Typophile

Well, John, certainly the two OED2 definitions of plagiarism,

1. ... the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one’s own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.

and

2. A purloined idea, design, passage, or work.

also fit the bill nicely.

So having exhausted our literary and amateur legal resources, I think it is time for some expert legal opinion. I realise that by now you probably consider yourself an expert in the field, but lawyers, especially judges, often hold rather shockingly different opinions from the rest of us.

You are not exaggerating when you say that you have always been disclosive about the Segoe matter, going back about two years to when the story first broke. Recklessly so, was the opinion in high places. I find that interesting.

David: or are you talking about the original designers making variations and licensing them to other Corporations? Is that possible with the CT fonts or the Segoe font?

The Segoe font is Monotype's and I don't know what licensing arrangement they have with Microsoft.

The CT fonts belong to Microsoft, so no I was not talking about the original designers licensing variations of these to other corportations. I was talking about Microsoft commissioning a variation of e.g. Corbel optimised for additional functions such as a being UI font or for use in corporate branding. They own the original font outright, so can do with it what they like.

I realise that by now you probably consider yourself an expert in the field, but lawyers, especially judges, often hold rather shockingly different opinions from the rest of us.

I certainly don't consider myself an expert in any kind of law. I generally avoid legal discussions precisely because I don't think one can make reliable statements, for the reasons you cite. This is part of the reason why I queried the term forgery. Uli explains that he has deliberately chosen this word because of its legal meaning in various countries; that is, he has sought out a word with legal implications to make, I presume, the point that he considers the actions of various companies to be illegal. That's his prerogative, but to me it looks like begging the question: by describing the actions as forgery, he is making a legal judgement on the action and, as you point out, matters of law should be argued by lawyers and decided by judges. Uli chooses a word because it has legal implications, whereas I choose a word that, as you note from the OED, 'fits the bill nicely', but does not necessarily have legal implications. A difference in personality, I suspect, as much as anything else.

A legal process is already underway regarding Segoe, and I think Linotype are right to take a stand on this. Over the years, Linotype seems to have been the victim of more acts of font plagiarism than any other foundry, and certainly of more blatant and financially significant plagiarism, with Bitstream and Monotype being the worst culprits. Microsoft's primary fault in all this is trusting Monotype to provide original designs. I think the trouble is that by the time these kind of things come to the attention of people who can address them, a massive software product like Vista is in code lock down, with UI font dependencies embedded in the system. At that stage, the cost of removing a font becomes prohibitively high.

The obvious solution is to do a better job on examining the originality and provenance of fonts at the licensing stage. This means having, for instance, a panel of knowledgeable and experienced people who can review proposed typefaces and advise if they are uncomfortably close to other designs.

Recklessly so, was the opinion in high places.

I wasn't aware that there were any high places left. :)

'The obvious solution is to do a better job on examining the originality and provenance of fonts at the licensing stage. This means having, for instance, a panel of knowledgeable and experienced people who can review proposed typefaces and advise if they are uncomfortably close to other designs.'

Something like the Morisawa?

Something like the Morisawa?

Er, no, it would have to be a group of people who would recognise a Lexicon clone. :)

Morisawa is a competition, and the judging of a large number of entries takes place in a short period of time, in conditions of at least semi-secrecy regarding the identity of the submitted designs and their creators. What I'm talking about is a process of examination of individual designs that a company is considering licensing, with reference to outside experts as necessary, capable of judging whether a design is sufficiently original or otherwise kosher (e.g. appropriately licensed, public domain, etc.) It's a process that could take several days, involving research, detailed comparisons, and submission of a written report and recommendations.

I'm very much of the opinion that one of the ways to stop people doing the wrong thing is to make it easier for them to do the right thing. If the problem is a software company licensing typeface designs that are too similar to existing designs from other parties -- regardless of the intent or deliberativeness -- then I want to ask what process would prevent that from happening.

twardoch

I have stated here and elsewhere in the past how much I dislike the Segoe project — I do consider it a knock-off of Frutiger, unlike Myriad, which I think really is sufficiently different, especially in the bolder styles. What I find amazing though is that when we talk about Segoe UI, we talk about a font that will be shown in screen sizes of no more than 20 ppm tops (typically even much less). Can one really argue that at those small sizes, a typeface is a knock-off of something else? Just wondering...

I wonder who made the earliest Frutiger forgeries.

My guess for the photo-composition era is the forgery "Frontiera" made by the bankrupt Compugraphic corporation, but I do not know in which year "CG Frontiera" was published.

My guess for the digital era is the forgery "Quebec" by Walter Florenz Brendel, who is said to have been one of the first users of the Ikarus system in the 1970s. Brendel, who died in 1992, was an economical font forger who used to forge only three or four letters per font. See http://www.sanskritweb.net/temporary/quebec.pdf

what process would prevent that from happening.

I don't think you need a panel of experts.
Just hire a designer with a reputation based on designing original typefaces.
Stipulate a contract with the usual legalese about the designer guaranteeing that there is no infringement of third party's intellectual property rights.
Then post the resulting prototype on Typophile.

Another way would be for the client to provide the designer with a "hermetic' room to work in, with a detached computer and no font files -- ie no reference material, and say, "come up with some designs".

Because if you were to ask a group of any type designers to recreate the Frutiger typeface (from memory), with no reference material, the results would all be different. Even Adrian Frutiger would come up with something different.

Just hire a designer with a reputation based on designing original typefaces.

Yes, a good start, although originality is only one of the requirements that need to be met.

Then post the resulting prototype on Typophile.

