

A Thicker Hope - mh_
http://www.marco.org/2013/07/08/a-thicker-hope

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benaiah
> (If not, you probably don’t care about fonts, so it will be Comic Sans.)

So, you either have to have a Mac or spend >$1000 (the price of a full desktop
license of Helvetica Neue) to care about fonts? Well, screw my burgeoning
interest in typography. I guess I just don't care enough.

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norswap
> (If not, you probably don’t care about fonts, so it will be Comic Sans.)

I love you too, Marco.

Written from my un-fancy device without Helvetica Neue.

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mrbreadcrumb
You know... you'd think that a bunch of commenters like yourselves would be
able to spot a self-aware (and brilliant) act of trollery. And I do mean that
in the best possible way. Here's to you, Marco, you magnificent bastard. It
obviously worked!

~~~
jljljl
The annoyance is that it makes his article less effective.

It's like letting cool come before functional.

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omaranto
I found the bit that says "If not, you probably don’t care about fonts, so it
will be Comic Sans" unnecesarily agressive _and_ false: his post displayed
completely in Droid Serif for me. I don't install Helvetica Neue or Comic Sans
on my Linux machine because I don't have a license for those fonts (I guess
you get one for Helvetica Neue with your copy of iOS, right?).

~~~
foobarbazqux
Comic Sans is one of the MS core fonts for the web and is free to use. Your
distro probably calls the package corefonts or something. I'm guessing that
Debian doesn't include it in main because it's a non-free license with respect
to distribution and modification, but you certainly have permission to use it
and you might even be allowed to include its glyphs in documents that you
sell.

~~~
omaranto
Are you sure about Comic Sans? The only information I could find from
Microsoft was on their font redistribution FAQ [1] and it says

    
    
        Until recently, most fonts that include a Microsoft
        copyright or trademark notice have only been available
        as part of Microsoft products. Although some fonts 
        remain Microsoft-exclusive, a number of Microsoft fonts 
        are now available to end users, ISVs and OEMs under 
        license from Ascender Corporation. These include 
        'Verdana', 'Georgia', 'Comic Sans MS', 'Microsoft Sans 
        Serif', 'Nina', 'Tahoma', 'Wingdings', 'Webdings' and 
        'Trebuchet MS'.
    

Doesn't that mean that to use Comic Sans you have to negotiate with Ascender
Corporation? I couldn't find anything on Ascender's website suggesting any
font at all was free to use (I didn't read everything carefully though), and
about the MS core web fonts specifically this page [2] makes it sounds like
you need to buy a license from them to use them:

    
    
        Monotype is proud to offer the Microsoft Web Core Fonts 
        for license to software developers and hardware 
        manufacturers who want to provide a consistent web 
        browsing experience in their products.
    
        Please contact Monotype for more information about the 
        Microsoft Core Fonts for the Web. 
    

[1]
[http://www.microsoft.com/typography/RedistributionFAQ.mspx](http://www.microsoft.com/typography/RedistributionFAQ.mspx)

[2] [http://www.ascendercorp.com/catalog/microsoft/web-core-
fonts...](http://www.ascendercorp.com/catalog/microsoft/web-core-fonts/)

~~~
foobarbazqux
Basically Microsoft screwed up with the license for version 2, and it's legal
to redistribute and use them, at least as an end user. They changed things for
later versions. There's a good amount of coverage of the legal status on
Wikipedia.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web)

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stutsmansoft
To the author's credit, this IS an issue specific to iOS.

I thought the use of Comic Sans for other devices was pretty funny, myself.

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ptomato
Well, this thread is certainly full of people completely incapable of taking a
joke.

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Zikes
I do not have Helvetica Neue, and so I got absolutely zero value out of this
article.

A simple screenshot could have fixed that, but if my lacking a certain font
makes someone on the internet feel better about themselves then I guess I'll
just have to live with that.

~~~
prehkugler
[http://imgur.com/bVZqzJB](http://imgur.com/bVZqzJB)

~~~
Zikes
Thank you

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dtp
I have the Helvetica Neue family installed, so apparently I care about fonts.
What I don't care for is smug, condescending bullshit, and I didn't finish the
article.

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woah
Obviously, the unwashed neckbeards not using Macbooks don't care about fonts.

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jjlharrison
Wow, people are taking this way too seriously. Great article!

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smackfu
Too bad the point of the article is lost due to silly platform sniping.

