the IP rights.

This isn't even remotely true.

And Unicode is a red herring with most of Adobe's current OT fonts - they don't have the character sets to take advantage of it.

But, I suppose they'll get there one day.

And Unicode is a red herring with most of Adobe’s current OT fonts - they don’t have the character sets to take advantage of it.

Do you actually believe that's what Unicode is for? Making 65000-character fonts?

I'm curious, what proportion of Adobe's fonts have non-Latin (or extended-Latin) characters? If the MMs didn't support Polish for example (like Adam said), I wonder how much the typical Adobe font user benefits from Unicode.

hhp

Hrant:
Okay, if metrics information is not lost you have a quite usable font (it's right: well spaced faces need often very little kerning).
I've not said having hacked versions around is not a damage, I've just said it's more likely they'll vanish, in time, if they don't work so good. This puts the "display" faces more in danger than "textsetting" faces. But embedding is mostly done with text faces, to make pdf documents lighter.

In the end I keep thinking hacked faces are used mostly by non-professionals. This represents a big damage anyway, especially in countries with high piracy-rates (I think Italy ranks pretty higher, if not in pole-position). But I think it' quite unlikely amateurs and non-professionals have the knowledge and skills to extract a PDF and generate a usable face.
Most non-professionals does not even have a type design program.

But, in the end, what I wished to know (and you keep answering bits and pieces, Hrant) was your (of everyone) opinion on pdf embedding. Is that OK to you?
To me it is, and although I can see the problems, well, we'll always have them. Jeremy Tankard used to put a protection on some of his faces but real pirates or "collectors" managed to crack them anyway.
But I've hardly seen any Tankard face pirated or used by the mass of non-designers and non-professionals.
And even the Enschedè typefaces, so craved and copied by "collectors", I've never seen them actually used or hacked as Emigre faces (still being "trendy") have been. Tarzana and Mrs. Eaves are everywhere, and this is not because pirates hate Emigre: ordinary people look for Emigre fonts, and here in Italy you have a minority of designers buying a license.

Anyway, if we should vote I'd agree on allowing PDF embedding, and I'd like just to know your opinion.

>> could you remove all that [crap] about .… it makes >>the whole thread hard to read.

>Is that the real reason you want it removed?

No, it's to avoid you making stupid/useless comments (like this) as well.

John wrote:
"Adobe sells OpenType versions of Joanna and Officina, but they don’t contain the SC+OsF present in the Monotype and ITC versions, because those glyphs weren’t included when Adobe did the original cross-licensing agreements. For Officina they might not even have been drawn yet. Both are called “Std.” How is the type buyer supposed to know this, and how is Adobe supposed to explain it concisely and coherently?

But some fonts with names ending in “Std” can and do have features. In fact, the main criterion differentiating “Std” and “Pro” is whether or not it supports the whole Adobe Western character set. The only thing that the “Pro” suffix tells you for sure is that it supports CE and a few other codepages. Some “Pro” fonts contain Greek, others Cyrillic, and still others both. They don’t have a uniform set of features because they can’t (e.g. what’s the point in a Trajan swash, etc.)"

This is a *very* good point, as usual coming from John.
And I keep saying I want good old exhaustive specimen sheets/booklets for each f***ing face I buy a license for, not some dumb collection like the FontFolio, handy for service bureaus but not for designers.

I should add that Adobe has made the best possible effort to show the entire glyph set in every font on their website. (This should satisfy your demands, Claudio, although they don't all have text specimens.) It's just that the designations "Std" and "Pro" in the family names by their nature simply cannot convey in detail what the font contains, and so might not be worth including to begin with.

Oh, and let's not forget this is the first Font Folio with Euros in every single non-Pi font.

Claudio, I think embedding is worth the risk.

BTW, one man's stupid/useless is another man's chocolate. Do censor, but... v e r y _ c a r e f u l l y.

hhp

Jacques said: Imagine a re-editable PDF document which is used by your customers. He or she will send it to someone else, who will work with it. And so on.

That's the whole point, and it's an extremely useful feature. I often create PDF ads for clients, and those ads may have to be used for several months in different magazines. It's very handy if they can edit certain details like phone numbers and sales specials without me having to generate new files and bill them again. It's not like they're ever going to figure out how to extract fonts, or use them in a valuable way on their own.

Paul

But if you can modify an existing PDF document enough to end up with something that saves you from having to buy the font yourself...

Picture in fact a product line which is a series of document templates where you might be able to choose the font from "inside".

hhp

John: Do you actually believe that's what Unicode is for? Making 65000-character fonts?

Ha, that would be fun wouldn't it!

No, of course not. But there seems little point invoking Unicode when the character sets of the fonts in question support little more than the 8-bit PS versions already in circulation. The vast majority of Adobe's OpenType fonts only have the superset of Windows+MacOS Latin 1. This hardly seems something to be shouting about.

They don't even have Central European support.

In fact, more than anything, highlighting Unicode just shows off the shortcomings of these fonts.

I would not say these fonts have "shortcomings" compared to their Type 1 predecessors. Being able to get small caps, old style figures and swashes in Fairfield Std or Centaur through OpenType features sure beats doing it manually via Type 1.

But you raise an interesting point: perhaps Adobe should package the subsets of Font Folio fonts that contain CE, Cyrillic and Greek support. Some of the "Std" fonts contain Cyrillic (like ITC Baskerville and Helvetica.)

John

At least with a Type 1 small caps font you can access them in programs other than InDesign and Photoshop. What is the difference between switching fonts or turning the small caps feature on or off.

Nigel, the focus on Small Caps may not help the argument for OpenType; since Small Caps often reside in the lowercase position in SC Type 1 fonts, all it takes is a font change and voila!

The cool thing about OT is that it doesn't change your text. In other words, you grab that text that your client has sent you in an email, set it nicely, turning on auto ligatures, so that all of your fi, fl, ff, fb, fk, ft, st, Th, ffz, Qu - whatever ligs you may have in your font - in place. You don't have to replace certain combinations with single glyphs from an expert font. AND when the client calls and asks you to send her the text as she deleted it by mistake, you can just copy the copy and paste it in your email file, and all of the letters are still ther; everything thta had been ligated is still there in the text.

One of the things I like best about OpenType is that you can tell fonts to set up much better in all-caps settings. You can set it up so that when the user selects All Caps from the OT menu, the letters are spaced wider, and parenthetics and punctuation center on the cap.

But again, the content is not altered: an 'a' is an 'a' is an 'a', but you can program OT to treat those 'a's differently depending upon their context.

And to get back to Small Caps... How often do you see heinous QXP-generated Small Caps? Good typographers will switch to proper Small Caps when setting type in QXP, but the 90%+ of designers who aren't "power users" of type will just click that little k button. Unfortunately, Quark does not understand OT, despite their having many many years to get with the program. (Guess they were too busy working out things like multiple undo and layers.)

I need coffee,
c

> How often do you see heinous QXP-generated Small Caps?

Pretty much 99% of the time. It might be painful to admit it, but virtually nobody uses smallcaps. And your 90% wouldn't even press "that little k button"...

hhp

Bright side: People who buy typefaces, such as the Adobe Font Folio, instead of relying upon system fonts and clipart fonts: those are the people who would use Small Caps properly.

This is all pretty far off-topic, isn't it?

Yep,
c

I work for one of the larger US statistics organizations. One of the methods we use for plausible surveying involves Acrobat forms. A lesser method involves Word forms. My employer's creative department will not license any font that cannot be embedded in forms. This is why I take issue with the move to restrict PDF embedding and enforce it in a new font format.

We are adamant about trying to hold high design standards, but there is only so much we can comply with before our workflow gets affected. The new format may be great, but if it paves the way for more PDF embedding restrictions, I don't think it can realistically be popular with my employer, or the numerous companies that compete with us.

I don't understand the embedding issue from the font vendor's perspective. If it is true that a vendor is afraid of font extraction from within the PDF, can the same argument not be made about Flash files, or even simple web bitmaps? On this very site I have seen a product announcement billing Scanfont's ability to construct fonts from any type of image. If a person wants a font badly enough, is she not able to use its many web showings to easily reproduce it with such products?

