You wouldn't steal a font

Post by whywhywhywhy » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 12:48 PM UTC

phony-account wrote: post #24

Is this the wrong time to rant about font licensing though? I’ve always bought and paid for fonts, but as I’ve gradually transitioned to mobile app development, I one day realized that all the fonts I bought for print are now worthless to me. These crazy outdated licenses that let you print as many magazines or books you want forever, for a one-time price. But if your hobby is making apps, then suddenly the same font…

Post by internetter » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 12:51 PM UTC

porker wrote: post #299

williamscales wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely fonts that are nearly identical copies, e.g. Palladio is a clone of Palatino ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino#Free_and_open-source_... )

Looking forward to someone doing the same for Gill Sans and most of the Monotype catalog now that they've switched to annual licensing for webfonts (pay once use forever is gone)

Post by abirch » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #336

kevingadd wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fonts loaded on one machine are typically not loaded reliably on all machines, so you need to distribute fonts with your application. Doing this is probably a violation of the license that all those "free fonts" were distributed under, so your only options are: 1. Public Domain Fonts 2. Fonts that cost money The set of public domain fonts is pretty small and most of them are low quality - not all, thankfully - an…

What? There's an endless supply of permissively licensed fonts, eg on Google Fonts. Many of them are actually pretty good. Yes, you'll find some bad ones too.

Post by int_19h » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 1:32 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #208

bravura wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually like your takes, but where I disagree today is when you say: "Truffles have a functional role in a dish." but fonts don't. Either both do have functional roles or both are luxuries like Hermès.

I don't want to get too deep into this because it doesn't matter to my point (you're also not entitled to eat truffled dishes any more than you're entitled to eat ortolans). But: set a document in one text face or another; it won't much matter at all to the experience of reading it (unless you pick a bad text face). Leave the truffle out of a risotto and you've made a different dish. The important subtext of this thr…

Post by int_19h » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 1:38 PM UTC

Nevermark wrote: post #132

Aeolun wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern included fonts aren’t that bad. It’s more like using tomato sauce instead of fancy handmade chilli. Your meal doesn’t deeply suffer, it’s just a bit bland.

Branding is very important. Branding requires being distinctive, mixing novel visual and other aspects in a pleasing way. As far as I have been able to tell no major platform ships with the universal font of fonts (full coverage of all possible fonts with 4.5Mb seed) “AnyStyleYouWant” font. And none of the fonts they do ship have the “distinctive” feature. Until that day comes…