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#151
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
In article ,
Chaya Eve wrote: On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 13:11:05 -0700, Savageduck wrote: I am a Mac user, I am not going to label myself ´expert¡, but since you are looking for a sans serif font which is common to Mac, and Win platforms, I have Microsoft Sans Serif Regular on this Mac, and I suspect it will be found on Win machines. As a note, I have no MS software installed on this Mac. https://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FMID=1599 https://catalog.monotype.com/font/mi...osoft-sans-ser if/regular BTW: This is what it looks like on my Mac: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ozi9gqpmq945db9/screenshot_170.png Thanks for running that test. A lot of good information came out of this thread, which I put into the project plan that I handed in today to the Graphics Arts teacher for review. I think we all learned something new but one thing that is for certain is that nobody is ever going to adequately tests a highway sign font sitting at a computer screen, hence only a well-tested font can even be considered. The most well tested USA font is, of course, Highway Gothic. The most well tested European font appears to be DIN 1451. Note that of these, only DIN is available commercially. While there are a number of digital fonts called 'Highway Gothic', none of them are the actual font used by the FHWA. The closest commercially available equivalent is Interstate FB. The next-most-well tested font in the USA is Clearview. Clearview is no longer recommended by the FHWA, though it is in actual use in many states. And a great look-alike font is Roadgeek. Luckily some versions of the Mac come with DIN and some versions of Windows come with Bahnschrift (both of which are DIN 1451 look-alike fonts), so that's the next choice. That is the finite (known) list of fonts that meet the road-sign spec. All those fonts are tested under real-world conditions for halation, night-time and speed legibility (especially when tight interstices are involved), cutout-integrity, removal of tiny notches in joints of the letterforms, negative spacing compactness (affecting legibility of signs in negative-contrast color orientations), common symbols, etc., all resulting in an increase in accuracy, viewing distance, and reaction time. Given that extensive testing, I would state that none of us is ever going to find a better font while just sitting at our computers. It's just not feasible no matter how "good looking" the font appears to be. So the only font choices that are feasible are, in this order: * USA Highway Gothic (not free, but available free so maybe it is free) * USA Clearview (not free) * Germany DIN 1451 (maybe free) * USA Roadgeek (definitely free) * Germany Bahnschrift & DIN (definitely free) I think your definition of 'free' needs work. Bahnschrift and DIN are bundled with Windows and macOS respectively. They are, however, definitely not free. Andre -- To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail service. |
#152
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 23:46:55 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak"
wrote: So the only font choices that are feasible are, in this order: * USA Highway Gothic (not free, but available free so maybe it is free) * USA Clearview (not free) * Germany DIN 1451 (maybe free) * USA Roadgeek (definitely free) * Germany Bahnschrift & DIN (definitely free) I think your definition of 'free' needs work. Bahnschrift and DIN are bundled with Windows and macOS respectively. They are, however, definitely not free. I guess it depends on what is meant by free, because electricity to run a computer isn't free either, so even freeware requires electricity to run. Nonetheless, if we assume that Highway Gothic isn't free, then we're back to Roadgeek (which is where we started) for the only font that works on both platforms that is definitely free. Sigh. |
#153
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
On 2017-09-11 20:25:51 +0000, Andre G. Isaak said:
In article , Your Name wrote: On 2017-09-12 00:31:19 +0000, Chaya Eve said: On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 12:20:39 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak" wrote: I pointed out already that DIN *is* included with Macs. Thanks for clarifying that a DIN font is included native with the Mac. You're the only Mac expert here who knew that. Even the Windows experts didn't know that a DIN 1451 compatible font exists on Windows (named Barnshrift) until you mentioned the DIN compatible font on the Mac. Since the name may make all the difference in compatibility, do you know the name of that DIN 1451 compatible font on the Mac? There is no "DIN" font installed by default on the Mac. You can download it and it may be installed by some third-party applications. There are no doubt lots of fonts that are close enough to be lookalikes. I just double checked. DIN is definitely installed in /Library/Fonts. I verified this against the Sierra and Yosemite installers. It is present in both. It is in my Sierra folder as well, but it's not a standard Mac OS X font. It doesn't show up in any Mac apps such as Font Book, Pages, InDesign, etc. (unless itt's listed under some name other then "DIN"). The only apps it is accessible in is Microsoft Office apps, so it's likely it was installed by Office and is licensed only for use in those. |
#154
