Re: preloading fonts or something like that...

At 11:16 AM 3/20/2000 , you wrote:
>Ben,
>Any special fonts that you want to use should be represented graphically to
>assure they look the same on all browsers on all systems.  I don't know of a
>way to forcibly load fonts onto a user system, and I'm not sure it is
>ethically acceptable to do that.  Fonts don't just play from the cache on a
>Windows machine, they have to be installed.  This requires a level of
>intrusion on the user machine that would be tantamount to hacking.  It
>wouldn't work at all on any machines behind a firewall or with
>"anti-hacking" software installed.  So, it is certainly impractical,
>probably immoral and possibly illegal to "preload" a font set to a Windows
>user, and generally unnecessary to go to that trouble for the small
>percentage of Mac users.

Ben-

         Different groups have been trying to create a way to preload fonts 
in browsers. There concern was more Font copyrights than any perceived 
'hacking' threat. This is the same issue that Adobe dealt with in their 
Acrobat Reader. They solved it by writing their own font wrapper that 
displays any special fonts (maybe all fonts) without giving the system 
access to it so it can't be stolen.
         In other words this *can* technically be done, and it could be 
done without installing the fonts in the system. Its more of an issue of 
getting companies to agree on a way to do it. I guess people make some good 
money off of licensing Fonts and they don't want the proliferation of fonts 
through web sites to take that way.
         Anyway, just a note on the conversation. Have a good one.

-Stephen Johnston

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