There must be a more valid reason for trying to restrict the embedding of fonts, or at least an understandable justification for selling a new technology that paradoxically improves workflow and restricts it at once.

All the Adobe Originals fonts in the Font Folio allow editable embedding. The stronger embedding restrictions on other fonts in Adobe's library, e.g. ITC and Monotype fonts, are the results of ITC and Monotype objecting. [Since they don't have their own portable document technology, this makes sense. Adobe and MS anticipated that not all foundries would want the same set of permissions in their fonts.] If you are designing forms in PDF, Adobe Originals fonts are probably the first fonts you should consider in your design precisely because of their liberal embedding policy.

The full list of originals can be found here.

The embedding flags in OpenType fonts are the same embedding flags found in TrueType fonts in general. Acrobat and Word check the same settings in every font. I don't know if Word allows CFF (.otf format) embedding in documents just yet.

Polly, be as adamant as you like, if you want that feature then some foundries are going to want to charge you an extra licensing fee.

The simple reason for this, and the reason you are "adamant" (Adam Ant!?), is that you get an added benefit from embedding software that was meant for rasterizing for print.

The reason font vendors see this embedding as a threat to their incomes is very well illustrated in this thread. Someone says he distributes ads for his clients to change, with the fonts embedded, you say you want your clients to fill in forms to your design standards - that's a lot of people using but not buying fonts.

If you don't like it, really, just send out pieces of paper - or use another font (hey, no compromise there in those design standards). Then you can clearly see that an embedding licence is something worth paying that bit extra for.

Polly,
when you buy a font, YOU pay the foundry an amount of money to get the official rights to use it.

If you'll send someone an editable PDF in the future*, which has all the thinkable features, the chance this person will pay the rights of usage are very, very small. But he or she will want to work with the given document. This is the problem.

You should not forget, people (clients) like to take things for granted, especially when it comes to topics like type. Even if you tell your customer to be aware, he or all the people following, will certainly not be.

---Jacques

* for example a presentation for a big corporate, for which a lot of external experts need to write a piece of text. The document will be sent to a dozen of people, who, logically won't see the need to pay for the typeface used by the corporate for its communication.

> some foundries are going to want to charge you an extra licensing fee.

And those foundries will lose out...

> an embedding licence is something worth paying that bit extra for.

Are you kidding? People have trouble justifying just buying fonts at all!

hhp

There is an unfortunate misunderstanding being perpetuated throughout this thread, despite Simon's and John's efforts to clarify. Perhaps it can be made more clear.

Font embedding is not an all-or-nothing parameter. There are 3 (THREE) levels of embedding. to understand the differences visit Agfa's glossary.

It might help this thread and future discussions of font embedding.

CC

Carl,
I doubt if there is a big difference in selling embeddable fonts, for which only a small percentage of the users will pay, or non-embeddable fonts, which won't sell if PDF might become the standard.

---Jacques

>And those foundries will lose out...

IMO, the only winner here is Adobe, which really doesn't care about type - it's just a tool to sell more copies of Acrobat (or product X).

Just to note, when discussing licenses for embedding I was referring to extensions for editable embedding, not for sub-set view and print.

>Are you kidding? People have trouble justifying
>just buying fonts at all!

I don't think this is true. Individuals may have trouble justifying this to themselves (especially if they have access to pirated copies or don't care too much about quality), but commercial users understand the purpose of licensing, and will pay to have an additional feature (ie editable embedding) that they never had available previously.

Though perhaps you have better experience in font licensing?

> Though perhaps you have better experience in font licensing?

I have enough (read my site), but I have much more experience working in mid-size companies -and one really large university- where if you suggested that the fonts being used should actually be payed for, you'd get laughed at. Since I started my "working life", I've only managed to get one PTF font and a couple of Adobe fonts bought by my employers (who in total used hundreds of them), and only through a lot of pestering. And remember that few employees are type-freaks like me! Get real.

----

BTW, who are you, that you have to hide your identity for such mildly critical comments? And how do we know you have any experience in any of this? You could be Apostrophe.

hhp

What you're putting forward is piracy by your employers. If they are not happy to buy fonts at all, having an embedding license extension isn't going to make any difference to them at anyway.

What we should be concerned about is the people who want to be honest. The thieves will stay thieves, and one day they may get caught.

You could be a Comma(!?)

Nigel, the focus on Small Caps may not help the argument for OpenType; since Small Caps often reside in the lowercase position in SC Type 1 fonts, all it takes is a font change and voila!

This results in a document that used to refer to NASA and UNESCO referring to nasa and unesco. Yes, you get the smallcap appearance, but to do so you have to massacre your text. Using OpenType with the feature you maintain the text level distinction between upper- and lowercase characters. This is particularly important these days, when people are publishing to multiple media from a single document, including web and other electronic media in which control of display is often out of the publisher's hands. The Unicode character/glyph distinction as implemented by OpenType allows you to produce different qualities of typographic refinement without ever having to touch the text string.

Oh, you must be Our President then...
People are not Evil or Good, everybody is a shade of gray - it's a matter of degrees, otherwise none of my employers would have bought any fonts. Any excuse you give them will make it harder for people like me to get them to pay up, sometimes.

What you need to be concerned about is reality. My employers have generally been pretty much average in terms of ethics.

----

Use your real name, jelly boy.

hhp

John: NASA and UNESCO referring to nasa and unesco

This kind of misses the point that some people think it's alright to write "Nasa" and "Unesco".

I'm not really sure there's any "correct" way to form small caps - should they be formed from lowercase, or uppercase. Whichever way you choose there are an equal number of arguments against.

sometimes

Sometimes it will, and sometime it won't. That's as it is right now, so no advantage/disadvantage perceived.

Oh, you must be Our President then…

No idea who your president is, you could be anywhere.

Use your real name, jelly boy.

One might even say the same of you, no one could possibly be called "H Rant"!

Walter and Hrant: please continue this discussion about Adobe, Font Folio, and OpenType without mentioning each other. Let's see how that goes.

> so no advantage/disadvantage perceived.

What are you talking about? If the fonts my employers did buy had unfavorable embedding restrictions, the chances would be less they'd have consented to buying them. Duh.

If you're out to make people into saints, then sure, there's no point factoring in human nature. But if you're out to make more money in the retail font market, then pragmatism is your best tool.

And if you must cower behind a pseudonym (my name is ~3000 years old, btw) then it's in poor taste to use one derived from somebody who was such a gift to type design. Use "ratspine" or something.

hhp

How about those 3 levels of embedding. Is it somewhere clearly stated which level we are talking about in case of Font Folio? Is viewing/printing allowed in the ITCs or others with these restrictive licenses?

Walter, I don't think only Adobe benefits from this, just to sell more Acrobats. In fact, I welcome any other corporation beating Adobe creating something similar; pdf is a wonderful format regardless. ;)

I'd like to see some sort of license policy that would restrict big corps. like Sony or companies > 100 employees that gotta pay for embedding (editable docs?) and freelance designers get 'full granted licences' - haha

Rolf,

What we're talking about is a setting in the font file itself, documented here... http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/os2.htm#fst

A foundry or independent designer can make and licnese 'no embedding' fonts, but it's been my experience that most make 'print and preview' fonts, including ITC and AMT.

Note that these settings relate only embedding a font in a 'document file'. These settings give you no rights to embed the font within other types of file.

Si

How about those 3 levels of embedding. Is it somewhere clearly stated which level we are talking about in case of Font Folio? Is viewing/printing allowed in the ITCs or others with these restrictive licenses?

Yes, Adobe's OpenType fonts are "editable" embedding.

Walter, I don't think only Adobe benefits from this, just to sell more Acrobats. In fact, I welcome any other corporation beating Adobe creating something similar; pdf is a wonderful format regardless. ;)

I think Adobe's in a sensitive position, but isn't reacting very sensively to the concerns of some of its partners. It is offering fonts for sale in competition to some of those partners, and it is using its position to leverage the entire market to its own ends.

Yes, PDF is a great format, but Adobe can't be the only company that commercial gains from it - just because it has the muscle to do so.

