The Hickensian

4.10.07 Fonts in your Face

32 comments
Tagged with: css, fonts

Sure, there’s trouble ahead with the announcement that Safari will be joining Opera in supporting @font-face, the chance at last for wider typeface choice! Place a font file on your server, and link to it in order to embed the typeface. We’ve been able to do it in PDFs and Flash movies since time began, but so far only one attempt has been made to make them work in HTML.

First problem, yes this will mean some people will specify unreadable/unsuitable type for body copy, but what’s new? It simply means that there will be a wider variety of unreadable fonts to choose from.

Secondly, and this is the real sticking point, font licensing. As John Gruber points out:

The conundrum is that most of the fonts worth using can’t legally be shared as free downloads, and most of the fonts that are legally shareable aren’t worth using.

Even if you purchase a font legally, the file is available to all to take. Now then, I have an idea to get around this – just like Google Maps, you purchase a ‘key’, a unique code, that works with that domain name only, with the font file (possibly) being served by the foundry. The actual filename of the font is hidden, and anyone trying to use that on a different URL, simply won’t get any dice. Whatever the solution – the font foundry that leaps onto this has the chance to lead.

Personally, I’m just happy that we’re reaching a point where we’re having this conversation! I want to be able to specify a face, and enable everyone to see it, without resorting to the image replacement and SiFR workarounds.

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No.1

∞ Jeff Croft said 859 days ago:

Sorry, Jon, but I personally can’t get behind any solution that requires me to re-purchase fonts I already own for use on the web. The key idea is a good one, but I don’t want to have to re-up the fonts I own for the new medium. I wouldn’t have to purchase a separate license to use them in any other medium (like say, a t-shirt), so I don’t see why i should have to on the web, either.

To me, this is a simple security issue like any other. It’s not difficult at all for system administrators to set up referrer-based rules in their web server that require any font in a particular directory to only be accessible from a certain URL scheme. For example, any fonts in my /home/jcroft/jeffcroft.com/fonts/ directory on my server should only be accessible when referred to in CSS files located at *.jeffcroft.com. That’s simple, basic web server administration that any sysadmin knows how to do.

If people are responsible, the legal conundrum here seems like a non-issue to me. If people aren’t responsible, then they derseve whatever legal repercussions they get.

No.2

∞ Jon Hicks said 859 days ago:

Who said anything about ‘re-purchasing’?

That’s simple, basic web server administration that any sysadmin knows how to do.

OK, not being a sysadmin, I wouldn’t have known that was possible!

No.3

∞ pauldwaite said 859 days ago:

It’s not difficult at all for system administrators to set up referrer-based rules in their web server that require any font in a particular directory to only be accessible from a certain URL scheme.

But surely it’s equally trivial to fake a referrer to get the font? I don’t think this would be enough of an obstacle to absolve site owners from legal responsibility, although I’m not a lawyer.

No.4

∞ Jeff Croft said 859 days ago:

Who said anything about ‘re-purchasing’?

Doh! Good point — you didn’t. :) I just assumed it would require a re-purchase. At the very least, your solution would probably require a re-download, though — right?

No.5

∞ ichigo said 859 days ago:

I think it is a great move by the Opera and the Webkit teams to add support for this CSS2 @font-face spec. The a list apart article from the CTO of opera which is linked to in the Webkit blog posting is also a good read.

I don’t really agree with Gruber though as I think there are quite some really nice fonts out there under Creative Commons and other licenses.

No.6

∞ Tim said 859 days ago:

@Jeff Croft: Maybe it’s because of Apple’s ringtone-policy you immediately thought of re-purchasing the font :-)

On topic: Yes there are a couple of concerns, including the overall browser-support, and offcourse the MySpace-generation...

No.7

∞ Brent Miller said 859 days ago:

Even if you set up a referrer screen, and for the sake of argument let’s say that you make one that works and isn’t hackable, you still have a major problem: the font will be downloaded by the client browser. Anything that a browser can download a user can save and use out of context, so your fonts would still be exposed.

No.8

∞ alex.r. said 859 days ago:

… are we speaking about DRMed fonts now?

Personally I’m all for letting users download a font even if they don’t have a license… I mean what are they going to do, write a lab report with it?

If by default the browser doesn’t ‘install’ the font for every other application to use, that seems like a good enough precaution for me. It’s not like somebody actively looking to pirate fonts can’t do it nowadays.

Designers using the fonts in publications and advertisements already know better than to use a font for which they don’t have a license.

No.9

∞ Uncle Asad said 858 days ago:

I suppose you could also use a no-cache http header on the font file to work around “stealing from cache.” However—and presuming that the header can’t be hacked away—you still potentially have a performance problem as the user navigates through the site and the browser has to re-download the font or re-fetch new glyphs for new pages or new blocks of text….

No.10

∞ Steven Teskey said 858 days ago:

I’m not completely sure about this but couldn’t you just place the font in a higher, than accessible to the general public, directory? Almost like how you would link a database connect file in php to mysql? Just a thought…

No.11

∞ Joen said 858 days ago:

It is an interesting development for sure.

