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Microsoft Vista and type
Posted by selfbuildtype in
15 Feb 2007 — 11:05am
15 Feb 2007 — 11:05am
Has anybody any experience of Vista yet? I'm wondering if Microsoft have sorted out all the mess with the OS/2 line spacing. Also has there been any change to the family-of-four-fonts thing? My guess is that Vista is the same as XP in this respect?
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15 Feb 2007 — 11:17am
http://typophile.com/node/31268
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15 Feb 2007 — 12:19pm
I'm looking more along the lines of authoring for the platform rather than actually using it. I didn't have anything against windows until I started using it. Now I can safely say that I won't want to use it for anything other than testing.
15 Feb 2007 — 4:19pm
Also has there been any change to the family-of-four-fonts thing? My guess is that Vista is the same as XP in this respect?
For existing and future GDI applications, there is no change.
Microsoft’s new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) handles font names in a completely new way, based on trying to shoehorn them into families that fit within the CSS spec’s ideas of how family members can differ. WPF is an optional install with Vista, and will also be made available for XP. Applications that use WPF will get the new font menus.
Here are the slides from my presentation on the topic, which was aimed at font developers rather than application developers: http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/atypi2006/CSS%20&%20OT%2015.pdf
If it's not already up, I'm sure MS will have info on this posted soon.
Regards,
T
16 Feb 2007 — 6:43am
Thanks for the informative reply. It looks like things are going to get even more complicated now W3C are involved. Do you think W3Cs involvement will help in the long run? It seems at the minute we will end up with another set of names, rather than a single standard.
18 Feb 2007 — 9:17pm
Actually, the W3C are not directly involved - this is just Microsoft trying to shoehorn existing fonts into the CSS spec.
The problem is that the CSS spec's handling of fonts is badly broken, or at best it is suitable for font substitution to find a reasonable replacement from a different family when the actual font is not available. However, using it for font specification seems goofy to me.
Plus, as you say, it is "yet another set of names" that is not cleanly related to any of the existing names. But on the plus side, it is a huge advance over where Windows is today, so I am tempted to stifle my complaints.
Cheers,
T