Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft Software => Topic started by: worker201 on 14 February 2006, 03:30
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Here's a reason to hate Windows that you probably don't run into everyday.
As many of you know, I am a cartographer - I make maps. Currently, I am putting together a CD of images, and I have decided to use the PDF format for image distribution, because it prints perfectly and can be opened by anyone on a graphical platform who can download a reader (official Adobe readers, or one of the non-official pdf readers out there). The images were built in Linux out of Encapsulated PostScript format, and then opened in Adobe Illustrator 10 in Windows for editing.
Now, this early in the process, we are already running across examples of Windows suckitude. Normal PostScript (Type 1) fonts like Chicago, Times, Paladino, and Helvetica are available free with any Xorg or XF86 distribution. The Linux mapmaker does everything in Helvetica. For some reason, fonts that are free to use in Linux cost money to use in Windows - plain old normal Helvetica costs US$29 - and that doesn't include italic or bold or bold-italic. Ridiculous, eh? Well, Windows has Arial, a true-type font, that works just as well. And thankfully, Illustrator has a handy tool that lets you go through and change all type from Helvetica to Arial.
So, now I've added shit like scalebars, annotations, and all that. Now I have the file saved in eps format. What I want to do is convert it to pdf. You can save a pdf out of Illustrator, but it is Illustrator/PDF-combo, which is not quite as transferable across platforms as I wanted. The best way to turn EPS into ultra-compatible PDF is to use Adobe Acrobat Distiller. Yes, we are getting into a lot of top dollar programs here, but at educational discounts, its no big deal.
Unfortunately, the Acrobat Distiller doesn't deal with Windows TrueType fonts very well. Apparently, there's all kinds of fucked up things about font metrics in TT fonts that don't translate well through Distiller.
Acrobat Distiller recognizes all Windows and Mac OS fonts; however, the type of font that you use (for example, TrueType) determines how Acrobat Distiller handles the information for that font.
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/325165.html (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/325165.html)
Upshot, here's a little image of what happened when Distiller tried to parse Arial text:
(http://www.triple-bypass.net/download/badtext.png)
Now, that ain't acceptable!
So what's a guy to do?
Solution 1: Pay $87 so I can get Helvetica, Helvetica Bold, and Helvetica Italic into Windows.
Uhm, no. Well, actually, if I was going to be using Windows for graphics like forever, I would consider a full Type1 library for Windows. But for this project, fuck that.
Solution 2: Take the EPS file home to my Mac, change the font back to Helvetica, download the Acrobat Distiller for Mac, install it, distill the EPS at home, and then transfer the PDF back here.
That can become a problem too, because Acrobat will still try and find a copy of Helvetica somewhere on the computer, because Helvetica might not have been embedded into the document. Fucking hassle.
Solution 3: Find a Windows compatible font in Type1 or OpenType format that doesn't cost money.
Fortunately for me, installation of Adobe Windows products like Illustrator also installs a set of OpenType fonts that you get to use. Myriad seems to be the most like Arial and Helvetica, and it is easily and automatically embedded into a distilled document. It's not as slick looking as Arial or Helvetica, but it will have to do.
So seriously, what the fuck? Why is a font free on Linux, but costs money on Windows? Why did Microsoft feel the need to come up with their own stupid font type and force it on everyone else, especially when that type is clearly inferior to Type1 (and its replacement, OpenType)? Is there any sane reason why Microsoft would use a font system that was marginally incompatible with PostScript and HPL, the universal standard printing languages for the last 25 years? And when the fuck will tools like Illustrator and Distiller be available for Linux? Fuck, I wish I had known about the beauty of OSX when I built this fucking system.(1) Mac users get to use Helvetica and Illustrator.
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(1) which brings me to an important tangent about what should be going on here at the forum. At the time that I decided to get a Dell, I was unaware that Illustrator ran better on a Mac than on Windows, I was unaware that OSX was much more usable than OS9 (which I hated), and I was unaware that there was fully functional *nix environment inside OSX. A big fat G4 or skinny G5 would have saved me infinite headaches (you don't want to hear about my experiences with SFU, trust me) and made my work run much more smoothly. The only benefit of the path that I chose was my fortunate re-introduction to Linux, and the proof of just how bad Windows can suck. Would have preferred the OSX path.