That said, I don’t think any form of copy protection will be effective at all. I’m fairly certain even fonts embedded in Flash can somehow be stolen.

I see a different solution: compress and adapt.

That’s what Flash does. Only the glyphs used (or specifically chosen) are embedded. That, and they’re vector compressed, meaning if you zoom ALL the way in you’ll see less than perfect curves on your font. Try it, prove me wrong. You’ll notice it’s been looking just fine, even with the compression, for nearly a decade.

Sure, this solution would require a new compressed truetype format as well as middleware to compress the new font. But it could work.

Now that we have this discussion on embeddable fonts on the web, here’s an equally interesting discussion: what about anti-aliasing? Windows has one way of doing things, Mac has another. In Flash I can specify exactly how anti- or aliased I want my font. Why not CSS for that?

sharpness: 200;
thickness: 50;

No.12

∞ Jon Hicks said 858 days ago:

Just to make myself clear:

* I’m not suggesting fonts should be re-purchased. If you’ve got a reciept for a font, this is something that should be supplied. * I’m not talking about DRM in the sense of encryption in the font file, but a service provided by the font foundries that allows you to use their fonts, without making it too easy for ne'er do wells to take the font

Of course, anything is ALWAYS hackable. If you don’t want it stolen, don’t put it on the web right? The thing is, like image libraries, the foundries will need assurance that it doesn’t open up anyone to EASILY download the font. With the font file shown clearly in the declaration, it would be. It’s all about suitable barriers.

Also, such a system will be costly to the foundries, and as Jeff rightly said, if you’ve paid for a font, you should be able to use it anywhere.

No.13

∞ Jakob S said 858 days ago:

So… what exactly makes fonts so immensely different than photos and other images? We’ve been putting licensed images online for ages and noone seems to worry terribly much about that.

Isn’t it merely a matter of getting used to the same thing for font faces?

No.14

∞ Jon Hicks said 858 days ago:

So… what exactly makes fonts so immensely different than photos and other images? We’ve been putting licensed images online for ages and noone seems to worry terribly much about that.

Because web images are 72dpi, you’re limited to how you can use them, whereas typefaces are vector information. You can use a tyepface as large as want without loss of quality, not something you can with images.

No.15

∞ Phil Baines said 858 days ago:

This is an interesting development. When I first read about this on Richard Rutters site I got quite exited, but then the feeling wore off as I realised that the reality was still that no other browsers would pick up the ball for a good few years. But now Safari is playing ball too. So, maybe now it’s more of a reality?

I wonder, has anyone thought to ask if this would be something the Firefox community would be willing to look into?

No.16

∞ Khairudin Lee said 858 days ago:

As for problems, well there are always problems with new/good things, that is inevitable imho. With a wider support in the future, this is good news to all web designers. Perhaps more open source fonts pls?

No.17

∞ James Kenwood said 858 days ago:

As Jon said the really good point here is that we finally get to have these discussions and put forward ideas about how these issues might be addressed.

Much of the success of this will come down to the major font foundries I suspect. If they kick up stink that their copyrighted content is being violated by Apple it has the potential to be a bit of a PR issue regarding DRM again.

On another point I wonder why they chose to implement Truetype and not OpenType? File size I suspect but does anybody know any technical reason?

No.18

∞ Matthew said 858 days ago:

with the font file (possibly) being served by the foundry

what if that foundries site goes down? It could happen

No.19

∞ Tom L said 858 days ago:

OK, So I am trying this out. Made my own page, using the font resource listed in the ALA article, AND hitting the links for the examples in the latest WebKit. It worked great. Once. After that, the custom fonts wouldn’t show again.

Chalk it up to “beta”??????? What happened?

No.20

∞ Patrick Desmarais said 858 days ago:

If I recall correctly, the PFR format; from the TrueDoc technology (developed by BitStream) was a compressed and encrypted file containing all the glyphs for a particular font. You just had to use a PFR conversion tool (can’t remember the name) to convert a TrueType of Type1 font to the PFR format. No repurchase necessary.

When converting, you had to specify the domain to which the font file was to be linked. The font was then accessible only to that domain, which is pretty similar to what some of you said.

This is pretty old… 1997 IIRC…

No.21

∞ David Hyatt said 858 days ago:

“On another point I wonder why they chose to implement Truetype and not OpenType? File size I suspect but does anybody know any technical reason?”

OpenType should work too, although I didn’t test it.