I'd like to see some sort of license policy that would restrict big corps. like Sony or companies > 100 employees that gotta pay for embedding (editable docs?) and freelance designers get 'full granted licences' - haha

I suppose we'd all like everything for free. :-)

I think there is something to be said for "scalable" licensing, or more adaptive licensing, but the way things are right now we are kind of stuck with a blunt instrument - that was put together by Apple, without the benefit of an oracle, back in the late 80s.

In a perfect world I'd like to see cheaper fonts and less piracy - but there seems to be no will to do this (the software companies are only concerned about protecting their monolithic apps).

--

An aside: there are at least 19 other Racey’s listed in the NY telephone directory

Voice from the oracle: it may take another ten years but Adobe's default document structure is going to be PDF - Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign... all will be opening and editing structured PDF and the "native" file formats will disappear.

> there are at least 19 other Racey’s
> listed in the NY telephone directory

And Nefertiti was a real Egyptian princess.

hhp

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20045.html

Coincidence? Perhaps it's not just the Google ad's that are watching us!

>This kind of misses the point that some people think it's alright to write "Nasa" and "Unesco".

Not just some people; most English newspapers, including the Telegraph.

>I think Adobe’s in a sensitive position, but isn’t reacting very sensively to the concerns of some of its partners. It is offering fonts for sale in competition to some of those partners, and it is using its position to leverage the entire market to its own ends.

My personal view is much simpler. Adobe would have clearly preferred -- for simple marketing reasons -- to have all fonts in FF embeddable. Knowing this, the other foundries, who are perpetually whining about how little they got from Adobe, went to Adobe and said, give us x dollars or you can't embed. Adobe called their bluff and said -- have it your own way. It is difficult not to sympathize with Adobe in this particular situation, but I of course have not been privy to all the inside details.

With regard to the subject of extracted fonts which lack kerning, I have this to say:

Extracted fonts have the correct spacing, and that could be fine for text applications. Isn't it a little rash to suppose that a font has been well-kerned? Very few really are. There are many objectionable kerns typical of Bitstream and Adobe fonts. Have a look at the hardcover edition of Gitta Sereny's Speer. It's impeccably set in Minion, using all f-ligatures and oldstyle figures -- what a lot of work, given the font changes involved! And there isn't a single typographical error in the entire book. But if I recall correctly, this diligent, tasteful designer turned kerning off. Why? Because there is a lot to object to in Minion's kerning, as there is in much of the Adobe Originals.

My point is that it is silly to presuppose that kerning is desirable merely because someone put it there.

My feeling is that kerning can often be as obtrusive as lack of kerning can.

I have also reluctantly become convinced that nobody really understands the kerning of text faces besides Matthew Carter!

But if you look at his faces, they are carefully fitted so as to require a bare minimum of kerning. Most of his actual kerning is concerned with refinements that are somewhat out of the ordinary.

This kind of misses the point that some people think it's alright to write "Nasa" and "Unesco".

How about CIA and FBI. I'm presuming no one writes those as Cia or Fbi, and in order to display as smallcaps they should not be encoded as cia and fbi.

I'm not really sure there's any "correct" way to form small caps - should they be formed from lowercase, or uppercase. Whichever way you choose there are an equal number of arguments against.

Smallcaps shouldn't be generally 'formed' from a particular case. Smallcaps are display variants of uppercase letters in some circumstances (e.g. abbreviations like those above) and lowercase letters in other circumstances (e.g. the opening few words of the first paragraph in a chapter). If the text is uppercase it should not be changed to lowercase in order to facilitate smallcaps. If the text is lowercase it should not be changed to uppercase to facilitate smallcaps. One of the key benefits of OpenType typography is text preservation, i.e. the ability to typeset text without having to mangle the character strings.

John: How about CIA and FBI. I'm presuming no one writes those as Cia or Fbi, and in order to display as smallcaps they should not be encoded as cia and fbi.

How about I move the goalposts too? I'm just firing your example back, because it wasn't a good example. Personally I'd write all four examples as caps, the U&lc method for acronyms just destroys meaning.

Smallcaps shouldn't be generally 'formed' from a particular case.

Kind of a hard argument to put forward, since they inevitably are.

Smallcaps are display variants of uppercase letters in some circumstances (e.g. abbreviations like those above) and lowercase letters in other circumstances (e.g. the opening few words of the first paragraph in a chapter).

The problem here is that those two things are opposed to each other. What about a face that has no lowercase, only caps and small caps? Selecting the entire U&lc text and imposing that face one would expect to see caps/small cap combinations - but no styling of small caps has taken place.

If the text is uppercase it should not be changed to lowercase in order to facilitate smallcaps.

I think, on the whole, it doesn't work like that. Caps stay as caps, lowercase goes to small caps.

Bill: Adobe called their bluff

:-)

What about a face that has no lowercase, only caps and small caps?

Such faces are generally only used for headlines. If the font you choose impedes text with ambiguities, you're using the wrong font. Often the meaning is clear enough:

FBI DIRECTOR NAMED IN HUMBUGGERY INVESTIGATION

But other times maybe not:

FBI DIRECTOR NAMED IN RICO INVESTIGATION

and it's the editor's responsibility to make that decision.

I can't believe I have to explain this.

I think, on the whole, it doesn't work like that. Caps stay as caps, lowercase goes to small caps.

From the sound of it, you are living in an 8-bit world of SC fonts and hacked text. I'm not. I use OpenType fonts and apps, and I select whether lowercase text displays as smallcaps using the 'Small Capitals' feature, or uppercase text displays as smallcaps using the 'Small Capitals from Capitals' feature, or both upper- and lowercase display as smallcaps by applying both features. Get it?

Regarding fonts that contain only caps and smallcaps, even if the smallcaps were mapped to lowercase characters I would still want mappings from uppercase characters to smallcap glyphs, so that I wouldn't need to change the text if I wanted something set in all smallcaps.

It's really simple, Walter: With OpenType fonts, the small caps style can be applied to either caps or lowercase. Either way you get small caps. It doesn't matter if the source text is caps or lowercase. I think OpenType fonts can even have all caps and lowercase styles.

>Smallcaps shouldn't be generally 'formed'
>from a particular case.

Kind of a hard argument to put forward, since they inevitably are.

Read it again: I said smallcaps shouldn't be formed from a particular case, i.e. always from lowercase letters; rather, they should be treated as display variants of any case. Understand the distinction between the particular and the universal?

I think OpenType fonts can even have all caps and lowercase styles.

OpenType doesn't have layout features for casing display. I suggested them at one point, but was convinced by arguments from Adobe and MS that applications can handle this at the text processing level, e.g. using buffered character conversion or glyph substitution based on cmap mappings. This is what InDesign does if you select 'All Caps' from the Character flyout menu: the text remains unaltered, but the display changes to uppercase glyphs. If you actually want to change the characters in the backing string to uppercase you have to use the Change Case function in the Type menu.

>It's really simple, Walter

>Read it again:

>I can't believe I have to explain this.

>Get it?

These quotations from the last few
messages show clearly what the problem
with OT is: you just can't explain how
something as simple as small caps works!

I wonder if anyone here remembers how small caps were brought to PostScript?

First we had Lino's small cap sets, which had already been used for years. They were simple to use, and completely intuitive: Type uppercase and you get uppercase; type lowercase and you get small caps.

Then we had Adobe's "Expert Sets". These were in theory better. They had small caps in the lowercase, and then all kinds of freakish things, including f-ligs, in the uppercase.

The Expert Sets were a marketing disaster. No designer could figure out how to work with them, and if they could, they were just too much darn trouble.

Ultimately, Adobe was forced to offer _every single one_ of its "expert sets" as SC/OSF sets as well. That confused things even more.

Only Font Bureau and a few others got things right, by including all necessary ligs in the base fonts, and then offering SC fonts in the Lino style.

The quotes above illustrate that smallcaps in OT have been made unnecessarily complex. In fact, OT's typographical features have been configured by engineers, for engineers. Nowhere has anyone consulted an average group of designers -- that beloved but admittedly not habitually too bright group -- to find out what they would actually feel comfortable using.