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Why did Microsoft feel the need to come up with their own stupid font type and force it on everyone else, especially when that type is clearly inferior to Type1 (and its replacement, OpenType)?
Wasn't TrueType developed by Apple (if you're not talking about TrueType, I'm lost. I never really 'got' this font stuff.)?
http://freetype.org/freetype2/index.html#patents
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Oh, and the OSX Helvetica is fucking sweet. There's a Windows version of it in Word XP, but it's really crap looking, similar to a fat arial.
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After browsing around here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truetype
I'm thinking that perhaps the problem isn't TrueType at all. Perhaps the problem is with Monotype, the company that came up with fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, Impact, Comic Sans, etc. In order to prove this, I would have to run a similar experiment on my Mac, which I probably won't get to before I leave.
However, that doesn't excuse the fact that Linux has access to these fonts, and Windows does not. The Type1 specification has been freely available since 1991, so I don't see what the problem is. OSX supports OpenType, TrueType, and Type1/Type3 fonts, and so does Linux. According to Adobe's own documentation, Microsoft support for all 3 font systems is spotty at best.
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Another, easy, cheap way. Open EPS in Preview in OS X. Save to PDF.
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Another, easy, cheap way. Open EPS in Preview in OS X. Save to PDF.
What?!?
I hate Windows so bad I want to cry.
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Just Screw Ms And Pirate The Font :d
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I say option 2 is best ... or does UNIX Acrobat Distiller (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=4&platform=unix) only work for Sparc or Solaris ?
(http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=4&platform=unix)
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Well, I went with 3.
btw, you linked to system updates for unsupported software.
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Well fuck, I am a dumb shit ! ... ok well it seems there is no Adobe Distiller for Linux ... but there is PS2PDF (http://www.pathcom.com/%7Ekujira/pdf6.htm) ... Postscript to PDF.
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Yeah, I've used Ghostscript tools in the past, and they've worked ok. But the real point is that Windows should have Helvetica - the only reason not to have Helvetica is to create compat "problems" with other systems.
Dammit, that IS the only reason, and that's what Microsoft does.
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I think you can take the TTF files from your Mac and use them on Windows...
You can use Windows fonts on GNU/Linux anyhow (http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/).
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Can't you embed the fonts into the .pdf or convert them to vectors?
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Can't you embed the fonts into the .pdf or convert them to vectors?
Of course. But it doesn't work right. That's the whole point. I can embed ttf Arial into the document, no problem. In fact, that's what produced the image I posted. So let me reiterate the problem, so that it is clear, because there are 2 facets to this problem.
1. PDF distiller doesn't parse Windows ttf font metrics correctly, leading to incorrect type layout when you use a ttf font such as Arial.
2. By default, Windows does not include any Type1 fonts or OpenType fonts. You have to get these from somewhere else.
Ergo:
The only fonts available by default to a Windows user will cause the PDF distiller to create incorrect type layout.
I suppose you could blame Adobe for part of this problem - making a program that only works properly with their open-standard fonts is kinda lame. But when you install Adobe programs, they install open-standard fonts for you to use. Because they are fully aware of the incompatibility problems that can arise.
However, Microsoft must also be aware of the incompatibility issues. And they don't seem to have done anything about it. For Microsoft to not include any open-standard fonts is extremely lame. More than likely, they have some kind of agreement with Nanotype, the company that makes Arial, Times New Roman, Tahoma, and Verdana, among others. Again, ridiculous business tactics seem to make money while making customers frustrated.
PiratePenguin, I have MS corefonts installed in Linux. That doesn't help with the above situation much, though.
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PiratePenguin, I have MS corefonts installed in Linux. That doesn't help with the above situation much, though.
But can't you copy the fonts from your Mac over to Windows?
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Too late, the project's already done.
