

Why Rent or Buy, When You Can Rasterize. - huhtenberg
http://typophile.com/node/64534

======
domnit
> If you think for a moment how exactly non-standard fonts are used in the web
> design, it will immediately make perfect sense. They are used sparingly for
> headers, menus and such and they are always rasterized.

Non-standard fonts are used sparingly precisely because they have to be
rasterized.

~~~
jhg
You took it out of the context.

He is talking about the state of affairs and how that creates an immediate
opportunity for type designers willing to sell rasterized versions of their
fonts, not suggesting an alternative to the @font-face support.

~~~
domnit
> here is an idea that can be easily implemented right now and that will cover
> the 100% of the web design community needs.

------
jrockway
There seem to be a lot of complaints about the fact that images of text break
accessibility. That is completely untrue, as long as the designer also
includes alt text. I use a text-based web browser from time to time, and I've
found that most designers do a good job of this.

This also doesn't break resizing any more than any other design element on the
page would. Try going to any blog and resizing; the layout breaks. That's just
how it goes if you want a page that looks nice. (Even HN doesn't resize
nicely, and it doesn't use any images at all.)

So basically, this is a non-issue for 98% of the users. For the 1% of the
users that use w3m without images enabled, they can still read all of the
text. The 1% of users that are blind, can still have all the text read to them
by the screen reader.

Sometimes I think people make these arguments because other people have made
the same arguments for years. It's like a disease....

------
mattdennewitz
personally, i'll stay w/ typekit. the commenter (on typophile) who raised
issue with images not being 100% accessible has a real point: now that i can
use non-standard fonts in a standard way, ill take scalable text over an
image.

------
finnomenon
is this what they are talking about? <http://skrrl.org/font>

------
huhtenberg
Startup idea, anyone ?

~~~
poronski
The idea is OK, but one needs to have connections in typographic community to
execute it. Going foundry by foundry and convincing them to take their heads
out of DRM hole and consider simpler, unsexy options such as this one. This
can translate into a lot of effort.

~~~
jrockway
If you are allowed to buy a font to make images for your website, why wouldn't
you be allowed to sell those images to others? Professional web designers do
it all the time.

(Video rentals are similar. First sale, and all that.)

------
niczar
Stupid idea. That's what's already done _today_ and it's not good enough:
doesn't reflow, doesn't zoom properly, does not work for dynamic texts (eh
buddy, ever heard of FUCKING BLOGS?), isn't that great for accessibility,
SUCKS a lot for the mobile web, and so on and so forth. Why, oh why do I have
to state the fucking obvious here?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Skip the profanity and you have a cogent argument in there somewhere.

------
oldgregg
Great concept, but who needs a service? This should just be an open source
plugin. I dump all of my local fonts into a folder and then just <%=
render_text "Hello World", :typeface => "Comic Sans", :height => "400" %> \--
add a cache and this would be splendid.

PS. By "local fonts" I mean
[http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4475069/Font_Collection_(65_...](http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4475069/Font_Collection_\(65_000__fonts\))

~~~
poronski
I wish I could downvote you for a sheer ignorance.

> who needs a service ?

Foundries do. You know, the people who actually _make_ your "local fonts".
Also those who recognize what a complex task the type design is and want to
compensate them for their work.

~~~
oldgregg
Yeah, okay, well if you still cling to the antiquated concept of IP then I
won't downvote you for sheer ignorance.

~~~
potatolicious
Listen, we don't much tolerate hostile assholes around here - so if you're
just going to hurl insults at other members of this community from the comfort
of your chair, then please do us all a favour and GTFO.

To address your rather poorly communicated point though: the concept of IP
isn't going to disappear, especially not overnight. To pretend that we don't
need to find solutions around the IP minefield is unwise at best.

~~~
sailormoon
I didn't think he acted like a hostile asshole. That comment about sheer
ignorance had already been made to him, he was just handing it back.

