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    <title><![CDATA[Blog]]></title><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
    <link>http://www.fonts.info/store/index.php/en/blog/</link>
    <description><![CDATA[Blog]]></description>
    <pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2013 16:41:07 +0000</pubDate>
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    <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[Download your free trial version of Wayfinding Sans]]></title><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
      <link>http://www.fonts.info/store/index.php/en/blog/wayfinding-sans-download/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://opentype.info/static/wsd700a.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="414" /></p>
<p><img src="http://opentype.info/static/wsd700b.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="467" /></p>
<p><img src="http://opentype.info/static/wsd700c.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="700" /></p>
<p><img src="http://opentype.info/static/wsd700d.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="700" />&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Update:</h2>
<p>Other temporary offer of a free demo version has expired. Feel free to check out our full <a href="http://www.fonts.info/store/index.php/en/wayfinding-sans.html" target="_self">Wayfinding Sans Pro family</a> and our other <a href="http://www.fonts.info/store/index.php/en/" target="_self">commercial fonts</a>.</p>
<p>If you don&rsquo;t want to miss any of our future offers, follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/fontsDotInfo" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/fonts.info" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://be.net/fonts_dot_info" target="_blank">Behance</a> or via <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/fonts-dot-info?format=xml">RSS</a>.</p>]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 14:49:35 +0000</pubDate>
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    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[Graublau Sans Web updated]]></title><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
      <link>http://www.fonts.info/store/index.php/en/blog/graublau-web-2012/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[<p>In April of 2008, shortly after Apple released Safari 3.1 with  webfont support, we announced the free download of Graublau Sans Web&mdash;one  of the first professional webfonts specifically released for @font-face  use on websites.</p>
<p><img src="http://fonts.info/pub/graublau-sans-web/demo/graublau700.png" alt="" width="700" height="450" /></p>
<p>At this time, the download kit only included two OpenType fonts, which could be used in Safari. Our goal was to support the &ldquo;webfont revolution&rdquo; and hopefully someday have a full webfont support in all browsers. Today, this is already true. All current browsers have webfont support&mdash;even though this support is usually achieved by providing different webfont formats.</p>
<p>Since Graublau Sans Web is still a popular typeface for websites, we decided to update the download kit. Now it includes all common webfont formats (TrueType, WOFF and EOT).</p>
<p>You can see a <a href="http://fonts.info/pub/graublau-sans-web/demo/" target="_blank">live demo of the typeface here</a>.</p>
<p>Download the <a href="http://www.fonts.info/pub/download/graublau-sans-web.zip" target="_blank">webfont package including CSS code here</a>.</p>
<p><em>Note: We provide this typeface free of charge, but that does not mean that it is free of rights. Please study the EULA, which is included in the download package. Some key facts:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><em>&mdash;You can use this typeface free of charge for personal or commercial projects.</em></li>
<li><em>&mdash;You can only use the typeface as webfont via @font-face linking.</em></li>
<li><em>&mdash;You can NOT use the typeface for regular design work, like creating print brochures, logotypes and so on. </em></li>
<li><em>&mdash;You can NOT redistribute the typeface on other websites.</em></li>
<li><em>&mdash;You can NOT bundle it with web templates, smartphone apps and so on.</em></li>
<li><em>&mdash;You can NOT create derivative works of the typeface. </em></li>
</ul>]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 04 Jun 2012 09:42:05 +0000</pubDate>
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    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[Webfonts now available]]></title><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
      <link>http://www.fonts.info/store/index.php/en/blog/webfonts-en/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[<p><em>When the webfont revolution started in 2008 with the release of Safari 3.1, fonts.info was one of the first foundries to support this development with the release of our free Graublau Sans Web typeface. Today this technology is implemented in all recent browser versions and we are happy to announce that our commercial typefaces are now also available as webfonts.</em></p>
<p class="sw-text">At this point the webfonts are only available&nbsp;<a href="http://new.myfonts.com/search/fdi/fonts/" target="_blank">via MyFonts</a>. Pay Once, Play Forever. No Monthly Fees! The webfonts are packaged in self-contained kits for easy upload to your own site, or any hosting service you please. You can use the default CSS styles that we've put together, or fiddle and tweak until your perfectionist web designer is happy. Your one-time webfont purchase never expires. You can re-download webfont kits whenever you like, and customize lots of settings each time (if that's what you're into). Each time you download a kit, you get webfont files generated with the latest technology, maximizing compatibility across browsers and operating systems.</p>
