enclose font in website

H

hoit

Hi all,

Does anyone know if it is possible to use a font face (specially created
for the site) and then upload the font face with the site.
I don't want the browser to pick its own font, I want it to use my font.

Is this possible and if so, how?

Any help is greatly appreciated


hoit
 
M

+mrcakey

Sherm Pendley said:
It's not. There's been some effort in this area in the past, but it never
caught on.

Actually the latest Firefox beta and the latest Opera alpha both support
font-face as specified in the draft CSS3, so it's on its way back. It's been
nixed in the past because of issues over downloading the actual font file to
the user's machine which is usually in breach of the font licence.
Publish a PDF then - HTML is not the appropriate media for such things.

I wouldn't think PDF is appropriate either for online publishing. That's
what Flash is for.

OP may also want to Google for SIFR which replaces inline text in the HTML
output with text rendered in the designer's choice of font using Flash. It
has issues though.
 
R

richard

Actually the latest Firefox beta and the latest Opera alpha both support
font-face as specified in the draft CSS3, so it's on its way back. It's been
nixed in the past because of issues over downloading the actual font file to
the user's machine which is usually in breach of the font licence.

Oh please. Will you stop belly aching about a frickin license on an
item which can not be copyrighted?
Unless the "font" does not use standard characters used in every day
life there can be no license.

As most windows products come equipped with several hundred fonts, you
can't find one suitable enough for your use?

Actually, the probable reason that feature was nixed is because most
people prefer to choose their own fonts. When I come across a site
that fixes fonts and sizes to a point where I can not change either,
bye bye.
 
D

dorayme

"Peter said:

The technique you quote has some downsides. I found a particular serious
one myself ages ago and I have forgotten what it is! But I only really
reply here to say that this is not good for the OP because it would send
him crazy to do *all his text* this way. The technique is not intended
for such, let me quote from the technique's webpage:

"sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text
rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your
users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by
using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash."

Please don't top post.
 
D

dorayme

"+mrcakey said:
I wouldn't think PDF is appropriate either for online publishing. That's
what Flash is for.

I would have thought that Sherm was quite correct and I am not sure that
Flash is *for* such a purpose?
 
R

rf

Oh please. Will you stop belly aching about a frickin license on an
item which can not be copyrighted?
Unless the "font" does not use standard characters used in every day
life there can be no license.

You obviously have absolutely zero idea about how copyright works. Fonts can
be and are subject to copyright.
 
R

richard

You obviously have absolutely zero idea about how copyright works. Fonts can
be and are subject to copyright.

So that you will understand better. The actual font is NOT
copyrightable. It is the software that is used to create it that is
copyrightable.

You can not copyright the alphabet regardless of how you represent it.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf

Excerpt from "What is NOT copyrightable".......

Titles, names, short phrases and slogans; familiar symbols or designs;
mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or
coloring....
ding ding ding hello. What then is a font?
A font is a variation of typographc ornamentation.
 
E

Eric Bednarz

richard said:
ding ding ding hello. What then is a font?

I can’t wait.
A font is a variation of typographc ornamentation.

A novel is a variation of typographc [sic] ornamentation order.

(I just realized that somebody smarter than me would just have said
‘idiot’ without sacrificing any semantics)
 
R

rf

richard said:
So that you will understand better. The actual font is NOT
copyrightable. It is the software that is used to create it that is
copyrightable.

So that you will understand better, the actual font IS copyrightable.
You can not copyright the alphabet regardless of how you represent it.

A font is not the alphabet.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf

Excerpt from "What is NOT copyrightable".......

Titles, names, short phrases and slogans; familiar symbols or designs;
mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or
coloring....
ding ding ding hello. What then is a font?
A font is a variation of typographc ornamentation.

A font is not a "mere variation of typographic ornamentation". A font is a
work or art and works of art ARE copyrightable.