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
In article ,
Chaya Eve wrote: On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 23:46:55 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak" wrote: So the only font choices that are feasible are, in this order: * USA Highway Gothic (not free, but available free so maybe it is free) * USA Clearview (not free) * Germany DIN 1451 (maybe free) * USA Roadgeek (definitely free) * Germany Bahnschrift & DIN (definitely free) I think your definition of 'free' needs work. Bahnschrift and DIN are bundled with Windows and macOS respectively. They are, however, definitely not free. I guess it depends on what is meant by free, because electricity to run a computer isn't free either, so even freeware requires electricity to run. I think you misunderstood my point -- I'm pointing out that it's not a good idea to place bundled fonts in the same category as freeware fonts. The latter can generally be redistributed, whereas the former cannot be. Andre -- To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail service. |
#155
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
In article ,
Your Name wrote: On 2017-09-11 20:25:51 +0000, Andre G. Isaak said: In article , Your Name wrote: On 2017-09-12 00:31:19 +0000, Chaya Eve said: On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 12:20:39 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak" wrote: I pointed out already that DIN *is* included with Macs. Thanks for clarifying that a DIN font is included native with the Mac. You're the only Mac expert here who knew that. Even the Windows experts didn't know that a DIN 1451 compatible font exists on Windows (named Barnshrift) until you mentioned the DIN compatible font on the Mac. Since the name may make all the difference in compatibility, do you know the name of that DIN 1451 compatible font on the Mac? There is no "DIN" font installed by default on the Mac. You can download it and it may be installed by some third-party applications. There are no doubt lots of fonts that are close enough to be lookalikes. I just double checked. DIN is definitely installed in /Library/Fonts. I verified this against the Sierra and Yosemite installers. It is present in both. It is in my Sierra folder as well, but it's not a standard Mac OS X font. I've verified that it is installed by Sierra. However, this font has fallen victim to a well-known apple bug which I forgot that I'd already fixed on my system. If you find a font in fonts folder which doesn't show up in your applications, try renaming the file. That should fix it. (this bug is tied to system integrity protection -- if there is any discrepancy between a font and the information contained in the .ATSD file with the same name, the system will assume the font has been damaged and will prevent it from loading. In a few cases apple has updated their fonts but left an old .ATSD file in place. Renaming the font file will fix this) Andre -- To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail service. |
#156
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
In article
, "Andre G. Isaak" wrote: In article , Your Name wrote: On 2017-09-11 20:25:51 +0000, Andre G. Isaak said: In article , Your Name wrote: On 2017-09-12 00:31:19 +0000, Chaya Eve said: On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 12:20:39 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak" wrote: I pointed out already that DIN *is* included with Macs. Thanks for clarifying that a DIN font is included native with the Mac. You're the only Mac expert here who knew that. Even the Windows experts didn't know that a DIN 1451 compatible font exists on Windows (named Barnshrift) until you mentioned the DIN compatible font on the Mac. Since the name may make all the difference in compatibility, do you know the name of that DIN 1451 compatible font on the Mac? There is no "DIN" font installed by default on the Mac. You can download it and it may be installed by some third-party applications. There are no doubt lots of fonts that are close enough to be lookalikes. I just double checked. DIN is definitely installed in /Library/Fonts. C I verified this against the Sierra and Yosemite installers. It is present in both. It is in my Sierra folder as well, but it's not a standard Mac OS X font. I've verified that it is installed by Sierra. However, this font has fallen victim to a well-known apple bug which I forgot that I'd already fixed on my system. If you find a font in fonts folder which doesn't show up in your applications, try renaming the file. That should fix it. (this bug is tied to system integrity protection -- if there is any discrepancy between a font and the information contained in the .ATSD file with the same name, the system will assume the font has been damaged and will prevent it from loading. In a few cases apple has updated their fonts but left an old .ATSD file in place. Renaming the font file will fix this) P.S. other fonts which have fallen victim to this bug at various times have included Athelas, Charter, Marion, Seravek, and SuperClarendon. Usually it gets fixed with the next update but not always. (AFAIK the .ATSD files serve no actual purpose other than to differentiate between apple and 3rd party fonts) Andre -- To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail service. |
#157
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
Andre G. Isaak wrote:
