Technical & legal background using copyrighted fonts in custom road signs in PowerPoint

In article , Mayayana
wrote:


All that's required is a text editor. HTML and CSS
are plain text. But it does require that the author
know HTML well enough to get the layout they want.
And all the reecipients are guaranteed to be able
to load and read an HTML file. Images can also be
embedded as base 64. HTML is by far the most
adaptable format for graphical pages that need
to display on any system.

the problem is html does not guarantee a particular layout, making it a
very poor choice.

"Chaya Eve" wrote

| If not PowerPoint, then what do you suggest that is already on everyone's
| computer and which they know well and which can edit the slides as needed?
|

I'm sorry if I've started a wild goose chase. I didn't
catch the part where you needed everyone to be able
to edit it. I thought you were writing and just needed
many people on different systems to be able to view it.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend Word. I was just
saying that more people have Word.

I guess it's really you who knows best. If everyone
really does have, and is adept at, PPT then that does
seem to be your obvious choice. Then I guess you'd
have to tell the Mac people to install the font.

I'm not clear about the needs of the project. If I
needed to print a sign I'd do it as a BMP in Paint
Shop Pro or some similar graphic program. I have
a brother who does signs. He generally uses a vinyl
plotter. But I assume you have a low budget and
you're just going to print out letters on a piece
of printing paper. If that's the case then just about
any graphic editor should do it. Paint.Net and GIMP
are both free... Then again, I might just be introducing
another wild goose chase. Graphic editors have other
limitations. For instance, everyone would then need
to install the font and a layout would probably
be redone more easily than edited. I don't see
why they can't just all download and install the font,
but you're the only one who knows all the requirements
of this project.

"Your Name" wrote

| It's just another of the ridiculous stupidities in the eduction system
| these days.
|
| In last week's newspaper they were complaining about kids becoming
| worse at the basics of reading, writing, mathematics ... it's these
| basic skills, taught properly and normally, that schools should be
| teaching, and teaching properly. Not playing around about on a laptop /
| tablet, not playing silly sports, and not sticking their noses into
| what kids have in their lunchboxes.
|

There was a fascinating and shocking article
last week in the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/t...hers-tech.html

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Tech companies seducing teachers into being salespeople
for their stuff. What really surprises me (in addition to the
sheer arrogance and sleaze of MS/Apple/Facebook/Google/etc)
is that no one is overseeing these things. Why is a company
like Google able to deal directly with teachers? Why don't
their salespeople have to go through state-level administrators
to get gadgets into classrooms? Maybe those people are
all so hypnotized by tech that they just don't think about
what they're doing.

My ladyfriend is a retired kindergarten teacher. She used
to be forced to get Macs in order to use Federal funding to
get things like tables and shelving. The Macs just sat in
the corner, unsuitable for 5-6 year olds but assigned to
her classroom and thus not eligible to be put to use
elsewhere. I'm guessing it was Steve Jobs's lobbyists who
are to thank for that.

On Sun, 10 Sep 2017 18:59:56 -0600, "Andre G. Isaak"
wrote:

I downloaded the font in question. If you want to teach the kids how to
'do the job right' this font is really not a good choice. The quality of
the outlines is horrible. Plus Mac OS already includes a well-designed
font specifically designed for signs (DIN), so why not just use that
instead?

If you can suggest a better font, I'm all ears.

However I'm not sure what you mean by "the quality of those outlines".
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya0.jpg

Can you just post a picture of your rendition of this sign for us so we can
compare based on what you said and did?

Rest assured I'm not beholden to any particular font - it just has to be a
font that contains all the symbols used in road signs and which contains
all the legibility issues and narrow widths needed for road signs.

If you know of a better free font that is both on Mac and Windows in
Microsoft Office, then I'm all ears since the project proposal is due
tomorrow.

Here are some samples from my PowerPoint presentation where all I ask is
that you show us where you think the "quality of those outlines is
horrible" by simply picking one of the signs below to print out in your
preferred font so we can see one of them compared side by side.

http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya1.jpg
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya2.jpg
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya3.jpg
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya4.jpg
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya5.jpg
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya6.jpg
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya7.jpg

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

There was a fascinating and shocking article
last week in the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/t...hers-tech.html

(Requires cookies enabled.)

no it doesn't.