No.22

∞ Jeff Croft said 858 days ago:

Even if you set up a referrer screen, and for the sake of argument let’s say that you make one that works and isn’t hackable, you still have a major problem: the font will be downloaded by the client browser. Anything that a browser can download a user can save and use out of context, so your fonts would still be exposed

Good point, Brent. I would imagine Apple will take some steps to prevent this in their implementation, though. For example, they may not cache fonts (i.e. they are downloaded and used, but never saved). This would obviously not be impenetrable, but it would go a long way towards preventing regular people from stealing fonts. Of course, there’s a performance issue to be dealt with…

Because web images are 72dpi, you’re limited to how you can use them…

That’s true today, but it probably won’t be for much longer. With resolution independence, we’re going to see a lot more high-resolution photos on the web. I think the general point he was trying to make is correct: people need to become educated about what they can and can’t do legally or suffer the consequences. Not everything can be prevented with technology, and not everything should be prevented with technology.

This is probably a case where font foundries are just going to have to suck it up and deal with it.

No.23

∞ Jeena Paradies said 858 days ago:

Jeff, couldn’t you just download the font with curl or wget, even if the server says “do not cache”? All the browser can get thru http, this tools can too.

No.24

∞ Jeff Croft said 858 days ago:

Jeff, couldn’t you just download the font with curl or wget, even if the server says “do not cache”?

Yep, which is why I said, “This would obviously not be impenetrable, but it would go a long way towards preventing regular people from stealing fonts.”

Regular people don’t use wget and curl.

No.25

∞ Thomas Phinney said 856 days ago:

“Sorry, Jon, but I personally can’t get behind any solution that requires me to re-purchase fonts I already own for use on the web.”

You already have this problem, because by and large your existing font license terms for retail fonts do not allow this sort of usage. It’s not prevented, just not permitted by the terms of your license.

“That’s what Flash does. Only the glyphs used (or specifically chosen) are embedded. That, and they’re vector compressed, meaning if you zoom ALL the way in you’ll see less than perfect curves on your font.”

I do not believe this to be true from what I know about Flash’s font compression process. (Could be I’m misinformed, but I garnered this straight from the Flash engineers I work with at Adobe.)

“On another point I wonder why they chose to implement Truetype and not OpenType? File size I suspect but does anybody know any technical reason?”

It sure as heck isn’t file size, as OpenType CFF fonts are noticeably smaller than TrueType fonts. Just ignorance I guess. Or a nod to the fact that it’s a small minority of open source or freely distributable fonts are in OpenType CFF format.

Cheers,

No.26

∞ eu führerschein said 856 days ago:

Looks beautiful in Opera 9.5 on the Mac; thanks for the update!

No.27

∞ Tom L said 855 days ago:

Can anyone take a stab as to why this isn’t working for me in either Opera 9.5 Mac or latest WebKit? I saw it work once, then the custom fonts just stopped displaying.

No.28

∞ Jens Kristensen said 855 days ago:

Jon, your “key” solution may also help solve a different problem, by making the font domain specific.

If you, as a web site owner, hires designer A to design your site, but you rely on designer B, your in-house designer, to maintain and expand the site, who needs to own the font? I’m not sure it’s enough that designer A already purchased the font previously.

No.29

∞ Darrel said 854 days ago:

“I want to be able to specify a face, and enable everyone to see it”

I agree. But it also conflicts with my “I don’t want anyone else being able to specify faces and force them upon me.”

Oh well.

No.30

∞ alex.r. said 854 days ago:

Compressing the font and removing the characters is a good solution in theory for heavy documents, like PDFs, but for the web I believe it’s another story entirely.

I don’t think that it would be uncommon for a site to use the same font for every page. Generating a new font file for every page would be a total waste of time and bandwidth…

Really, am I the only one to think that the fundamental problem is not with the technology (or lack of) but with the font license?

Is it really the consensus that someone not making any money from the use of font and not distributing it publicly should have to pay? It’s not like they would be loosing a huge market by allowing this — how many individuals actually buy a license for a font for their own personal enjoyment without any intent to publish the work in some way?

No.31

∞ aj kandy said 854 days ago:

I think it’s doable, with a multipronged strategy.

1. Some changes to font copyright law. A certain set of older/historical faces can be declared to be archetypes in the public domain – your Garamonds, Goudys, blackletters, Bodonis etc — and new, free versions of these faces commissioned that are available to all without charge.

2. Get a combined movement, public and private, to contribute to a pool of public web fonts — encourage foundries to release at least one font gratis, encourage typographers to create new free faces. (How about an improved Arial, for one?)

3. Establish digital licenses for fonts, either explicitly (web-only) or as add-ons to existing font licenses. I don’t think site-specific licenses are practical; maybe we have to think of them more as royalty-free photography vs. rights-managed works, and buying the digital license is like purchasing the next step up in resolution. This way, independent designers, hobbyists and nonprofits are not penalized or made to suffer undue financial hardship with multiple purchases.

Certainly, I want font companies to make money (Sam Berlow needs to eat!), at the same time do we want to be getting into some sort of arcane system of certificates or activation etc etc? I think not: the web needs to remain open.

No.32

∞ Jan said 853 days ago:

I think encoding the font in the browser cache might be a solution to avoid theft of fonts. On the other hand, instead of using OpenType, TrueType or PostScript. Using XML-based UFO fonts might even be a better option.