Re: Web Fonts

Sherill:

Those of us that now play on the Web often forget that fonts were
never designed specifically for the web. In fact, going back a
few years to the dark ages before computers you found the "Font"
manufactures casting their type in metal at foundries.

Therefore--to be strictly true--there is no such thing as a PC
font or a Mac font.

When Windows 3.1 came out, Microsoft included a few True Type
fonts and now they have come to be thought of as "Windows" or
"PC" fonts. Actually Mac was using True Type before Windows.

These days, it's very hard to make really positive statements
about fonts other than the two "numerically most popular" fonts
are True Type and Postscript, (Also called Type 1 "Adobe", etc.).

Both of these can be used on either Mac or PC. What causes some
of the confusion is that many fonts are included free with
programs and if you are using a Mac for example and one of your
graphics programs includes Helvetica, you tend to think of it as
a Mac font. Note that it also was included in a Program Called
Professional Draw for Windows 3.0. That program came with a built
in Type Manager to enable the "Type 1" fonts. To use them on the
rest of the Windows 3.0 machine you had to purchase and install
Adobe Type Manager, (which also included a few more free fonts.)

Windows 95+ changed all that by simply including type managing on
a broader scale. I'm sure the modern Macs have done the same
thing.

Make a fresh pot of coffee, settle back and type in "fonts" in
your favorite search engine and you can spend the whole day
looking at THOUSANDS of fonts. Just remember most of them are
copyrighted.

In the real and proper world as defined by Microsoft, (and
surprisingly, quite a few others), there are a few fonts
assigned/reserved ?? just for the web. You can download them from
Microsoft's site but I suspect you already have them all. (Hint?:
They are the ones you hear mentioned on this list all the time.)

Does this mean you can use this half dozen with the assurance
that everybody will at least, have these fonts on their
computers??

Of course not -- But then --That's what makes this job so
rewarding (BIG silly smile.)

Best wishes
Ted Temer
Temercraft Designs Redding, CA
temer(at)c-zone.net
http://www.temercraft.com
http://www.newsredding.com/


>
>How does one know what Mac fonts look like when you don't have
access to a
>Mac and vice versa? Are there examples on the web somewhere?
>
>Sherill
>

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