The point is that I shouldn't have to.
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2. By default, Windows does not include any Type1 fonts or OpenType fonts. You have to get these from somewhere else.
Which version of Windows?
I was browsing my Windows 3.1 directory on my other machine with Windows 2000 and I'm certain some of the fonts said opentype on the font viewer, I could upload them if you like, providing it isn't against the rules.
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I'm sure it is against the rules.
Windows XP SP2. Here's a visual sample of my fonts folder:
(http://www.triple-bypass.net/download/fonts.png)
Although some of the fonts have OpenType icons, they are still ttf OpenType, and not true OpenType. The only fonts on my computer that are not ttf are the ones provided by Adobe, which can be found in c:\Program Files\Common\Adobe\Fonts
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You should read The Scourge of Arial (http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html) to learn about that knockoff font's history. It's there as a substitute for Helvectica because MS (unlike Apple) didn't want to pay for the real thing.
The Helvectica font that comes free with Linux distros isn't really Helvectica, you know. It's Nimbus-Sans, but it's aliased to the postscript name Helvectica.
You can get Nimbus-Sans Type 1 fonts on Windows as part of the gnu-ghostscript font package.
THe older versions of acrobat viewer actually came prepackaged with copies of official Adobe type 1 postscript fonts in a fonts directory. One of them was helvectica.
My webpage (http://www.geocities.com/mobrien_12) has lots of information on building PDFs. It's geared to using ghostscript, but since Acrobat distiller also uses the adobe postscript driver, all the font tips will work there, including how to keep TrueType fonts out of your PDF files.
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Great article, very informative. I appreciate that.
It's been a very long time since I was actually a fan of Helvetica, but the fact is Helvetica became popular on its own merits. Arial owes its very existence to that success but is little more than a parasite
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The Helvectica font that comes free with Linux distros isn't really Helvectica, you know. It's Nimbus-Sans, but it's aliased to the postscript name Helvectica.
If that's true, then Nimbus-Sans must be based at least in part on the original Type1 Helvetica, allowing it to function as a Type1 font. Why couldn't Microsoft build themselves a Type1 font? Also, Nimbus-Sans must be a blatant copy of Helvetica, which, according to the article you linked to, is ratty, but legal. If Linux can find a way around it, why can't Microsoft?
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It's got to be about money and Adobe. I used to work for a commercial printer. We had macs running OS 7.6.x on up to Panther and Risos running Adobe fonts with a Linux OS.
Vinnie, our sysop, had fits with fonts on the Risos. Adobe loaded the fonts on the hd's themselves and charged a $500 license for it. The hd's burned out often because we did thermography. If we returned the hd and waited for a replacement, we got to keep the old license. But the wait could be weeks. That cost money having a machine down. The other choice was to buy a new hd and pay for the license that went with it.
A B Dick couldn't help us. Adobe didn't trust them with the fonts and wouldn't cut them any slack over new licenses either. Vinnie came to me finally and asked if I knew any way to force clone a drive. We were merged into a sister company before being forced to try that. It would have been interesting, though. The Risos ran some form of Linux, but A B Dick wouldn't tell us exactly what.
Cloning a drive should be easy, assuming they didn't have firmware on the drive in a read-only area or on a rom.
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Well, there is a story behind it all.
Adobe created PostScript. As you know, PostScript is amazing. Part of the big postscript (which I will no longer properly capitalize cause it's annoying) picture was Adobe's fonts. There were, if memory serves correctly, four types, but really only two mattered: Type 1 and Type 3.
Type 3 were bitmap fonts. Nothing really special about these, just a bunch of dots. Bitmap fonts don't scale well: try to expand them and they get blocky, try to shrink them they get illegible. You need a set of bitmap fonts for every point size you want to use. Like I said, nothing special. Adobe didn't care too much about these and let anyone use them. They are fine for printing, not good for screens.
