Still the official OS of design

[worker201]

For a long time, the conventional wisdom was that Macs were great for graphic design.  Originally, that's because important programs like Quark and Macromedia Director and Adobe Photoshop were only available on the Mac.  Eventually, these programs were brought to the Windows platform - but the Mac OS was designed from the ground up for drag and drop between programs, something that Windows was late to cash in on.  Now that Windows can do drag&drop, it seems like there is no particular advantage to using a Mac for design.  If you can stand the viruses and the crashes and the childish inteface, a Windows system is just as viable as a Mac.  Right?

Wrong.  After watching a recent documentary about typefaces, it seems clear that Helvetica is the most used font/typeface on the planet.  Everything, from street signs to Microsoft's logo, is done in Helvetica.  At various times over the past 50 years, designers have cycled between love and hate for the typeface.  It's not unreasonable to say that you can't be a professional designer unless you have Helvetica.

Apple and OS X provide Helvetica.  By purchasing a Mac, you are purchasing a license to use Helvetica in your designs.  Windows does not provide Helvetica.

Admittedly, it's not a big thing - you can buy Windows versions of the 4 Helvetica fonts that a Mac provides for $104 direct from Linotype.  But it is something.

[Refalm]

Windows has Arial, and it's Helvetica's mutant half-brother.

[Aloone_Jonez]

There's virtually no difference

[worker201]

Pretty big difference, actually.  In the sample image Refalm shows, there are significant differences in all 6 letters.

Interesting article about how Arial came to be, and why it is popular, and why it is not used by professional designers:
http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html

[Aloone_Jonez]

I disagree, I can hardly tell the difference, the letter R is the only letter with a big difference in the example posted above, followed by g a and t. The letters C and r are nearly identical apart from the odd pixel.

I quickly read through the article and it just looks like someone whining about Microsoft doesn't something they don't like. Microsoft have done much worse that ship their OS with a very slightly different font than one which they would've had to pay licence to use.

[worker201]

I can't believe you don't see those differences.  It's like night and day to me.

[reactosguy]

For a long time, the conventional wisdom was that Macs were great for graphic design.  Originally, that's because important programs like Quark and Macromedia Director and Adobe Photoshop were only available on the Mac.  Eventually, these programs were brought to the Windows platform - but the Mac OS was designed from the ground up for drag and drop between programs, something that Windows was late to cash in on.  Now that Windows can do drag&drop, it seems like there is no particular advantage to using a Mac for design.  If you can stand the viruses and the crashes and the childish inteface, a Windows system is just as viable as a Mac.  Right?

That's the words of a Windows evangelist.

Wrong.  After watching a recent documentary about typefaces, it seems clear that Helvetica is the most used font/typeface on the planet.  Everything, from street signs to Microsoft's logo, is done in Helvetica.  At various times over the past 50 years, designers have cycled between love and hate for the typeface.  It's not unreasonable to say that you can't be a professional designer unless you have Helvetica.

Really? I usually use Calibri or other sans serif fonts.

Apple and OS X provide Helvetica.  By purchasing a Mac, you are purchasing a license to use Helvetica in your designs.  Windows does not provide Helvetica.

I thought I had Helvetica.

 

Admittedly, it's not a big thing - you can buy Windows versions of the 4 Helvetica fonts that a Mac provides for $104 direct from Linotype.  But it is something.

Windows evangelist: It's only $104. Combine the font prices and the cost of Windows and boom! Still cheaper than a Crapple iMack.
Normal guy: It's not just the fonts. Mac has everything out of the box--multimedia, fonts, browser et cetera. Just talking about the fonts doesn't help.
Windows evangelist: It's still cheap, idiot. I can force you right now!
Normal guy: (runs away) BUT THEY'RE NOT OUT OF THE BOX!!!

Windows has Arial, and it's Helvetica's mutant half-brother.

There's a huge difference.

C's are the same.

Arial's G has no tail, the opposite of Helvetica's extended tail on the G.

Arial's R is slanted but Helvetica's is almost curved and straight.

Helvetica's "a" has a longer tail than Arial's.

The "r" in Arial is fully curved but Helvetica's is slightly different.

Arial's "t" has a slant on top but Helvetica's "t" has a flat top.

Those are the differences in detail. Enjoy!

[worker201]

Windows has Arial, and it's Helvetica's mutant half-brother.

There's a huge difference.

C's are the same.

Arial's G has no tail, the opposite of Helvetica's extended tail on the G.

Arial's R is slanted but Helvetica's is almost curved and straight.

Helvetica's "a" has a longer tail than Arial's.

The "r" in Arial is fully curved but Helvetica's is slightly different.

Arial's "t" has a slant on top but Helvetica's "t" has a flat top.

Those are the differences in detail. Enjoy!

The C's are not the same.  If you look at them closely, you'll see that the curves on both left and right are different, creating a different shape inside the letter.  Also notice the subtle angle difference above the opening.

You can see the same issue with the curves in the G as well, but they're not as pronounced.  Another point to notice in the G, which is also true for the a, C, and r, is that Helvetica caps all the open-ended curves with segments that are parallel to the baseline, while Arial uses a diagonal segment.

