The “software” is only an aid, legal one. Nothing more.

>Nothing more.

Some type designers and engineers may see it that way, but not all. TrueType hinting code and OpenType Layout tables are clearly software, even if outlines and metrics might be considered “data” by some.

First thoughts, before reading past the first paragraph.

- Humans can be used for production as well as creativity.
- Color can be used to technically correct a problem, as well as visually enhance a solution.

Thoughts after reading.

- I think it won’t be easy to make a cut-and-dried separation from using the words creative works without also using software. Maybe it isn’t necessary to use them both at the same time. Maybe, depending upon context, you will use them in different order. But, I think because the legal is so deeply ingrained into it, it will always be necessary.

For those of us whom appreciate — as David does, and myself for that matter — the hours that really go into creating a typeface we only need think of them as creative works that also happen to be a tool that runs like software.

> denigrates the creative work

I think you’re ignoring an important aspect of coding.
Creativity is not limited to painting pretty pictures.

That said, I agree it’s mostly a bogus term. :-)

hhp

Excellent Point, Hrant!

>I think you’re ignoring an important aspect of coding.
>Creativity is not limited to painting pretty pictures.

You are right. Software/coding is also creative work. And definitely typography contains some coding, but that does not make it software. A car has an engine, but a car is not an engine. You may choose to speak about, or use, or midify the engine part of the car, which may affect the whole appearance and/or functioning of the car, but it still remains a car not an engine.

Similarly, a font is a font, even if some part of it may be software, it cannot be identified as softwarfe alone. The other side is also true: you cannot say that a font is only a set of letter drawings.

Around our way we call cars “motors”, even though they consist of more than an motor.

So it depends how you define “software” - if you define software as only executable code, then most of what we consider software isn’t software.

to me software is anything made up of zeros and ones.

One definition of software...

computer programming code that provides a computer with instructions to perform specific tasks.

which is what we commonly refer to as a font is. What used to be called fonts — a single size of a single typeface cast in metal — could just as easily be called be called foundry (factory where metal castings are produced) products. However, as David noted above, the designation of typeface products as software is the only element of legal protection for our work that U.S. laws allow. So, what’s all the hub-bub, bub?

David compares fonts to music. I think fonts are more like musical instruments.

The way a font looks is analogous to the sound an instrument makes. The font software (or a metal font) is analogous to the physical instrument that makes the sound.

Music would be analogous to a typographical composition.

It seems like everything’s software these days.
I’m often in conversations at my sports club, where you meet people from all walks of life, dressed in sports gear, so you don’t have a clue what they do for a living, and people sit down for a drink after a game or a workout and so often it’s “what do you do?” “oh ’I’m in software” or “I’m in IT”, and the reply is “really? so am I!”. Faced with the prospect of having to explain type design, “wow, you mean people actually do that for a living?” I sometimes say “I sell software, over the internet”, which elicits the more tolerable, “how’s business?”

I used to have a similar problem at mandatory parties. When asked what “I did” I began to answer that I was a plumber. The snobs would nod and go away (thank god!) and the real people would just ask you how to fix their leaky faucet:-)

ChrisL

http://www.typographer.org/, nice point.
“I think it devalues high quality typography to label it as software,”

(It’s hard to read when I have to ask myself...what’s “typography”...?)

An idea related to this, is: “typefaces” are brilliant shining (slowly formed and long term) ideas, and “fonts” are relatively “dumb” parts of dumb mechanisms (with dumb being good as it brings a great deal of “Far and Fast”), and “typography” is the thing that weds them for economic and/or artistic gain, funding the whole thing by the interminably long or short, and infinitely possible or impossible “things-people-do” to make *their* brilliant shining ideas, out of said fonts and into — typography. There are other ways to slice it, but fonts (as software), are the key dividing line between design of the type, and design of the typography. So we, founders, (Font Software Developers if I’m talking to Another Audience), work in our many ways along the lines given to us by the dumb mechanism folk, (dumb being good in this context), to give the best experience possible for everyone from the “not much” things-people-do-with-type people to the too much things-people-do-with-type people, all with a single product.

(...or does he mean that this particular industry has so many shining facets that he can’t quite get a grasp on the sheer brilliance of it all? or is it too hard to be on the inside as one of those facets and have to change the context of his discription of what he is, every time he has to describe it in each new context that he meets?...)