When you have to resort to this level of explanation, it should be clear that you have a remarkably counter-intuitive technology.

This should be addressed soon. So far, OT only makes sense to the couple of hundred people on the OT list. It is very far from being productized, I'd say. By illustration, consider that all the fonts in FF/OT are OT, yet some have the SC/OS/ligs built in, and others don't. What is the approach with the Mono expert sets? The Lino SC sets? Are they simply offered just as they always were? If so, that is colossally confusing. So, with some fonts, you have to use a special SC or expert set, while with others, the SC glyphs are built into the base weight? Wow. What Customer would feel comfortable among such disorder?

You know, it's a funny thing: the people who are enthusiastic about OT are those who have a financial stake in it. Customers don't seem to have noticed yet.

Can someone tell me how small caps worked in GX? Is Apple doing anything on its own here? I seem to remember with GX that everything just worked. I recall that this probably rather silly business of making Cap letter strings small-cappable was not allowed. It's just too confusing.

This technology is all in someone's head. Nobody has translated it into the workplace yet. That's what makes me uncomfortable. What it needs is to get one of the great Mac interface gurus onboard.

Bill, you're wrong. Applying smallcaps in OpenType apps is easy. It is also easy to explain to most people, although it does require grasping the Unicode character/glyph distinction. The latter is not peculiar to OpenType, though: it is a feature of GX/AAT, Graphite, DecoType's Arabic engine, and just about every other current text rendering system outside of Quark.

John, I must be pretty dumb because I fail to grasp the difference between a line of caps, and another line of caps with a few different words in it. This somehow demonstrates some concept of OpenType?

John & John, you should lighten up a little, there's some pretty good condescention going on between the two of you.

...and just about every other current text rendering system outside of Quark

Hmm, while there is a fairly wide range of complex text processing engines, I really don't think that by any stretch of the imagination you could single out Quark as a company not using such. It's really the 90% of the iceberg that's below the water that either don't know or don't care.

You mean like maybe the guy who decided the mouse should be one-button? iRetard.

hhp

Hmm, while there is a fairly wide range of complex text processing engines, I really don't think that by any stretch of the imagination you could single out Quark as a company not using such. It's really the 90% of the iceberg that's below the water that either don't know or don't care.

A lot of apps make use of system resources for text processing and line layout, e.g. making text out API calls, which means that they can leverage the rendering system provided by the OS rather than having their own. Many app developers that either 'don't know or don't care' about things like Unicode text processing or OpenType layout don't actually need to know about such things in order to implement them via standard system text calls. Last year I was typing in UltraEdit, my favourite text editor, when I accidentally hit the hotkey combination that switches to my Arabic keyboard driver. I typed several meaningless words before I realised what I'd done, but to my delight the Arabic text was perfectly formed, with appropriate font switching taking place and the proper letter forms being substituted. Intrigued, I typed some more Arabic, and then tried Hindi and a couple of other Indic scripts: they all rendered perfectly. I wrote a note to the maker of UltraEdit to congratulate him on having done such a good job of supporting these scripts, and he wrote back to say that he wasn't aware that he was supporting them: he was just making standard system calls that Windows routed via the Uniscribe script engine. A similiar situation now exists on the Mac side, with any natively written Cocoa app taking advantage of ATSUI and rich typography features in AAT fonts.

>Applying smallcaps in OpenType apps is easy. It is also easy to explain to most people, although it does require grasping the Unicode character/glyph distinction.

although ... grasp ... this perfectly illustrates the complete dichotomy between engineer and user that I have been commenting on as regards this ugly stepsister of type formats.

>The latter is not peculiar to OpenType, though: it is a feature of GX/AAT, Graphite, DecoType's Arabic engine, and just about every other current text rendering system outside of Quark.

But Quark long ago figured out, thanks to its unfortunately deceased interface engineer, how to make a progam that people simply love to work in, as 99% of designers do.

You know, it's beginning to look to me like OT will have even less budget for promotion and advertising than MM did. That isn't a good sign.

What's interesting here is that what MS is trying to do with OT is sensible, invisible to the user, and is free. What Adobe is trying to do with OT is incomprehensible, cumbersome, and expensive.

For the record, I have no financial stake in OpenType.

To be a bit crass, if you can't grasp the difference between a character and a glyph rather quickly, you're stupid. Sorry. I went through a crappy public school system, and I learned the difference between a number and a numeral in elementary school. It's the exact same situation. A character is an abstract concept, and a glyph is the physical representation of that concept. You don't have to be an engineer to understand that.

If you can learn Quark XPress and Photoshop, you can realize that there's a exciting new feature that lets you change capital letters to small caps without retyping them as lowercase. I can't believe anyone is saying that this is hard to figure out. It's different, not counterintuitive. Yes, it's an extra feature, but it's one I've wished was in Quark XPress for years now. (Hell, I would've settled for an "all lowercase" option so I could style my small caps as SC font + all lowercase.)

It makes sense that what MS is doing is transparent to the user, since their side of OT is important to the semantics of the languages. What Adobe is doing is not -- they are providing tools designers to create more beautiful text.

This is important: We are talking about designers here, not Joe Sixpack using Microsoft Word (though hopefully some day Word will implement the more basic OT advanced typography features). We are talking about professionals. It seems like you're saying that that these professionals should not be expected to learn anything new. Stop being such a luddite.

... a progam that people simply love to work in, as 99% of designers do.

Making up fake figures: Strengthening weak arguments since 1639. You should talk to Quark users who have pressed Ctrl+Z twice.

Mr. Troop,

Do you own a licensed copy of InDesign?

John,

As you note, system level support is there - but developers of cross-platform applications won't use it.

You've already cited Quark, let me add Macromedia, Corel... there are plenty of application vendors in the graphics market who are just not supporting Unicode or OpenType - Adobe is really the only one that is.

Also, just to come back to something you wrote previously, your faith in OpenType applications appears to be a bit misinformed.

InDesign 1.5 only transforms lowercase to small caps, v2.0 does the same using the "Small Caps" setting, and will only set caps to small caps if you use the "OpenType - > All Small Caps" setting.

Which is kind of a halfway house, except, as you probably know, InDesign has no interpretation of the "OpenType - > All Small Caps" features where non-OpenType fonts are used. It won't scale to small caps if that setting is used so the string will appear as U&lc. Whereas it will scale with the "Small Caps" setting.

Not that I'm a fan of scaled caps, but people have been using it for years, and they will continue to do so.

FWIW I agree with Bill about the XPress interface - it's a long way ahead of "palettes everywhere" that people take for progress a la Adobe.

Adobe has managed to generate so many palettes that it even had to develop the "tabbed" palette in an attempt to clear up the mess - thus destroying the concept of having "everything" visible all at the same time.

I still can't really come to terms with the way Illustrator was messed up.

Mr Racey,

InDesign cannot be all things to all people. I recommend you not buy InDesign if you don't intend to use it with OpenType fonts, and you not buy OpenType fonts if you don't intend to use them with applications like InDesign. The fact that InDesign can reasonably leverage an existing investment in expert sets and MM fonts (and even do it better than Quark) still doesn't mean you can use it to its full potential without the latest technology.

A move to InDesign should be part of the existing continuous move to newer hardware, software and OSes. The best way to do this is to gradually insert it into a design workflow and start using it now and then for simple, non-rush projects until you get used to the UI. The palettes and shortcuts are very customizable, and the tabs can be dragged out into their own palettes. (Try it.) If clutter is a problem for you, you should look into adding a second or third monitor. Use your existing T1 fonts and the OT fonts that are bundled with InDesign until you are comfortable working in it. I get the impression that most people who are wary of InDesign have not had much opportunity to use it yet.

If you are satisfied with Quark's limitations, by all means keep using it. Plenty of people still run Mac OS 9 too. I think the industry is still well into a software transition phase, much like the previous one from PageMaker to Quark, and there will still be plenty of stragglers for several years. I also think InDesign's adoption is being slowed by other issues like Mac OS X adoption. Lots of expensive changes are happening at the same time. It's natural for designers not to want to shell out for them all at once. (I still run Illustrator 6.) It sucks that I can't run OS X on my old 7600, but that's how fast technology advances.