<p class="sw-text">The entry-level MyFonts webfont license &mdash; available by itself or packaged with the desktop font with a 50% discount &mdash; allows you to use your webfonts on any number of sites, up to a shared 10,000 pageviews per month. This is plenty for most small sites, like personal blogs or small storefronts. For busier sites, you can upgrade your monthly pageviews. For 2x the price, you get 10x the pageviews, up to a maximum of 16x the regular price for totally unlimited webfont use.</p>
<p class="sw-text"><a href="http://new.myfonts.com/search/fdi/fonts/" target="_blank">http://new.myfonts.com/search/fdi/fonts/</a></p>
<p class="sw-text">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="sw-text">Check out the online preview function to see how our webfonts will look in different browsers:</p>
<p class="sw-text"><strong><a href="http://new.myfonts.com/search/fdi/fonts/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.fonts.info/info/press/webfontsample.png" border="1" alt="Webfont sample" width="742" height="462" /></a></strong></p>
<p class="sw-text">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="sw-text"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p class="sw-text">Check out these live demos: <br><a href="http://fonts.info/webfonts/graublau-sans-demo.html"><img src="http://www.fonts.info/info/press/graublau-small.png" alt="" width="200" height="133" /></a></p>
<p><em><br /></em></p>]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:34:48 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[OpenType Myths explained]]></title><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
      <link>http://www.fonts.info/store/index.php/en/blog/opentype-myths/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[<p><em>OpenType is the standard font format of these days. But even 14 years after its introduction, many users don&rsquo;t really know what the term OpenType implies and how it differs from other font formats. Since I use the domain opentype.info&nbsp;for my weblog, I thought it is time to shed some light on this confusing subject &hellip;</em>&nbsp;</p>
<p>First of all, it&rsquo;s important to know that OpenType is not as new as some marketing claims try to suggest. It is directly based on the TrueType specifications, or to be even more precise: it is based on Apple&rsquo;s SFNT (&ldquo;Spline Font&rdquo;) format originally developed for QuickDraw.&nbsp;You can think of OpenType as &ldquo;TrueType 1.5&rdquo;.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" title="Comparison TrueType, OpenType TT" src="http://www.opentype.info/static/opentypetables.jpg" alt="" width="540" height="271" /></p>
<p>It uses the same basic structure as a TrueType font, but with some optional features stored in additional tables within the font. Which brings us to our first myth:</p>
<h1 class="inbody">OpenType brought cross-platform compatibility</h1>
<p>Wrong! Until MacOS 9 both TrueType and PostScript Type1 fonts had to be delivered as separated versions for PC and Mac. This was in large parts due to the way Apple stored font information in the&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork" target="_blank">resource fork</a>&nbsp;of a file. Since MacOS 10 the new Mac operating system also supports data fork fonts, such as Windows TrueType fonts. So platform compatibility was made possible by this change from Apple, not by the introduction of a new font format. But since OpenType is directly based on the file structure of a (Windows) TrueType font, OpenType is also cross-platform compatible.</p>
<h1 class="inbody">OpenType fonts have a larger character set</h1>
<p>Just partly true. The old PostScript Type1 fonts usually had just an 8 bit&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_encoding" target="_blank">encoding</a>&nbsp;like<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Roman" target="_blank">Mac Roman</a>,&nbsp;which only allowed to address 256 characters. This made setting different languages or writing systems a pain. Different font files of the same typeface (like Helvetica CE/Greek/CYR) had to be used in one document and without these fonts installed the text could not be displayed properly. OpenType with its Unicode support clearly solved this dilemma, but then again: this was not something that was developed specifically for OpenType. The older TrueType fonts also supported Unicode and larger character sets.</p>
<p>What OpenType really introduced was a new way to access these larger character sets. Instead of just accessing them via their Unicode, they can now be accessed using OpenType features, like the LIGA feature, which (for example) automatically replaces every instance of f and i with an fi-ligature. Or the AALT feature which allows you to access all alternative versions of a glyph in the Glyph Palette of InDesign.</p>
<p>But then again: Having an OpenType font doesn&rsquo;t mean that all those features and extended character sets are really there. You can turn a TrueType font into an OpenType font by just adding one fi-ligature as an OpenType feature. So as you can see: Drawing a strict line between TrueType and OpenType as two separate formats often doesn&rsquo;t make any sense at all. Often people ask, how they can convert old TrueType fonts to OpenType. But this would be completely pointless since there is nothing to gain from such a conversion, unless the font foundry itself decides to really add additional glyphs and features.</p>