David, I think your distinction between typeface and font is nicely paralleled by Richard Southall’s between type designer and font producer (as well as arguably some other pairs he mentions in his book).

hhp

I agree it is not a software only. Type is something higher than limiting it in technology only .. the glyphs - for me - are mix between Applied scinces and arts process and techonlogy. The word technology here never stops at computers!.. You can make the font and print it without using computer at all! It is like Chess board you can craft it using gold, craft it using silver and make it an antique. You can code chess board by computer also, and you name it chessmaster or Fritz, but no body can say “chess” is a software!
Another point here.. Do you name a design done in photoshop a software? Say you made a poster and you have put pictures ( done by camera ), fonts, some textures done on papers by pencils, and some photo proces done by photoshop. Then you seperate colors and print it . Do we say it is all a software? I disagree.. it is a “design process” for me, and the designer used art, and scince to make his final product. This is my own opinion.

As a font designer, I sympathize with the idea that the design of a font should have legal protection in the U.S. as it does elsewhere. Apparently, fonts are put in the same category legally as flatware—forks, spoons, knives, etc.—designs of which are also not protected as creative works. I wonder if flatware designers have a discussion board somewhere on which they lament the unfortunate legal status of fork designs.

Funny.
You know what’s really denigrated though? Bitmap fonts,
which don’t just fall out of the sky - some of them requiring
quite a bit of work, and being extremely useful. Especially in
the case of gayscale pixelfonts, which really are WYSIWYS
(What You See is What You SWIPE) but can take just as long
to make as an outline font design! Legal protection? Zilch.

In Chris’s “Ethics” thread just now Thomas and Nick seem to be
both implying that OT code is more valuable than bitmaps... Sad.
I do both coding and grayscale pixelfonts, and the latter is in fact
more of a challenge just to get to click.

hhp

Actually I think design patents may be the way to go here. On the surface they seem to afford more protection to bitmap renderings than they would for outlines.

>Thomas and Nick seem to be both implying that OT code is more valuable than bitmaps

It never entered my mind.

> design patents ... seem to afford more protection to bitmap renderings

I hadn’t thought of that. Others agree?

> It never entered my mind.

Good to hear. But it did sound that way in something
you wrote yesterday (which I can’t find at the moment).

hhp

I’m not sure whether you could get a design patent for a bitmap font, but it is worth enquiring about. The US Copyright Office apparently rejected protection for bitmap fonts on the basis that the grid for text sizes was too crude to allow significant variation. I suspect the Patent and Trademark Office may say the same thing.

That’s understandable. In an 8 x 8 grid of black or white squares, there are only 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique patterns. It would be pretty hard to come up with any significant variations within such a narrow range.

> the grid for text sizes was too crude

I wonder if multiplying that with shades of gray would change their mind. I can certainly make two bitmap fonts of the same PPEM -and even the same width- look very different. On the other hand, those guys probably think Times and Garamond are the same...

Mark: :-)

hhp

I was being a bit facetious—a lot of those zillions of patterns would be indistinguishable and/or unusable as characters. There is still a lot of room for variation, especially when you throw in shades of gray. And when you get to larger grids, the field of possibilities expands by magnitudes.

An aspect of the legal position of fonts in U.S. law is that they are considered “useful objects” (along with flatware). It seems that when something is regarded as such, the public’s right to access is considered a greater good than the rights of originators. There is also this idea that “the alphabet” is in the public domain and that fonts are simply instances of “the alphabet” It all falls down when you consider that some fonts are more in demand than others. Clearly, not all fonts are valued equally by the people who use them, even though under the law they are considered to be interchangeable “useful objects,” indistinguishable as instances of “the alphabet.”

>But it did sound that way in something you wrote yesterday

Probably a slip of the tongue (?) — when I typed “pixel piracy” instead of “point piracy”.

You know, I tried to track it down, even recruiting
help, but couldn’t find it. Maybe it wasn’t you at all. :-/

hhp

Design patents are evil. Pure evil. Unless you work for a large software company. Or, of course, if you’re a lawyer. :0)

I actually don’t like them either.
But I’m also a big fan of “we’ll use your best weapons against you”.

hhp

What is it about design patents that makes them evil, especially pure evil. I’ve seen crits of software patents re. the s/w industry but design patents?

These seem to be used by h/w companies, not s/w companies to protect industrial design, say the shape of the iPod or a mouse?

Si

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent

My main problem with design patents is that unlike copyright, they involve serious money/effort in getting the design patent. Very few type foundries (other than Adobe) use them, because the costs are so steep.

The nice thing about them is that they protect the abstract design. This is the type of protection I would like to see in copyright for fonts.

Btw, I never said or suggested that OT code was more valuable than bitmaps. I have no idea where Hrant got the idea that I did. I don’t recall anybody else saying it in that thread, either.

Cheers,

T

“I don’t know about pixel-piracy, but point-piracy
of the outlines would certainly call for action.”

Nick’s thing though I can’t find - so maybe I imagined it. Maybe.

hhp