>It makes sense that what MS is doing is transparent to the user, since their side of OT is important to the semantics of the languages. What Adobe is doing is not — they are providing tools designers to create more beautiful text.

>It makes sense that what MS is doing is transparent to the user, since their side of OT is important to the semantics of the languages. What Adobe is doing is not — they are providing tools designers to create more beautiful text.

Really? Have you talked to any Adobe type designers about this, or rather, the only one left, Robert Slimbach? I really doubt that Robert thinks that OT functionality will help "create more beautiful text" as opposed to the multiple master technology it replaced. Beautiful text forsooth!

This is all about marketing: Adobe wants a Quark killer at any price -- not because they want to improve technology, but because they want to grab those sales. Quark, Corel, Macromedia, and any other Adobe competitor are refusing to adopt OT because that would validate their deadly competitor's technology and bring them even closer to irrelevancy.

>This is important: We are talking about designers here, not Joe Sixpack using Microsoft Word (though hopefully some day Word will implement the more basic OT advanced typography features). We are talking about professionals. It seems like you’re saying that that these professionals should not be expected to learn anything new. Stop being such a luddite.

Who's the Luddite? Almost ten years ago, Microsoft Word for PC had a feature where, if it detected a multiple master font with an optical axis, it would automatically select the correct point size.

But OT's typographical features are so cumbersome that the MS Word team won't get near it.

We're not moving forwards, it seems to me, but backwards.

But as regards the issue of simplicity, this writer is obviously an engineer who simply does not know any graphic designers. Graphic designers like to keep their technology real, real, simple, and real, real, elegant.

>Mr. Troop,

Do you own a licensed copy of InDesign?

I can't imagine why you are asking this question. Why do you care whether I own a copy, licensed, or unlicensed? What has that got to do with any of this?

In any case, while Adobe may have -- probably inadvertently! -- sent me a few copies over the years, I believe I am correct in telling you that I never inhaled.

On InDesign's palettes: you needn't have them open. Use key commands if that's your style. In the end, InD is simply more flexible than Quark. It lets you work the way you want to.

I can't imagine why you are asking this question.

I ask because in my experience, people who don't use a given piece of software generally don't understand it; and people who have an unlicensed copy have less incentive to understand it (people who pay money for something like business software are generally motivated to get some use out of it.)

You just go on as if you've not used it that much, if at all. Put more bluntly, you don't know what you're talking about.

But OT’s typographical features are so cumbersome that the MS Word team won’t get near it.

This is incorrect. These features are absolutely necessary for complex script typesetting, and MS Word currently implements them through Uniscribe. Fine type features for Latin script are simply less of a priority right now. The only thing the Word team has to do to make them accessible is build some UI elements to let the user toggle these features.

You must understand that MS Word contains tons of very old code still being replaced gradually, because Word still needs to be able to open and modify legacy Word format documents. And because it's a f*ck-ton of code.

Adobe and Microsoft are starting from opposite ends of the OpenType feature spectrum: Adobe from the fine typography side, MS from the mutilingual side. They will eventually converge and pass one another until both support all of the OpenType spec.

Microsoft is a large company, and the Type Group's list of priorities differs from the Word division. They interact but don't agree on everything in terms of timelines and priorities. Right now the Office team is (as far as I can tell) more concerned with component modularity, XML interchange, and simply expanding the pervasive presence of Office in every single business process. You will probably see the next versions of Office start to do things that were previously entrusted to software like SAP, Baan and Oracle, as well as some completely new stuff.

I really doubt that Robert thinks that...

I'd rather hear from him directly on this.

On clutter - no Adobe app is really as navigable as XPress, and I don't come to dislike their interface choices because I have not used their apps, I've been using Illustrator since "88+", Photoshop since 1.x and InDesign since, er, probably beta.

Productivity-wise XPress kicks their asses.

The color palette in Illustrator since v8 is just a disaster area.

John, clearly one is only going to adopt new tools if they have killer features (and no downside). InDesign has a few killer features, but also plenty of downside. Sometimes the pluses just about knock out the minuses though.

I really think it's pretty "D-U-M-B" for people to be criticising others for their tool preferences, and to be saying "InDesign is great, but...".

Large studios want to sit in their comfort zone, and ID isn't there. And trying to make out it's getting there with its current share of the market is pretty funny. XPress killed PageMaker because it had killer features and no downside - and it's had ten years to settle itself into complex, and trusted, workflows. Give Adobe another five years and another couple of versions of ID and they may just get where they want to be.

But some serious UI work needs to be done first.

John, clearly one is only going to adopt new tools if they have killer features (and no downside).

I can't agree with that at all.

I really think it’s pretty “D-U-M-B” for people to be criticising others for their tool preferences

This started off as Bill trashing OpenType and the people who use and support it.

As I said two posts ago, feel free to stick with Quark if it's all you need. I find ID is better for most things. If I need Quark for something, I'll get it and use it. There's another seemingly foreign idea... right tool for the job. It is possible to own and use both programs, you know.

It took me about a year to move from Fontographer into FontLab. Looking back, it was easily worth it.

>I wrote

But OT’s typographical features are so cumbersome that the MS Word team won’t get near it.

John Butler wrote

This is incorrect. These features are absolutely necessary for complex script typesetting, and MS Word currently implements them through Uniscribe.

When I say typographical features obviously I am not referring to the multilingual features, but to the Latin type features. John, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, and that is not advancing the discussion.

JB continues,

"Fine type features for Latin script are simply less of a priority right now. The only thing the Word team has to do to make them accessible is build some UI elements to let the user toggle these features."

That is not what I have heard from MS. We have long since been given to understand, from Microsoft, and I think this was public, though perhaps it was in private email to me from the MS type people, that the reason OT Latin typographical features are not going to be supported in Word for the foreseeable future is that it simply slows down the program too much -- like by a factor of 2.

I wonder if MSW still supports the trick of selecting the right optical size for a PC multiple master? Somewhere along the line, I think the feature was removed, but who knows? And of course, with Adobe's ill-conceived but admittedly idiot-proof optical axes, you have to examine closely to know whether you're looking at Minion 6 pt or 72 pt.

John continues,

>[quoting me] "I really doubt that Robert thinks that...

I'd rather hear from him directly on this

Then why don't you call him? The chances of Robert reading a typographical blog are zero. The man's got work to do and doesn't even read his email. But as I am almost certainly the one on this list who knows him best, having spent, after all, several hundred hours talking and working with him, and despite the fact that I have not spoken to him since 1998 or so, and am very unlikely to again, unless it be in a very cleverly designed form of Purgatory, the fact is that I have a pretty good idea what he thinks. You could of course try to call him and get him to tell you what he really thinks. But I think he would probably tell you to go away.

One thing I know for sure: Robert is 1000% committed to multiple master technology, and is bitter that his completely reconceived version of Garamond (which requires two multiple masters, one for 6 to 18pt, a second for 24 to 72pt) has not been productized. It's a pity, since it's probably by far his best font. No doubt it will see the light of day, sometime in the next ten or fifteen years, when MM technology is rediscovered and remarketed.

So please, please, let's not get involved with this red herring, this fantasy, this marketing ploy, that OT is actually going to "make more beautiful text."

For any who want to try, Robert can be reached by calling the Adobe swithboard and simply asking for him. But do you really think he would talk candidly about his work and his feelings to a stranger? Especially since it would probably not be in his best interests (i.e. keeping his job) to do so?

On Indy, I can honestly say that I don't understand it, or rather I do. It's one of those messy programs with a steep learning curve which simply have no future today. I no longer use programs that require me to read a manual. I expect the interface to be good enough to make everything seem entirely natural, like perfectly fitting clothes. I've done my time in DOS, I've done my time programming in assembler, and I'm not interested in that anymore. The software is there to do the work for me; not me to do the work for the software. Like a great piano, that seems to play itself when you put your hands on it, I expect software to be entirely intuitive, entirely seductive. I'm not in the least alone in this. Graphic designers are typically people who have a hard time understanding how to save a file or even what a file is or where it is. The tech talk is fine for your engineering buddies, of course.