Search for "font copyright" and you will find all sorts of information.
However this is a good one:

http://desktoppub.about.com/gi/dyna...pub&zu=http://www.typeright.org/feature4.html

<quote>
There are legal foundations to why there should be font copyright-in fact,
cases from other fields, and the United States' obligations under
international conventions, demand that copyright registration be allowed for
type fonts. Most courts in the U.S. will not find any difficulty with these
arguments.
</quote>

<quote>
The US Copyright Office still officially refuses to accord protection for
typeface designs. This is due to a misunderstanding of the field, which has
resulted in the United States being the only country in the western world
not to recognize the intellectual property in typeface designs.
</quote>

Good on you the U S of A, not.

It gets better:

<quote>
The United States' obligations under the Berne Convention, now that she is a
signatory, is to respect the copyright on fonts, if such copyright exists in
the countries they were designed in. Fonts designed outside the United
States become subject to protection as artistic works. There is little
reason for domestically designed fonts to receive a different treatment (nor
should they
</quote>

So, even if your stupid bloody county attemps to not recognise font
copyright the rest of the world does.
 
N

Nik Coughlin

richard said:
So that you will understand better. The actual font is NOT
copyrightable. It is the software that is used to create it that is
copyrightable.

You can not copyright the alphabet regardless of how you represent it.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf

Excerpt from "What is NOT copyrightable".......

Titles, names, short phrases and slogans; familiar symbols or designs;
mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or
coloring....
ding ding ding hello. What then is a font?
A font is a variation of typographc ornamentation.

You *cannot* legally redistribute fonts if doing so breaches the license.

The typeface may not be copyrightable, but the file containing the vector
data for a font IS copyrightable. Note, I'm not talking about the software
used to create it, but the resultant font file. This applies to scalable
(vector) fonts but not to bitmapped fonts for some reason.

The offshoot of this is that you can sit down and painstakingly re-create
from scratch a font that looks exactly like my font, and do with it as you
please, redistribute it, sell it, whatever. However, if I've trademarked
the name of my font you can't call it the same thing. An example of this is
Microsoft's Book Antiqua, which is a version of Palatino, a trademarked
name.

But, you *can't* redistribute my original font file without my permission,
it is copyrighted. If you are granted a license to use it in some way you
are bound to the terms of that license so long as these terms are legally
watertight, but that's another matter.

Note that some fonts, like Lucida, are actually covered by Design Patents,
which protects them against the loophole outlined above. This is no longer
a copyright issue though, but a patent one.

Note that for the most part the above only applies to the US, in most
countries typefaces are copyrightable, just like any other work of art.
Also, IANAL.
 
R

richard

So that you will understand better, the actual font IS copyrightable.

A font is not the alphabet.


A font is not a "mere variation of typographic ornamentation". A font is a
work or art and works of art ARE copyrightable.

Search for "font copyright" and you will find all sorts of information.
However this is a good one:

http://desktoppub.about.com/gi/dyna...pub&zu=http://www.typeright.org/feature4.html

<quote>
There are legal foundations to why there should be font copyright-in fact,
cases from other fields, and the United States' obligations under
international conventions, demand that copyright registration be allowed for
type fonts. Most courts in the U.S. will not find any difficulty with these
arguments.
</quote>

Looks like you just shot yourself with your own quote.
This says that there is currently no copyright available on fonts.

<quote>
The US Copyright Office still officially refuses to accord protection for
typeface designs. This is due to a misunderstanding of the field, which has
resulted in the United States being the only country in the western world
not to recognize the intellectual property in typeface designs.
</quote>

Good on you the U S of A, not.

It gets better:

<quote>
The United States' obligations under the Berne Convention, now that she is a
signatory, is to respect the copyright on fonts, if such copyright exists in
the countries they were designed in. Fonts designed outside the United
States become subject to protection as artistic works. There is little
reason for domestically designed fonts to receive a different treatment (nor
should they
</quote>

So, even if your stupid bloody county attemps to not recognise font
copyright the rest of the world does.

Mr. Matlock sir, fonts are not "art". They are
"mere variations" of commonly used items, i.e., the alphabet.
 
C

Chris F.A. Johnson

Mr. Matlock sir, fonts are not "art". They are
"mere variations" of commonly used items, i.e., the alphabet.