Tech companies seducing teachers into being salespeople
for their stuff. What really surprises me (in addition to the
sheer arrogance and sleaze of MS/Apple/Facebook/Google/etc)
is that no one is overseeing these things. Why is a company
like Google able to deal directly with teachers? Why don't
their salespeople have to go through state-level administrators
to get gadgets into classrooms? Maybe those people are
all so hypnotized by tech that they just don't think about
what they're doing.

technology in schools is a *very* good thing.

those kids will be growing up in a world with all sorts of technology
that people today can't even imagine, and they *need* to know how it
all works.

My ladyfriend is a retired kindergarten teacher. She used
to be forced to get Macs in order to use Federal funding to
get things like tables and shelving. The Macs just sat in
the corner, unsuitable for 5-6 year olds but assigned to
her classroom and thus not eligible to be put to use
elsewhere.

that just means the school system she worked in was very ****ed up.

I'm guessing it was Steve Jobs's lobbyists who
are to thank for that.

you guessed wrong.

On Sun, 10 Sep 2017 21:25:09 -0400, Mayayana
wrote:

The idea was to provide a legal, ready-made product,
with an official font, that works with both Mac and
Windows. What good is a font that's only on Macs?

There is a LOT that people don't seem to know that goes into the design of
a road-sign font, such as the parts that you cut out of the "A" have to be
really tiny, because letters are often stick-on vinyl.
https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/res-ia_clearview_font.htm

Also everything has to be legible at night (didn't anyone read the articles
I quoted?) where even the government screwed up with the Clearview font,
which made them revert back to Gothic.
https://www.citylab.com/transportati...arview/427068/

I'd use Gothic or Clearview if I could - but they're not freely available.
But I'm not beholden to the roadgeek font.
If someone has a better road-sign font, now is the time since the proposal
is due tomorrow.

Just don't be naive when proposing a font (or an editing program).

The font set has to include ALL the road-sign doohickies such as turn
arrows and u-turn symbols and interstate symbols and outline borders etc.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...hard-read.html

The font has to be narrow enough to fit words legibly on a limited space
sign. The numbers have to have specific legibility offsets.
https://qz.com/605695/font-designers...highway-signs/

What that particular Mac user is doing is picking a font that likely
doesn't have ANY of those legibility capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearview_(typeface)

Given that a road-sign font is far more complex than most users here seem
to realize, I think that Mac-only font would fail for so many reasons that
it wouldn't even be funny - but I'm willing to see a side-by-side
comparison of the Mac font against the Roadside Geek font any time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic

To that end, I did ask Andre G. Isaak to prove his assertion that "the
quality of the outlines is horrible" compared to his favorite Mac font
simply by posting a comparable screenshot to the signs I posted for him.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/09/11/chaya1.jpg

In article , Chaya Eve
wrote:

Given that a road-sign font is far more complex than most users here seem
to realize,

particularly you.

I think that Mac-only font would fail for so many reasons that
it wouldn't even be funny - but I'm willing to see a side-by-side
comparison of the Mac font against the Roadside Geek font any time.

macs use industry standard fonts, which means that no matter what font
you choose, it will work on either platform.

On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 00:03:31 -0400, nospam wrote:

macs use industry standard fonts, which means that no matter what font
you choose, it will work on either platform.

A road-sign font is a specific type of font for a specific use.
https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/pixymbols/highway-gothic/

"If it sounds trivial, remember that picking a font for a road sign is
very different from picking a font for a brochure."
https://qz.com/605695/font-designers...highway-signs/

Basic road-sign font considerations are 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.

One other font that I'm exploring is the official "Highway Gothic font",
which I'm trying to find the official location for since it should be a
free font commonly available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic

Here are some sources for a Highway Gothic Font, although I'm not sure
which is the "official" Highway Gothic Font download.

https://www.fontyukle.net/en/Highway+Gothic.ttf
http://www.dafont.com/highway-gothic.font
http://www.fontgala.com/highway-goth...t-download2862
http://fonts.webtoolhub.com/?prefix=highway+gothic
http://josoholucogegagoce.ga/88e56c6...oad-1d3264e24e
http://www.fonts2k.com/font/Highway-Gothic
http://www.fontspace.com/category/highway%20gothic

As long as the font is a specific road-sign font, it doesn't matter to me
which one it is, as long as it can be embedded into PowerPoint on both the
Mac and Windows where that document is compatible across the platforms.