In article , Your Name wrote: On 2017-09-12 00:31:19 +0000, Chaya Eve said: On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 12:20:39 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak" wrote: I pointed out already that DIN *is* included with Macs. Thanks for clarifying that a DIN font is included native with the Mac. You're the only Mac expert here who knew that. Even the Windows experts didn't know that a DIN 1451 compatible font exists on Windows (named Barnshrift) until you mentioned the DIN compatible font on the Mac. Since the name may make all the difference in compatibility, do you know the name of that DIN 1451 compatible font on the Mac? There is no "DIN" font installed by default on the Mac. You can download it and it may be installed by some third-party applications. There are no doubt lots of fonts that are close enough to be lookalikes. I just double checked. DIN is definitely installed in /Library/Fonts. I verified this against the Sierra and Yosemite installers. It is present in both. That is correct, but the font cannot be selected by the user in recent OS versions: DIN Alternate Bold and DIN Condensed Bold don't show up in Font Book, nor in font selection menus in application. They also don't show up if attempting to install the same files as a user font. Apple's document on fonts included in Sierra doesn't mention those fonts: https://support.apple.com/HT206872 but they were in the corresponding document for Mavericks: https://support.apple.com/HT201375 I couldn't find corresponding documents for Yosemite and El Capitan (nor does Wikipedia have links for those versions). Given the list of "Fonts available for document support in macOS Sierra" in the first document, I suspect DIN Alternate Bold and DIN Condensed Bold are supposed to be on that list but were accidentally omitted. Testing older OS versions, those two fonts only appear in Font Book for OS X 10.9 Mavericks and OS X 10.10 Yosemite. They are missing from Font Book (and applications) for OS X 10.11 El Capitan and macOS 10.12 Sierra, despite the font files being present in /Library/Fonts. Using TextEdit as an example, I was able to save a document using those fonts in Yosemite then open it in Sierra, where they display correctly. With that document open, those fonts are able to be selected from the the recent list at the top of the font popup menu in the TextEdit toolbar. They still don't appear in the Show Fonts floating window and they disappear if that document is closed then TextEdit is quit and relaunched. This is consisent with those fonts being retained for use in existing documents when referenced by name, but not being available for use in new documents, as described in the Sierra support document for a long list of other fonts. The DIN font files are not identical between Yosemite and Sierra, but the Yosemite version of the font also doesn't show up if installed as a user font in Sierra. Recent OS X versions must have a master list of fonts previously supplied by Apple which are no longer available for selection. If someone wanted to use that font in new documents, they would probably need to get a separately licensed copy from Linotype. (I don't know what would be involved to get around the OS blocking the availability of a font with that name, unless that mechanism is tied to Apple-supplied font files.) -- David Empson |
#158
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
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#159
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
On Tue, 12 Sep 2017 02:04:56 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak"
wrote: I think you misunderstood my point -- I'm pointing out that it's not a good idea to place bundled fonts in the same category as freeware fonts. The latter can generally be redistributed, whereas the former cannot be. Thanks for clarifying that the bundled fonts might not be legally distributable. I think the problem with bundled fonts is even worse, in that the distribution would have to be by us (particularly for the Mac DIN bundled fonts) rather than by a simple link. That is, there are three scenarios: * If we pick a free font, such as Roadgeek, we can point Mac uses to the download site for that font and we can embed the font into the PowerPoint document for Windows users. * If we pick a Windows bundled font, such as Bahnschrift, we can't point the Mac users to the download site and the Mac users can't "see" the embedded font in the PowerPoint document - so effectively we'd have to somehow distribute the font with the document as a separate file. * If we pick a Mac bundled font, such as DIN, we can't point the Windows users to that download site, and the Mac can't embed the font into the PowerPoint document, so, again, effectively, we'd have to somehow distribute the font with the document as a separate file. Hence, the Mac & Windows native fonts are useless, effectively, for our purposes as far as I can see. |
#160
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Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint
On Tue, 12 Sep 2017 02:28:20 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak"
wrote: If you find a font in fonts folder which doesn't show up in your applications, try renaming the file. That should fix it. This may be a crazy idea, but if we rename the DIN font to "Bahnschrift" on the Mac, will the Mac then be able to use the DIN font in place of the Bahnschrift font if the Mac edits a PowerPoint that came from Windows that had the Windows Bahnschrift font embedded in it? |
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