I think we're getting off topic, and I know I'm getting long-winded. Is there anything more constructive to say on this thread at this point?

I'd like to hear more about how the new FF/OT works with the newer apps. I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here, because, as I can report, Adobe has _not_ sent me the new FF. And I wonder if Adobe is still allowed to sell FF 8, which is beginning to seem more and more like the most desirable, practical version. I wonder if its resale value will increase over the years? And I'd really like to know what insiders at Quark, Macromedia and Corel think about OT. Doesn't anybody have any contacts?

> Microsoft Word for PC had a feature where, if it detected a multiple master font with an optical axis, it would automatically select the correct point size.

Can anybody else confirm this? And provide some elaboration, like what version, and if/why that feature was pulled out, etc.

> I'd rather hear from him directly on this.

Don't hold your breath.

> his completely reconceived version of Garamond (which requires two multiple masters

That doesn't make sense, because MM technology does support discontinous axes.

hhp

Then why don't you call him? .....

Bill, when I said "rather," I meant, "in comparison to listening to Bill Troop speculate about what he'd say." I have never met Mr. Slimbach, but I suspect that he's good enough at what he does so as to be able work for whomever he damn well chooses, and the fact he's still with Adobe makes me doubt your speculation. Which is not to say I'm particularly anxious to bother him about anything.

As for those other companies...

Quark will skate along for a few years more with no advanced type technology, I suspect. Macromedia is moving away from print altogether and milking the Flash Cow. I used to have a contact there (we all did) but he's left now. And Corel? No idea. They have lots of disparate products with very little in common component-wise. I suspect the text rendering libraries in Draw, WordPerfect and Painter are all unique. GUI text rendering services haven't always been as well-featured out of the box as they are now. Again, this is inevitable code cruft slowing down advances. It happens in all well-established software, and I'm not condeming it. Quark is the perfect example. In ten years, InDesign might have a similar problem. (Its modular architecture seems to anticipate that issue, though.)

it simply slows down the program too much -- like by a factor of 2.

It is fascinating how you oscillate between deriding us "engineer-types" and trying to argue technicalities yourself. Make up your mind already.

Those same routines running in Word 2002 RIGHT NOW which handle the Arabic and Indic shaping are the routines that handle fine typography. Look at the OT specification on MS' site if you don't believe me. They're all just generic GSUB and GPOS tables. The purpose of the substitution does not affect the time it takes to perform it.

MS Word is nothing to a CPU fabricated any time in the past three years. They run at 3 gigahertz now. I have a 400 MHz Pentium 2, about four years old now, and both the latest Word and InDesign run just fine on it.

Word is not a very CPU-intensive program anymore. Fire up Windows Task Manager and mess around with a Word document on any recent machine. The Performance tab in the Task Manager will show you your CPU utilization. Double that number and you'll see it's still not that much.

Returning to Quark Xpress, I doubt that Quark can adopt their existing code to newer type technology. Adobe couldn't do it themselves, otherwise we'd have OpenType in PageMaker. It's a very difficult problem. Again, look at Word. Quark would do best to start from scratch on a new app and sink millions into it, as Adobe has done with ID. Who's to say they haven't started?

OpenType is a viable choice for some: mainly newcomers not tied down to Quark and established companies with some funds to invest in the new hardware and software. It's winning the students over too.

I think the biggest obstacle for OT right now is the lack of an OT layout services library for MacOS. Ideally you would want something that works in both Carbon and Cocoa. Without such a library, you have to write one from scratch, as Adobe has done with CoolType. I asked about licensing CoolType, but no no no. Understandable but unfortunate.

Oh well. The next place to look is something like IBM's ICU library, which would need some Cocoa hooks grafted onto it. Pango might also work.

You may be surprised and delighted to know, Bill, that Apple's GX/AAT technology will be coming back in Panther. It never really left, but it's features will be accessible in all Cocoa apps including the default text editor. There are also new tools to build AAT fonts, including fonts with the same features accessible in both AAT and OT apps. I'm working on such a font right now.

Jane! Stop this crazy thing!

John (and anyone else who's been annoyed by this problem)--Don't refresh your browser window after posting a comment. It's a bug in the blog engine used here. Close out and come back in through the main page. Refreshing the page works fine after that.

Oh, wait. That may not be true in this case. I got an error when I tried to post that. Something screwy going on with the back end...

Stephen? Matthew? Joshua?

That's not a bug, it's actually a Movable Type feature designed to discourage posts on overly long-winded threads.

Seriously, though, I wish I knew what it was. Unfortunately my backend man is not around so I have to look elsewhere for help. Any experts in the house?

>But some serious UI work needs to be done first

That comment was with regards to the Indy UI.

I agree. I really dislike UIs that just present a bunch of icons in a row or column -- and that includes the friggin Dock.

With all the Adobe type interfaces (and that extends to Macromedia stuff too) I just can't "read" the difference between icons that present a letter or two with some horizontal/vertical arrows. Years later, I'm still clicking on the kern/track button when I want scaling, and vice versa.

The logic of the system is too rigid -- I mean, the adjustment button arrows (in Indy) next to the horizontal scaling icon point either up or down. That completely f***s my head, and I have to stop and figure it out every time I use it!

What I like about Quark (which I use with QX Tools) is that the typographic tools are split up and look different. So it's less likely that a twit like me will confuse them. And in the measurement palette the leading arrows point up/down, and the kern/track arrows point sideways.

As for OT controls in Indy, they have been added on (after the faux effects even), not properly integrated.

The main type panel presently has two "levels" showing for typeface,
1. Name, 2. font (ie a particular weight, or Roman/Italic)

It should be revised so that 3 levels show:
1. Name, 2. font, 3. "feature set" - to include options such as small caps.
Within this 3rd level, there should be a distinction (perhaps by color) between faux stylings and real. Also, OT features not available in a particular font should be greyed-out (which is standard practice), not in brackets.

This is pretty straightforward, no?

What's so frustrating for typographers is that Indy on OS X is, in many areas, an improvement on Quark on OS 9, but in several areas it's actually a step backwards.

You can always tell when Stephen gets tired of a long thread, cos he starts posting new items one after the other in the hopes of distracting us. :-)

I have been using Xpress since version 2. Last year I bought InD 2 as a leap of faith because I like other Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator. InD's typography is nice but slapped together interface wise. The character palette is there just like in Illustrator but the real meat spills out of the small options button in the corner of the palette. I agree with the person who posted that it looks like it's an afterthought.

For what it's worth on QX versus Indy coming from a heavy duty QX user who tried switching to InD and found it too difficult.

InD makes some things easier than QX, e.g. color management, integration with Photoshop and Illustrator, transparency, overprint/knockout, but these are things that an experienced QX user should have no problem handling in QX especially with the many xtensions available to handle those features. But there are so many more things where QX is still unsurpassed.

QX has improved considerably over the last 2 versions. QX layers are much better than InD because runarounds can be disabled automatically in hidden layers. Version 6 also has a better system of multiple undos than InD because it allows you to skip back and forth between multiple levels of undos and redos. QX can work with multiple documents from tabs at the bottom of the screen, while InD is still in conventional single document mode. QX 6 is much better at synchronizing text and standardizing content, InD still works with links and outside documents. QX 6 tables are much more intuitive than InD tables. QX lets the user precisely customize a font's kerning pairs throughout the whole document, InD only allows a somewhat vague machine version of that through its own engine's optical kerning which is either on or off. QX has customizable stroke styles, InD just has some non customizable presets. QX offers a dedicated web design mode and tools which are different from the print design mode and tools, InD has the one interface with the same tools for both design modes. And QX has a much better name than InDesign ;-)

InD's best feature is the fact that it got the Quark team off their asses to finally listen to what their customers want. But InD still has long ways to go before it does everything a QX user is accustomed to doing.

- Jason Hull

Jason - You are wrong on many of these points, probably because of inexperience with InD. But let's reserve this thread for Font Folio now. There's a separate article on Quark vs. InDesign.