As books are "mere variations" of the alphabet.

If you read what was posted, you would have realized that the USA
is (or has been) alone in not allowing the copyrighting of fonts;
it is prevalent almost everywhere else.
 
D

dorayme

"rf said:
You obviously have absolutely zero idea about how copyright works. Fonts can
be and are subject to copyright.

Richard is talking about ... letters and things that have been around a
long time. Here is the story of them:

<http://people.aapt.net.au/~miltonreid/letters/cover.html>

On pages 9 and 10, the figures are enlargable by link and the popular
and much loved pop up menu. They are of great beauty and are not subject
to ordinary copyright.
 
R

rf

richard said:
Looks like you just shot yourself with your own quote.
This says that there is currently no copyright available on fonts.

Did you not read any of the links you found when you googled for "font
copyright"? Did you not even read this post?

Here it is again:
</quote>

The other 97% of the world DOES recognise the intellectual property in
typeface designs.
Mr. Matlock sir, fonts are not "art". They are
"mere variations" of commonly used items, i.e., the alphabet.

Fonts are "works of art".

Why do you think Windows does not have an helvetica font (although Ariel
looks amost the same). Windows does not have an helvetica font because
somebody else holds the copyright on that font.

Who is Mr Matlock?
 
A

asdf

rf said:
So that you will understand better, the actual font IS copyrightable.

A font is not the alphabet.


A font is not a "mere variation of typographic ornamentation". A font is a
work or art and works of art ARE copyrightable.

Oh goody... can we start arguing about what constitutes art now? :)

For me a font (no matter how fancy) is NOT art, in the same way that a piece
of stationery is NOT art. Let's be frank- a computer font is just portable
and configurable stationery.

I do lots and lots of graphic design jobs - including fonts, but not for one
second would I describe them as art. Jobs like this are not *intended* to be
art. If I wanted to create art, I would produce one, eloquent image that
communicates on it's own terms, not something that can (nay NEEDS to) be
broken up, reordered and resized before it has any intrinsic or extrinsic
communicative value. One might as well try to 'copyright' the bricks that
make up your house.

As far as I am concerned the client, once they've paid for a graphic design
job can do what they damn well like with it- color it in with crayon, screw
it up, roll it flat again, fold it seven times and make paper soldiers out
of it. I wouldn't care. I got paid for the job- they own it, not me.

If I had created a piece of *art* however, I would would prefer that it be
placed in a prominent, publically accessible position for all the world to
see, and that I be paid a suitable sum for its conception and creation, but
I certainly wouldn't be expecting to collect a royalty for every photograph
that was taken of it.

IMO the idea of collecting royalties for a font is simply ridiculous. If you
want to collect royalties, create an image or other artwork that actually
communicates something worth perceiving. ...and that's my OPINION. No
correspondence etc.

A better argument is that a font *might* be somebody's *intellectual (cough)
property*, in the same way that works of art tend to be (usually) somebody's
intellectual property. Though if I were building a house using copyright
bricks, I would probably just live in a tent instead. Arguing that fonts are
art is nonsense, since art is 'in the eye of the beholder'.

[snip]
 
R

rf

asdf said:
Oh goody... can we start arguing about what constitutes art now? :)

For me a font (no matter how fancy) is NOT art, in the same way that
a piece of stationery is NOT art. Let's be frank- a computer font is
just portable and configurable stationery.

"Work of art" is what the copyright law states. It is not my idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_of_art

Whether you think it is "art" or not is immaterial.
 
A

asdf

rf said:
"Work of art" is what the copyright law states. It is not my idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_of_art

Whether you think it is "art" or not is immaterial.

From that article to which you refer:
"A work of art (or artwork or work) is a creation, such as an art object,
design, architectural piece, musical work, literary composition,
performance, film, conceptual art piece, or even computer program that is
made and or valued primarily for an "artistic" rather than practical
function."

A font's primary purpose for those that use it is functional, therefore by
those terms (not mine) is NOT art.
 

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