Type 1 fonts were scalable fonts. These were really amazing little buggers because they were defined by their outlines and mathematically splined using a thrid order polynomial (ax^3+bx^2+cx+d) producing smooth shapes nomatter what size they were at. You only needed one Type 1 font to do all sizes. They worked for printing and screens. Adobe was the only company, in the world to have this technology.
Adobe gaurded Type 1 font technology very closely. It was very expensive to licence it, but, after all, it was the only game in town.
Apple wanted scalable fonts but didn't want to pay Adobe's fees, or have a core OS component controlled by a 3rd company, so they decided to develop their own alternative: TrueType. MS got a royalty-free, perpetual licence to use. I've heard that MS and Apple were working together on it, but quite frankly I have no idea what MS contributed, if anything, and it seems to me like MS really got the better end of the deal.
TrueType works like T1 fonts in that they are outline fonts and are scalable. They are technically inferior in the curve fitting because they only use second order polynomials, but this doesn't seem to matter for the screen. The TT spec allows the font designers to throw "hints" into the font, or little helper instructions to make the font look better at certain sizes according to the font designers eye, rather than a purely mathematical scaling. Using these hints is patented by Apple. Code exists for it in the FreeType library, but it is disabled. You can enable it at compile-time if you licence the patent from Apple. Apple didn't threaten anyone over this, rather FreeType found out about the patent, asked Apple if it would be ok for them to use hinting, got no response, and disabled the code to be safe. I don't think the hinting is that necessary... it's only useful at certain scales, and from what I hear it's bloody hard to program---more of an art form---so not many fonts really use it right.
A nice thing about TT is that they live in just one file. T1 require two files: the font file and the font metrics file. From what I have read, professional typographers consider TT to be inferior to T1.
I myself like T1 fonts. They just feel a little better to me.
Anyway, back to the story.
We now have TT, and it's a much more open specification than T1. The two biggest personal computer platforms, Apple and Windows 3.x use TT. Others are using T1 (OS/2 I know, I think NeXT had the capability because they used display-postscript). You could get T1 fonts to work on Windows and MacOS by installing Adobe Type Manager (ATM), but it wasn't free, and only came with an Adobe product.
So TT was gaining alot of market share, not great for Adobe.
Eventually, T1 lost so much market share to TT, that keeping a lock on T1 made no sense. How are they going to sell their T1 fonts if nobody uses T1?
Adobe opened the T1 spec. Linux uses it as a result. Adobe made ATM a free download.
This is why MS did not make T1 fonts. They don't do it now, although they could. They did this OpenType partnership thing with Adobe which was supposed to sort of unify T1 and TT, but that hasn't seemed to have made a big impact.
Nimbus-Sans is a T1 font, using T1 font specs, but has no Adobe code in it.
Why did MS make that ugly Arial by bastardizing Grotesque into Helvectica's dimensions instead of cloning Helvectica? Well, I can only guess.
Back in the 90's there were sort of "font wars" happening. Alot of small font firms were popping up and making fonts that looked very much like those of the big font houses like Adobe and Monotype, and selling them for much less money. Many of these were inferior to some degree, but many were still really nice.
Some of the really crappy companies had apparently truly ripped off the big font companies by taking the high Q T1 fonts and mathematically converted them to low quality TT fonts before reselling them. Others had built lookalikes from scratch.
Anyway, the big font companies didn't like this. There were lawsuits. Lots of them. Some of these font companies were real bastards. I read one page where a font company saw a decorative font in a jpeg on this guys webpage, checked their records, found they never sold him a copy of their $150 font, and told him they wanted money. He told them the font in the jpeg came from a CD that came with his printer, and gave him the font foundry and name. They then wrote back and said that the font foundry had illegally made a lookalike and demanded he pay them for the font.
Many of those smaller font foundrys are not around anymore. :(
MS probably wanted to avoid this, so they made a font that was different enough from helvectica that they wouldn't get sued, but would have the same dimensions so it could be a drop in replacement. Thus we get Arial.
I don't know the whole story behind Nimbus-Sans. I know it's a beautiful donated T1 font from a company. Maybe it's one of the scratchbuilt fonts from a company that survived the font wars (pure speculation, I don't have time to research it now).