<h1 class="inbody">OpenType is more reliable, compatible and better supported than TrueType</h1>
<p>Wrong! Users often think they should generally prefer OpenType over TrueType, mainly because of the bad reputation the TrueType format still has. But this is a myth of its own. It comes from the early 1990s when &ldquo;professional&rdquo; fonts were usually PostScript Type1 only and thousands of TrueType fonts of poor quality were used by semi-professionals and such fonts caused problems with the Raster Image Processors when used in print. But these days are long gone. Today there is no reason to avoid TrueType fonts anymore and as I have explained before, a TrueType font and an OpenType font can be almost identical. OpenType is not even more compatible, as some users like to think. Since&nbsp;OpenType is a superset of TrueType, whenever there is OpenType support, there is also TrueType support.</p>
<h1 class="inbody">OpenType fonts render badly in Windows</h1>
<p>Depends! I heard this myth a lot recently in all this talk about&nbsp;<a href="http://www.webfonts.info/" target="_blank">webfonts</a>. What is really meant here is that PostScript outlines may look bad in Windows, because they might be shown without&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering" target="_blank">subpixel rendering</a>&nbsp;(ClearType).</p>
<p>It is very important to know that an OpenType font might be either TrueType-flavoured or PostScript-flavoured. TrueType outlines use&nbsp;<strong>quadratic</strong>&nbsp;B&eacute;zier splines&nbsp;and PostScript outlines use&nbsp;<strong>cubic</strong>&nbsp;B&eacute;zier splines.&nbsp;So if we want talk about the outlines of a font, using the term OpenType alone makes no sense at all!<br />We already established that a TrueType-flavoured OpenType font is like a TrueType font with some optional OpenType features. A PostScript-flavoured OpenType font is the same thing, but the part that defines the TrueType outlines (the &ldquo;glyf table&rdquo;) is here replaced by a &ldquo;CFF table&rdquo; (Compact File Format). That&rsquo;s why PostScript-flavoured OpenType fonts are also sometimes called CFF-based OpenType fonts.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" title="OpenType flavours" src="http://www.opentype.info/static/opentypeflavours.jpg" alt="" width="540" height="271" /></p>
<p>So if the outline format matters it is really recommended to speak of TrueType- or PostScript-flavoured OpenType fonts. Common abbreviations are&nbsp;<strong>OpenType TT</strong>&nbsp;and<strong>OpenType PS</strong>.</p>
<h1 class="inbody">So, TrueType fonts use .ttf and OpenType fonts use .otf, right?</h1>
<p>Wrong! Unfortunately, the suffix doesn&rsquo;t tell you for sure what you have. OTF is mostly used for PostScript-flavoured OpenType fonts, but according to the OpenType specifications TrueType-flavoured OpenType fonts can also use .otf.</p>
<p>TTF on the other hand is both used for regular TrueType fonts and for TrueType-flavoured OpenType fonts. This makes sense, since as we have learned before, these types of fonts are pretty similar. By keeping the old TTF file extension TrueType-flavoured OpenType fonts can work in older apps and operating systems that have no specific OpenType support. The fonts are then treated as regular TrueType fonts and the OpenType features are simply ignored.</p>
<h1 class="inbody">But I can tell the font format from the icon, right?</h1>
<p>Wrong! If you look into the font folder of a Windows XP or Vista installation you see some fonts with an OpenType icon and some fonts with a TrueType icon. Again, these will not tell you for sure, what type of font you have. PostScript-flavoured OpenType fonts will have the OpenType icon, but it gets complicated for TrueType fonts. Microsoft decided to base the icon on the existence of a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/dsig/default.htm" target="_blank">digital signature</a>&nbsp;which was also introduced in the OpenType specifications. This means, TrueType-flavoured OpenType fonts might have an OpenType icon (if they have a signature) or they just might look like a regular TrueType font (if they don&rsquo;t have a signature).</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" title="Font icons" src="http://www.opentype.info/static/fontfolder.jpg" alt="" width="540" height="201" /></p>
<p>Windows users might install the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/typography/TrueTypeProperty21.mspx" target="_blank">Font Properties Extensions</a>&nbsp;which will give more detailed information about the installed fonts, including the OpenType features of OpenType fonts.</p>
<h1 class="inbody">But OTF means &ldquo;OpenType Font&rdquo;, right?</h1>
<p>Well, &hellip;&nbsp;While it is true that OTF means OpenType Font, I generally advise people not to use the abbreviation OTF when one wants to talk about OpenType fonts in general. OTF is usually (but not necessarily) the file extension of a PostScript-flavoured OpenType font, so if one talks about &ldquo;OTF fonts&rdquo; it&rsquo;s not really clear if this should exclude TrueType-flavoured OpenType fonts or not. I recommend to speak of &ldquo;OT Fonts&rdquo; for OpenType fonts in general and &ldquo;OpenType TT&rdquo; and &ldquo;OpenType PS&rdquo; if the outline format matters.</p>]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:09:47 +0000</pubDate>
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