Cufón, the Javascript font rendering engine

linux-mag.com

14 points·linuxmag··8 comments

For those who are curious, this is just an article about Cufón, the javascript font rendering engine.

Thanks. Too long and very misleading.

It was a misleading title.

Is it ironic that the authors goes on and on about the limits of HTML, presents a solution but doesn't actually show it in use. You're only given links to download Cufón and an HTML sample to cut and paste.

... anyway I'll just stick to the good ol' fashion img for a title with an alt tag if I need to have "fancy fonts" for something. It's not slick, but it is simple and reliable.

Do publishers have to pay special licensing fees to print a magazine or newspaper with text in a certain font?

I don't understand how font licensing works. Is it because the web browser has to download the font spec to someone's computer who hasn't paid for the font?

Actually, for many commercially licensed fonts, every viewer must buy and install the fonts, if they are cheap for $30 for each of regular, italic and bold (and each other variant, if so desired) for every computer he wants to view the document on. Mark Pilgrim had a point with his "fuck the foundries" rant a few weeks ago, even if the tone was controversial.

And how much dough do the font-designers see? Virtually nothing. Designing typefaces is one of the lesser paid design professions, albeit being one of the hardest if you want to do a good job. Foundries are just another one of those music-newspapers- obsolete by digital age industries.

very very misleading title

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