It's interesting that Jason doesn't mention typography. Probably because there's no money in it. "Huh, werz the pitchures?"

hhp

I did mention typography. You probably aren't a designer because if you were you would know that typography is only 1 of about 20 different things that can occupy the designer's mind when he's working.

InD does have better typography than QX but only if you use open type fonts which I'm not willing to use unless I get free upgrades from Adobe. I have a postscript version of Adobe Garamond that I paid a lot of money for and I don't want to pay another $230 for a font upgrade that is essentially the same thing aside from saving me a step in my design process. It just doesn't make sense. I also mentioned that QX allows you to edit any font's kerning pairs precisely to your liking while InD doesn't. That is typography isn't it?

> You probably aren't a designer

I most certainly am not your typical graphic designer, absolutely not. But I have been designing professionally since the age of 13 (early 80s).

> only if you use open type fonts

Totally untrue.

> kerning pairs

If a font is bad enough that it needs a graphic designer to spend so much time tweaking its kerning, that font is generally bad enough to need Indy's optical spacing.

hhp

Some of you should visit todays academies where virtually every student uses InDesign over Quark. First of all Quark's "support" is a bitch. Secondly InDesign is much easier when you're working with Illu and Photoshop. Third, it's cheap (for schools certainly).
"We" only use(d) Quark because the stupid printers didn't support InDesign yet and even wanted 4.0 version documents when Quark 5 was out for more than a year already.
This won't change and I bet in two-three years every student uses InDesign. Previous generations had experience with Quark before InDesign 1, but those new ones don't so naturally choose InDesign if they see the interface.

I'm curious how InDesign 3 supports OT and type features (have they changed the type palette for example?)..

Also, more and more students are using pc's. They're cheaper, easy to upgrade (for little) and they are all up for graphic work. Only the printers are not (yet). No worries turning over my InDesign document with my OT font to them using a mac. Hooray.

I had an old teacher who still used Quark 3 and was happy and wasn't considering upgrading or switching to InDesign. He also shivered when we were like making something on a pc if all macs were taken. Well so be it, but let's see how quick I can adapt my document now with InD and an OT font with special features against him with his olde Quark with an old type 1 fam.

;-)

As an experienced graphic designer who has spent many long hours making my own kerning tables in Quark for commercial fonts (including from Adobe) because the supplied kerning tables simply weren't good enough for my publications, and as an experienced graphic designer who knows many other experienced graphic designers who have done the same, I really object to what hhp said. Kerning is something it seems to me we graphic designers usually know better than font designers, and that stands to reason, because we kern according to our specific copy, which can differ greatly according to what size we are using the font at, what kind of tracking, and many other specific factors. Also, I'm no expert on InDesign, but I haven't been impressed with what I've seen of its optical kerning, whatever that means. I've tried it and I haven't seen InDesign's automatic spacing and kerning features come close to meeting the requirements of a professional designer.

Several years ago I was with an agency and we spent a lot of time trying to get URW Kernus to improve our fonts. That didn't work, and it doesn't seem to me that InDesign is much better. Isn't it the same technology with a different name?

> Kerning is something it seems to me we graphic designers usually know better than font designers

It's probably true that a really good graphic designers can generally kern a font better than your mid-range type designer, especially if the kerning is specific to a single setting. But you can't grasp the true complexity of kerning (with its relationship to base spacing) unless you're in effect a type designer too.

> I haven't been impressed

Well, I can't help you there.

hhp

I might be smoking the weed here, but as I recall Adobe used to distribute a an InDesign plugin with their OpenType FDK that allowed you to save edited kerning information into an OpenType font, when you did the alterations in InDesign.
Maybe they still do? (or never did)

The EditOTFMetrics plug-in appears to be part of the OTF FDK still. I’ve only just glanced at it, but it is not a solution for graphic designers, such as Polly or Jason above.

It seems to be a tool to allow OTF designers to utilize InDesign as a graphical interface for adjusting OT kerning feature files visually. But it looks like it requires some level of understanding of the structure and syntax of the OT class-kerning feature. I think one would also have to then run MakeOTF to compile the new feature file into the font.

Someone more tech-savvy than I can correct me.

But it seems clear to me that this is an OTF production tool, not a customization tool for the Indy user.

— K.

I'm interested in the comparison between Kernus and the "optical" spacing and kerning in InDesign. This is something I have never been able to get to the bottom of. Adobe and URW have made all kinds of extravagant claims about the "optical spacing/kerning" in Indy, but they have never been in the least specific. They have not

(1) given us specific examples, with measurements, showing precisely how Indy optically kerns and spaces

(2) explicitly refuted the suggestion that the engine is merely the same Kernus that was in fact available in PageMaker 5, and separately long before that.

I have not seen any evidence that Indy can space or kern nearly as well as either a font designer with spacing expertise, or an experienced graphic designer who knows exactly what is needed for a specific piece of copy and is willing to put the work in to get there.

I am perfectly willing to be convinced. But I haven't seen a single measurement, or any explicit technical information, from either Adobe or URW. My impression is that the technology is just smoke and mirrors. That so many people in the font industry have been taken in by this outrageous flak is just evidence, to me, of how few people in the font industry know anything about spacing.

I repeat, I am willing to be convinced -- I am perfectly open-minded. But it's up to Adobe and URW to provide the proof.

Also, what was Albert-Jan Pool doing at URW in the mid-90s if he wasn't respacing all their fonts? I guess the technology just wasn't up to it . . . .

For the time being, I remain convinced that only someone who doesn't understand kerning and spacing (and I admit that I myself am still on what I would call rather a low rung of the ladder of expertise in this area) could possibly be so naive as to imagine that a piece of software could do it adequately.

Show me da money!

> showing precisely how Indy optically kerns and spaces

One thing I've discovered is the mathematical behavior of Indy's optical spacing with respect to point size: no change below 4 point, a straight line between 4 and 12, a separate straight line between 12 and 72, and then no change above that. Besides the fact that stright lines aren't optimal*, I think you need three of them, with the shifts at 8 and 12 point.

* But to be fair there were most probably performance issues at play: calculating lines is much faster than parabolas.

> I have not seen any evidence that Indy can space or kern nearly as well as either a font designer with spacing expertise, or an experienced graphic designer who knows exactly what is needed for a specific piece of copy and is willing to put the work in to get there.

Indy's auto spacing isn't as good as the spacing of the best type designers out there, but it is better than probably about 90% of type designers. As for graphic designers, few of them bother, and few of the ones who do actually know what they're doing.

So Indy's optical spacing is very valuable (for example it makes Mrs Eaves into a usable text font), and that's not surprising: computers can be -and have been- programmed to do much more complex things than spacing fonts!

That said, there's certainly room for improvement, especially in terms of flexibility. For example, Indy likes its optical spacing a little too loose in the overall, as far as I'm concerned. I think a real text face needs to look slightly cramped upon deliberative observation to work optimally in immersive reading. So it would be nice to have a slider to control the overall tightness Indy uses to optically space everything.

hhp

This is terribly off-topic, but the topic seems to have exhausted itself (without, however, having brought anything revelatory to the fore) and it would be interesting to subject Mrs. to a rigorous spacing analysis. One only has to glance at a text setting to know that something is wrong, but recently, I had a look at the metrics, and I saw that a lot of thought and mathematical precision had gone into the spacing -- almost as if someone had spaced it according to the book, but without actually looking at the results except a general way. That shows why machine spacing is so limited: it can only space according to rules, and no typeface I have ever encountered accommodated itself to all the spacing rules. Spacing by rules is only a good starting point.

Letterpress fonts often seem to be more closely spaced than they really are because inkspread often causes some characters to overlap, or nearly so. That brings up the issue of weak stem widths in most photo/digital fonts, but again, that's another thread, and something that has been discussed at length in the past.

In any case, the cure is not to space thinnish fonts more closely, but to beef up thinnish fonts.

The better (more intelligently complex) the rules, the greater the percentage of human designers it's better than. It can be argued that an algorithm can never be as good as human heuristics at anything important, but when you do have an algorithm (like Indy's) that's better than most type designers seem to manage, then that's a Useful Thing.

hhp

So some type designers should be able to export Indy's settings and use those in their fonts... "Export metrics" sounds like a good button for Indy.