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Which version of Windows?
I was browsing my Windows 3.1 directory on my other machine with Windows 2000 and I'm certain some of the fonts said opentype on the font viewer, I could upload them if you like, providing it isn't against the rules.
Yeah, that's against the rules. Instant messengers and Gmail exist for a reason, you know?
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Yeah, that's against the rules. Instant messengers and Gmail exist for a reason, you know?
Heh, I thought he meant copyright law. I was wondering what the hell he was thinking, obeying copyright law!
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I meant both, if it's illeagal then it's also against the rules but if it's legal then it isn't against the rules.
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http://rapidshare.de/ if you don't mind breaking THEIR rules.
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I meant both, if it's illeagal then it's also against the rules but if it's legal then it isn't against the rules.
Then I'll clarify it, since apparently I was intoxicated when I made that post.
If you must trade font files that have not been legitimately purchased, don't do it here. Posting those files here violates our rules and..well... you know what happens when you break the rules.
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No need to worry yourself - I don't need to borrow anyone's font files. The problem has been taken care of, thanks to Myriad.
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Then I'll clarify it, since apparently I was intoxicated when I made that post.
If you must trade font files that have not been legitimately purchased, don't do it here. Posting those files here violates our rules and..well... you know what happens when you break the rules.
I posted a link to download QBasic once and Refalm didn't mind as it's abandonware - just like Windows 3.1 which is just as old. Seriously I wouldn't worry about Microsoft sueing us for pirating their antiquated software - they've got better thing to do.
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I posted a link to download QBasic once and Refalm didn't mind as it's abandonware - just like Windows 3.1 which is just as old. Seriously I wouldn't worry about Microsoft sueing us for pirating their antiquated software - they've got better thing to do.
Except that QBasic and Windows 3.1 are the basis for Vista/Longhorn - you could get into a lot of trouble!!!!!!!!!
Seriously, Microsoft does not in fact have better things to do than chase people who have supposedly violated their copyright and/or EULA. Watch yourself.
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Well I don't know but thay haven't shut down any sites that offer downloads of old copies of QBasic or even Visual Basic, I don't see why they'd waste their time.
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It often amazes me what Microsoft considers to be worth their time.
One of their favorite tactics here (not sure about Europe/Asia) is to look over corporate purchasing. If your company has licensed 120 copies of Microsoft XP, but has 250 employees, Microsoft will call your business and accuse you of using illegal copies of Windows. They will stop at damn near nothing.
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We must be fucked then as half our empolyees don't use computers.
Look this site (http://www.ojodepez-fanzine.net/network/qbdl/) hasn't been shut down dispite having downloads for all versions of MS Basic up to Visual Basic 4, including the Qbasic source code which is very interesting.
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Use Python or Java, the real programming languages ... not QBasic or any Basic for that matter
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There's FreeBASIC (http://www.freebasic.net) if you want BASIC. I like it because it's a nice and easy programming language and it's the only one I've ever bothered to fully learn and now it's free I've become interested in it again.
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I posted a link to download QBasic once and Refalm didn't mind as it's abandonware - just like Windows 3.1 which is just as old. Seriously I wouldn't worry about Microsoft sueing us for pirating their antiquated software - they've got better thing to do.
Abandonware is one thing. Fonts are another. On another forum, I've recently seen lawyers rise from their coffins and go after an administrator for the most innocuous of invented copyright infringements. I have no desire to see that happen here. Please don't post those fonts here, no matter how old they are.
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On second thoughts they might be TrueType.
(http://www.illhostit.com/files/5223370116945214/fonts.PNG)
There again it says OpenType at the top - this is very confusing. :confused:
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Most fonts on windows are OpenType, mixed with a few TrueType according to the MS Paint Text Toolbar.
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OpenType wasn't even announced until 1996. I'm wondering how this font would be reported if you looked at it in Windows 95.
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Possible solution = Font Forge (http://freshmeat.net/projects/fontforge/)
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You mean open it with FontForge and see what it really is? Good idea.