At the moment, nobody has proposed even close to a better solution that
meets the requirements than the following:

FONT: Any freely distributable road-sign font:
* For the Mac users, there is no choice but to provide the font
* For the Windows users, PowerPoint works fine with embedded fonts

SOFTWA Any slide editor that is commonly already on most systems:
* PowerPoint is the only one that meets this requirement

If you know of a better road-sign font (including arrows), let us know.
If you know of better common slide-editing software, let us know.

On Sun, 10 Sep 2017 23:03:06 -0400, Mayayana
wrote:

If the author is not experienced with HTML there
are plenty of free "wysiwyg" HTML editors. But it
does require some experience to get the page design
to behave.

There is no way HTML editors are going to be as universal and already well
known and as easy as simply typing the letters into Microsoft PowerPoint.

If they are, you'll have to name the HTML editor that is already on most
Macs and Windows machines that most people already know how to use.

On Sun, 10 Sep 2017 23:17:18 -0400, Mayayana
wrote:

I'm sorry if I've started a wild goose chase. I didn't
catch the part where you needed everyone to be able
to edit it. I thought you were writing and just needed
many people on different systems to be able to view it.

Yes. The signs are custom. Everyone needs to edit it.
Otherwise PDF with embedded fonts would have worked.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend Word. I was just
saying that more people have Word.

I'm not against any software but Word is much harder, IMHO, to create
slides than Powerpoint which is designed for slides.

I'm all ears if there is a common software product that is on most macs and
windows machines that everyone already has and knows how to use, but you
can't just shoot down PowerPoint without proposing something better just as
you can't propose a Mac font when it won't even come close to doing what a
roadsign font does.

I guess it's really you who knows best. If everyone
really does have, and is adept at, PPT then that does
seem to be your obvious choice. Then I guess you'd
have to tell the Mac people to install the font.

While I only deal with well educated people, I don't think I've met a
person in my life who didn't know how to use PowerPoint.

Do they exist? Sure.
But anyone who owns a computer generally can use PowerPoint.

Besides, even if they can't - they'd be in the minority since nobody has
proposed a better common solution for custom sign editing.

I'm not clear about the needs of the project. If I
needed to print a sign I'd do it as a BMP in Paint
Shop Pro or some similar graphic program.

Printing is the least of the problems.

The font is designed for stick-on letters (for example, the hole in the "A"
is small so that it doesn't tear easily) but other than the font being
designed for printing on signs, the printing itself is easy.

The goal has been stated numerous times, but summarized it is to create a
process so that anyone can take the single document alone, and edit it and
print it to get a street-legal standards-compliant custom road sign.

We have easily met this requirement on Windows.

It's impossible to meet this requirement on the Mac, so we had to figure
that out first, and then once we realized the limitations of the Mac, we
had to add another step to the process.

Because the Mac PowerPoint can't handle embedding in any way shape or form,
we are stuck with an incompatible document. Blame Microsoft, not me.


I have
a brother who does signs. He generally uses a vinyl
plotter.

That's what we'll be using. Vinyl letters that stick onto the signs as a
form. I don't know the exact process but the Graphics Arts teacher pointed
out the equipment to me so I think that's how it's done.

But I assume you have a low budget and
you're just going to print out letters on a piece
of printing paper.

Nope. The Graphics Arts class at the local school is going to print the
vinyl letters for all the residents. In addition, the students will make
their own custom keep-out signs, and the process will be repeated each
year.

I'm writing up the project plan. In the graphics arts class they use
Photoshop, and Illustrator and Design, but most residents won't have that,
so that's what dictates the use of PowerPoint instead.

If that's the case then just about
any graphic editor should do it. Paint.Net and GIMP
are both free... Then again, I might just be introducing
another wild goose chase. Graphic editors have other
limitations.

The constraint is that most residents need to be able to just pick up and
go without training. PowerPoint serves that need the best. Certainly better
than The Gimp and Paint.NET (which also requires .NET Framework
installation).

If we were going to use a graphics program, we'd use one of the Adobe
products that the school already uses. But the residents won't have them so
it doesn't fit the requirement of customization by the residents.

For instance, everyone would then need
to install the font and a layout would probably
be redone more easily than edited. I don't see
why they can't just all download and install the font,
but you're the only one who knows all the requirements
of this project.

The original goal of one document does all works fine on Windows.
It's the Mac limitations that screwed up the original simple plan.