The slider control would be great yes. And perhaps use something as "Use metrics similar of this font [select font]".. I don't know :)

I don't understand why InD doesn't have the manual kerning window that QX has. Maybe in the next version or is this something to do with this whole embedding license thing coming out now? Are kerning pairs intellectual property? Quark obviously doesn't think so. Does Adobe think so? If font metrics are intellectual property isn't InD infringing with its optical spacing anyway, so why not have the manual kerning window?

The Kern-Track Editor in Quark is an XTension (i.e, a plug-in). Seems like if Adobe is determined not to build in a global kern-editing feature (I seem to recall reading somewhere that Adobe has said explicitly that it plans never to do so), then I would think this is a feature that’s ripe for a third-party plug-in.

I seem to recall seeing an InDesign SDK on the installation disk. Any savvy programmers listening?

There's a kerning plugin here.

Unfortunately, it's out of my price range, but there is a limited demo version.

> export Indy's settings

In fact I've heard that somebody has a way to extract the "new" spacing info from a PDF file saved by Indy...

hhp

>I seem to recall seeing an InDesign SDK on the installation disk. Any savvy programmers listening?

Unfortunately, there are very few programmers savvy enough to design a plug-in for a product that has less than 1% market share.

>In fact I've heard that somebody has a way to extract the "new" spacing info from a PDF file saved by Indy...

I would like to know more about that. Can someone nail this down?

Bill

What facts do you base your statement on that Adobe InDesign hass only 1% market share.

Well, about a year or so ago, this question arose, when Adobe had made the fantastic claim that it had something like 17% market share. I did a little digging around and gained access to a research report by one of the top brokerage firms, which may possibly not have been public, which found that Indy's penetration into the graphic design professional market was less than 0.1%. Allowing for the lapse of time, I thought it reasonable to throw out the figure of 1% as a possible maximum, although I suspect the real figure is less. I will try to dig up some better information if anyone is that interested. But since it is an issue that has received little official recognition, I doubt that things have significantly changed.

Bill,
are you talking of Indy versions that have been bought, or those which are really used?

--Jacques

So after analysts were proven unreliable in the stock market bust we should trust an ANONYMOUS brokerage report?

Market share. This year-old c|net article may be of interest.

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-957737.html

"Although hard numbers are difficult to come by--Adobe and privately held Quark have declined to publicize market-share figures, and few third-party researchers track the layout-software market--Quark's market share has long been estimated in the 90 percent range."

This Jan 2000 piece illustrates how difficult it is to estimate market share...

http://desktoppub.about.com/library/weekly/aa012600a.htm

>are you talking of Indy versions that have been bought, or those which are really used?

The goal of the research I had access to was to determine how many copies were actually being used, particularly by graphic designers. That was the only way to cut through the fluff in Adobe's misleading financials. I mean, you're not interested in tryout copies, impulse buys, or freebies offered with new Mac purchases. You want to know how many graphic designers are actually using the product.

>So after analysts were proven unreliable in the stock market bust we should trust an ANONYMOUS brokerage report?

What -- were you burned? Play with matches and you're bound to get burned. If you can't take the pain, take Mark Twain's advice:

OCTOBER: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The other are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

> You want to know how many graphic designers are actually using the product.

No, how many are paying for it. Since Quark has been around much longer (and maybe also because it costs more) there are many more unpaid copies of it in use*. Just like Fontographer has many more users than FontLab, but:
1) That doesn't mean it's better. And quality does drive future sales to some extent.
2) That doesn't mean FontLab is financially non-viable - in fact it seems to be doing very well!

* On the other hand, piracy does facilitate brand loyalty, so it is generally an advantage to having even non-paying users than users of a competitor.

> were you burned?

I don't know about William, but I for one didn't get burned because I'm careful who I trust...

hhp

I am just curious about how InDesign is doing, being a happy owner of it. Bill Troop and Hrant seem to want to change the subject and talk about me instead of responding to my question about the reliability of Bill Troop's source of information about market share. It looks from the references given by Simon that it is hard to ascertain what really is going on.

William is right; we should stay on topic, and Indy market share is validly on topic. But getting real numbers is hard.

I'm inclined to believe the

The stories Si cited are pretty lame, but they're obviously the best that are out there on the net. That's not saying much.

For example, about.com says Quark's market share is 36-72%. Wow. Is that margin of error or what? This is clearly some dutiful junior reporter trying to do a good research job and woefully failing.

Then there's news.com, which says

"Adobe was never able to make a dent in the market with its PageMaker software, but it appears to be making better headway with InDesign, introduced two years ago and updated early this year to support OS X."

That's nonsense. In the mid-90s, PageMaker had larger market share than Quark on Windows. Many, many copies of that wonderful program have been sold, millions more than the unreportable numbers for Indy. Here we have a reporter who is completely out of his depth and isn't even trying to get it right.

I don't have any better information, but I'm digging away and will report whatever I can as I can.

Adobe should speak up. Let us know what Indy's market share really is -- and let us know, too, how many OT fonts have been sold. Have they passed any milestones lately? Is it more than a hundred yet?

You think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not. In 1996 or so I -- a very, very, foolish font optimist -- asked Fred Brady, formerly of Adobe, how many copies of Jenson Adobe expected to sell, he told me they would be very, very happy to hit a thousand.

And even then I didn't give up type design! I thought these guys were holding out on me! David Berlow had told me years before that to sell 200 copies of a font retail was a huge success. I didn't believe him!

I do now.

As regards InDesign, Adobe should never have let Aldus's great product manager, Lori Birtley, slip through their fingers over to Microsoft. Lori was one of the all-time great product managers, and nobody ever gave PageMaker a bad review when she was in charge. It would have been like slapping your grandmother. Everybody loved Lori. Things like that have a lot to do with a product's success. They shouldn't, but they do.

Where it says above "I'm inclined to belive the" ... the server cut off the rest of the text, maybe because I used a [less than] character?

Anyway, the sentence should read:

I'm inclined to believe the [less than]0.1% market share figures I quoted some time ago, but, as I pointed out, that was some time ago.

> Bill Troop and Hrant seem to want to change the subject and talk about me

I don't know about Bill (and -as above- this obviously doesn't mean I'm now talking about Bill - it's just a desire to avoid speaking for somebody else) but in my case:
1) The "subject" is Life.
2) I only care to talk about you to the extent of the relevance of your self to type, but then I care a lot. And anyway in this case I didn't even do that.

Rooh l'ab ba'eed.

hhp

For example, about.com says Quark's market share is 36-72%. Wow. Is that margin of error or what?

No, that's 36%-72% plus or minus 30%, guaranteed to be reliable 92% of the time plus or minus 23.7% on 2nd Class Feasts falling on a Wednesday in October.

>just when you think this blog couldnt get more fucked up

Why do you say that, Zuzana? Because it isn't an "I hate Hrant" blog? You know, if that's what you want, you're at liberty to start your own. Personally, I think you'd be wise to make your peace with Hrant. Like I told you years ago, you should have just given him that wretched font! (Whatever it was! Nobody even remembers anymore, or cares!) Instead, you've paid for it at least a thousand times over in bad PR. And you've given yourself the reputation of being not just a crackpot but a sour-tempered and unattractive crackpot. By contrast, Hrant comes off as a well-meaning crackpot, and nobody really minds that.

Years ago! I can't believe how long this awful Hrant/Emigre thing has been going on! And still!

If Emigre has anything interesting to say about OT, I'm sure we'd all be glad to hear it. We are not interested in hearing _about_ Hrant. Just hearing _from_ Hrant is a full time job!

May I propose this for a constructive idea? Let Fred Nader design an OpenType font called Papazian, and release it through Emigre? Hrant can consult on the Armenian characters, and I'LL do the FITTING! !

...and with that I believe we've fully exhausted this discussion. If anyone has something interesting to say about Troop's original article I'll reopen the comments. But until then – seeing that the Christians have yet to be mentioned – I think everyone should ease up and sing a hymn.

NOTE: Those who place false email addresses in their comment form should be warned that they will be banned from any further comments at this site. If you don't believe me, ask anonymouse.