In the R, the shape of the hole is totally different, as is the character of the kickout leg.

In the a, the kickout leg, the shape of the hole, and the shape of the partially enclosed area are totally different.

I actually think the r's flyout segment in Helvetica looks too shortened - but the Arial version also looks silly, like the curve ends and becomes a slanted straight segment.

Arial's t is flashier both at the top and the bottom, which seems to fit with its other letters.

[davidnix71]

I've been in the printing business my entire adult life. We used Compugraphics typesetters with 8086's and then Mac 7.5.5
Compugraphics didn't use Adobe and that version of 7 was free by the time we used it. It was all about money. Unless you
did high end printing, which we didn't do, the differences between Arial and Helvetica are not discernible.

Personal computers killed our buisness, not Windows. Anyone can design and print their own business stock or wedding invitations
now.

Licensing fonts from Adobe was always a legal nightmare. No one wanted the hassle if they didn't actually need the font. Even embedding the font
to transmit a file was supposed to require a license. DRM is a lot older than some of you think. Our Riso's had $500 fvcking hard drives
because they came with Adobe fonts installed. We weren't even supposed to look at the contents of the drive lest we see something Adobe didn't
want to get out.

I don't like M$, but they did us all a huge favor by not using Helvetica.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I can see the very minor differences now they've been pointed out to me.

I've decided that I prefer Arial and I don't see how anyone could prefer Helvetica.

I find Arial easier to read, if I screw my eye up.

To be superficial, Arial just sounds better than Helvetica which I can't spell and I' not even 100% sure if I'm pronouncing correctly because I've never heard anyone say it before.

I think MS did us a favour too.

[worker201]

It sorta sounds like you guys are saying that it's okay for Microsoft to do the things it does when they're doing them to something you dislike, but it's not okay when they're doing them to something you do like.  Microsoft's treatment of Helvetica is no different than their treatment of Netscape.  Either this behavior is okay or it isn't okay - make up your minds.

[Refalm]

Most Linux distributions also have some great fonts:


So I don't think Microsoft's copy of Helvetica is bad. The open source world basically does the same, because it saves money on font licenses.

[worker201]

Most Linux distributions also have some great fonts:

So I don't think Microsoft's copy of Helvetica is bad. The open source world basically does the same, because it saves money on font licenses.

Illegally hotlinked image is not viewable.

Of course, I don't know for sure, but here's my theory about the questions being asked:
Linux: "What sans-serif fonts can we include in our distro without compromising our GPL license?"
Windows: "How can we manufacture a font for ourselves that looks like Helvetica without getting sued?"
Mac: "What fonts do we need to include in our OS in order to appeal to professional designers?"

Preference for one font over another is irrelevant to the discussion, in my opinion.

[piratePenguin]

Or Microsoft: "Helvitica will cost us money we don't need to spend, raise the price of the OS, and perhaps most critically give another company a chance to create an unnecessary problem when they dominate, and we need to pay whatever they ask for the license". Did anybody think of that?

This is why we don't want H.264 to dominate the web people. IT WILL FUCK THIS SHIT UP.



aside:: In the case of h264 the people behind it (*cough* the licensing authority) offered a free patent license to firefox covering all the patents, FOR 5 YEARS (couldve been 10, not sure of the length, but thats not the point). Why do you think they did this? COULD THEY HAVE DECIDED TO BE COMMUNISTS?? It happens that the licensing costs, even before a monopoly has been created, were prohibitive for Firefox - they required 10s or 100s of millions (since firefox has such a large number of users in the region of 300m+ this is), figures that Google and Apple can afford, but not cheap little firefox. Now, if you cant see the problem with accepting those terms where the agreement ends in a fixed time, I will find you and kick you in the balls.

Also Firefox support would be instrumental in their plan to *cough*gonna be careful here*/cough* "gain marketshare", but perhaps that wont be necessary, since Google and Apple have paid that license and are supporting h264 (as far as I know google also excludes ogg (there is a reason for this, that webbrowsers shouldnt support an ammalgenation of codecs so google is h264 exclusive whilst firefox and opera are "doing the right thing" and are ogg exclusive afaik, apple supports video in any format Quicktime supports i think)) (and google have a h264 version of youtube, which is a kick in the teeth. However they also purchased on2 who have created perhaps a better codec than h264, but we dont know what google will do with it (the fsf wrote an open letter inviting google to license the on2 codec freely, this is possibly something we need)). Microsoft has either paid the license (I expect), going to pay it, or going to fight it with WMV and their control of IE, now at least that would be fucking hilarious.

(this is pretty confusing and most of my info burried deep in my memory atm, apologies)

Now, bringing this all back to the topic, if the helvetica owners provided a license to MS at a fixed fee, or a fixed small fee per user, perhaps that would be acceptable, if the contract lasts forever. There is probably a history here and perhaps this was offered, but I wouldn't critisise MSes choice to avoid a dependence on another company without that information. Unless, of course, the company is communist  8)