Core fonts for the Web

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Core fonts for the Web was a project started by Microsoft in 1996 to create a standard pack of fonts for the Internet. It included the proprietary fonts Andale Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Webdings, all of them in TrueType font format packaged in executable files (".exe") for Microsoft Windows and in BinHexed Stuff-It archives (".sit.hqx") for Macintosh. These packages were published as freeware under a proprietary license imposing some restrictions on usage and distribution.[1]

Microsoft terminated the project in 2002,[2][3] but thanks to the license terms, the distributed files are still legally available from some third-party websites. Updated versions of the fonts produced since 2002 have not been published as freeware and are usually available only after purchasing a license or as a part of some commercial products.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

Overview

The fonts were licensed to Microsoft by Monotype Corporation or designed for Microsoft by Microsoft's own font designers or external designers. The fonts were designed to:

  • Be highly legible on screen;
  • Offer a wide range of typographic “timbres” within a small number of typefaces; and
  • Support extensive internationalisation.

These design goals and the fonts' broad availability have made some of them extremely popular with web designers. However, these proprietary fonts (or some of them) are not distributed with some modern operating systems by default (e.g. in Android, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris or some Symbian versions)[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and they are substituted by other fonts (e.g. by free software fonts, such as Liberation fonts, Ghostscript fonts,[21] Droid fonts, DejaVu fonts and others). All of these fonts in their latest versions are installed by default in the latest versions of Mac OS X (i.e. Mac OS X 10.4 and newer), but older versions of Mac OS X did not install some of them by default (e.g. Andale Mono, Impact) and old versions of Mac OS also did not include many of them (e.g. Arial).[4][22][23] Some of these fonts are also not installed by default in iOS (e.g. Andale Mono, Comic Sans MS, Impact, Webdings).[24]

While the project has formally ended, the benefits of using broadly available fonts remain: to increase the likelihood that content will be displayed in the chosen font, or in a metric-compatible alternative. In addition to the Core fonts for the Web, some newer fonts, such as those packaged with Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org or other software could form a new canon of core fonts. Broader web browser adoption of the web fonts specification may ultimately render the notion of core fonts obsolete by allowing the real-time downloading and display of specific fonts.

Program termination and software licence agreement issues

The project was terminated in August 2002, allegedly because of frequent EULA violations. A Microsoft spokesman declared in 2002 that "Microsoft has also found that the downloads were being abused — repackaged, modified and shipped with commercial products in violation of the EULA." "Most users who wanted the fonts have downloaded them already."[2][25][26] However, that same EULA allows redistribution if the packages are kept in their original format (.exe or .sit.hqx) and original filenames (e.g. times32.exe) and not used to add value to commercial products.[1][27] As a result, these packages are still available for download on third-party websites under the terms of the original web fonts end user license agreement.

The EULA referenced below also requires[28] that a copy be applied to transferees. The EULA is therefore directly linked to: for example, on the documentation page for the Sourceforge "corefonts" download package.[29] If a third party offering the fonts for download does not offer a copy of the EULA, the legal status of such a download is questionable. However, a copy of the EULA is obtainable via the FAQ maintained on Microsoft's typography website and from some other third-party websites.[3][1][27]

For Windows, the fonts are provided as self-extracting executables (.exe); each includes an embedded cabinet file that contains a font file in TrueType format (.ttf). For the Macintosh, the files are provided as BinHexed Stuff-It archives (.sit.hqx). It is forbidden to rename, edit or create any derivative works from the executables (e.g. arial32.exe) or archives (Arial.sit.hqx), other than subsetting when embedding them in documents.[1][27] The fonts can be installed and used on non-Windows or non-Macintosh operating systems, as long as they are distributed in original form (original .exe files or .sit.hqx files) and with original name (e.g. arial32.exe). A cabinet file can be extracted in an end-user's system with appropriate software, if such software is available.

The latest font-versions that were available from Microsoft's Core fonts for the Web project were 2.x (e.g. 2.82 for Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New for MS Windows[30]), published in 2000. Later versions (such as version 3 or version 5 with many new characters) were not available from this project. A Microsoft spokesman declared in 2002 that members of the open source community "will have to find different sources for updated fonts… Although the EULA did not restrict the fonts to just Windows and Mac OS they were only ever available as Windows .exe's and Mac archive files."[2]

Even though the fonts are available from some third-party web sites (such as an anonymous SourceForge project) and are included with Mac OS, Håkon Wium Lie (Chief technical officer of Opera Software) cited the cancellation of the project as an example of Microsoft resisting interoperability.[31]

In July 2007, Apple announced that it had renewed its licensing agreement with Microsoft for the use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts.[4][5][6][32][33]

Files

The TrueType core fonts for the Web project included the following files under a proprietary license:[30][34]

Filename Name Variants Last version Copyright[9]
arial32.exe Arial for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.82 Monotype
Arial.sit.hqx Arial for Apple Mac OS regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.90 Monotype
courie32.exe Courier New for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.82 Monotype
CourierNew.sit.hqx Courier New for Apple Mac OS regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.61 Monotype
times32.exe Times New Roman for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.82 Monotype
TimesNew.sit.hqx Times New Roman for Apple Mac OS regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.91 Monotype
arialb32.exe Arial Black for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 black version 2.35 Monotype
ariblk.exe Arial Black for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 black version 2.20 Monotype
ArialBlack.sit.hqx Arial Black for Apple Mac OS black version 2.35 Monotype
andale32.exe Andale Mono for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular version 2.00 Monotype
mtcom.exe Monotype.com for Windows 3.1 and 3.11
(later versions released as Andale Mono)		 regular version 1.10 Monotype
andalemono.sit.hqx Andale Mono for Apple Mac OS regular version 2.00 Monotype
comic32.exe Comic Sans MS for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular, bold version 2.10 Microsoft
comic.exe Comic Sans MS for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 regular, bold version 1.20 Microsoft
ComicSans.sit.hqx Comic Sans MS for Apple Mac OS regular, bold version 2.10 Microsoft
impact32.exe Impact for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular version 2.35 Monotype
impact.exe Impact for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 regular version 2.20 Monotype
Impact.sit.hqx Impact for Apple Mac OS regular version 2.35 Monotype
georgi32.exe Georgia for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.05 Microsoft
georgia.exe Georgia for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 1.00 Microsoft
Georgia.sit.hqx Georgia for Apple Mac OS regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.05 Microsoft
trebuc32.exe Trebuchet MS for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 1.22 Microsoft
trebuc.exe Trebuchet MS for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 1.00 Microsoft
Trebuchet.sit.hqx Trebuchet MS for Apple Mac OS regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 1.15 Microsoft
verdan32.exe Verdana for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.35 Microsoft
verdana.exe Verdana for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 1.01 Microsoft
Verdana.sit.hqx Verdana for Apple Mac OS regular, bold, italic, bold italic version 2.35 Microsoft
webdin32.exe Webdings for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 symbol version 1.03 Microsoft
webdings.exe Webdings for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 symbol version 1.01 Microsoft

Included fonts

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ "Reproduction and Distribution. You may reproduce and distribute an unlimited number of copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT; provided that each copy shall be a true and complete copy, including all copyright and trademark notices, and shall be accompanied by a copy of this EULA. Copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may not be distributed for profit either on a standalone basis or included as part of your own product." -- The font EULA
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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