Companies investing in custom typefaces for unannounced products are not going to show those typefaces off in public. Generally speaking, the non-disclosure agreements under which one does this kind of work won't even allow the designer to discuss the project until after it is released.

I'm looking for practical ways for companies to avoid things like the Frutiger/Segoe controversy, and practical means that they have to be acceptable to those companies and their ways of working.

Can one really argue that at those small sizes, a typeface is a knock-off of something else?

With ClearType or without ClearType? :)

The small size bitmaps are a product of the outline font and its hinting, so even if the bitmaps themselves are not considered knock-offs, they are a product of an outline font that may be. If MS had made a bitmap font, I doubt there would be this kind of controversy, even if the bitmaps were identical to those generated by an existing TT version of Frutiger (such as that made for MS's eBook reader).

In the case of Segoe, though, the project includes not only the UI fonts but also the use of the design in MS corporate branding. So clearly this typeface is not only going to be seen at 20ppm or less. Indeed, I first saw it in banners at about 600pt.

Miguel Sousa

John: I’m looking for practical ways for companies to avoid things like the Frutiger/Segoe controversy, and practical means that they have to be acceptable to those companies and their ways of working.

In this case, I believe that there are enough qualified people inside Microsoft that could state the obvious — Segoe resembles Frutiger — if they were consulted (assuming they were not), and this whole thing would never happen.

One sad thing about this story is that people's names get indirectly linked to this issue, and are assumed to be associated with the crucial decisions behind the process, when in fact they might even be against it.

For those who cannot read German, I should like to mention that the German Erik Faulhaber, who was an apprentice at the Linotype Library GmbH, claims to be the designer of "Frutiger Next". At his http://www.erikfaulhaber.de Mr. Faulhaber declares under the header "Typedesign: Frutiger Next":

"Revision and completely new conception of the Frutiger typeface family. 18 font weights commissioned by the Linotype Library" (in German: "Überarbeitung der Schriftfamilie Frutiger mit komplett neuer Konzeption. 18 Schnitte im Auftrag der Linotype Library")

Mr. Bruno Steinert contests that the apprentice Mr. Faulhaber was the designer of "Frutiger Next". See Mr. Steinert's statement at the end of Mr. Faulhaber's German interview at http://www.typeforum.de/news_254.htm

In order to describe this bizarre Faulhaber case, may we use the term "plagiarism", or is the term "imposture" more appropriate?

Yes.

Also, when Nick wrote 'I don’t think you need a panel of experts', I should have responded immediately that I'm not talkimg about a panel of experts per se. Indeed, a process that relies on individual expertise is generally not a robust process. What is important is a process of review, of exploration, consideration and recommendation. Consultation with experts might form part of the process especially, for instance, where non-Latin fonts are concerned where the provenance of designs can be quite, um, complicated. But the process shouldn't rely on experts. For most cases, all you need is decent research skills and a reasonable amount of time. Cases like Segoe would be the easy ones, where the resemblance is obvious to anyone whose been typographically awake for the past thirty years. Determining whether, for instance, a Bengali typeface is or is not a clone of another is much trickier and needs forensic examination by an expert.

One sad thing about this story is that people’s names get indirectly linked to this issue, and are assumed to be associated with the crucial decisions behind the process, when in fact they might even be against it.

Indeed. I was trying to find the right words to make this very point, Miguel. One shouldn't assume that everyone as Microsoft thought that Segoe was a good idea.

twardoch

John,

I know that the entire Segoe family includes branding fonts. In the graphics shown at http://www.microsoft.com/ or in the Microsoft printed ads, the typeface surely does look a bit like Frutiger. But I was specifically wondering about Segoe UI.

Uli,

no doubt, Erik Faulhaber has worked on the Frutiger Next project but the extent of that work is disputable. This is a typical case of "getting credit". Type design only recently became an individual effort -- previously, a large team of people worked on a particular type, and yet typically, only one person got the credit as the "designer".

Even today, when FF Meta Pro is published, the credited designer is Erik Spiekermann and not "Spiekermann, van Rossum, de Groot, Schäfer, Lipton, Schwartz, Safayev, Chayeva, Haratzopoulos et al." If it were so, it would be quite ridiculous anyway.

If you want personal credit, you need to negotiate it upfront in the contract.

Christian Schwartz and Erik Spiekermann collaborated on FF Unit and on FF Meta Headline. Schwartz does get personal credit for FF Meta Headline but not for FF Unit -- this is obviously result of different negotiations in different projects.

The credited designer for Frutiger Next is "Adrian Frutiger / Linotype Design Studio". This means that Linotype chose not to personally credit the other designers who worked on the project, including Erik Faulhaber. This is similar for Linotype Univers. This is different for other projects, e.g. Avenir Next is credited as "Adrian Frutiger / Akira Kobayashi", just like Palatino Nova and Optima Nova are credited "Hermann Zapf / Akira Kobayashi".

Altogether, such decisions are made on a per-project basis, and surely depend on the actual creative input of "the other" designer. Sometimes, designers arrange collaborations by themselves -- they might hire a collague to draw the small caps or florins in their own typeface if there is a tight deadline.

Whenever you're a "junior designer" and embark on such a project, make sure to clarify issues such as personal credit *upfront*. Erik Faulhaber seemingly has not. He has seemingly agreed to hide his name behind the "Linotype Design Studio" label but now is trying to change reality retroactively. This is not how you work with other people.

> ... recognise a Lexicon clone.

Apparently you don't know the details. And if you
knew what kind of person Roy Preston is, you might
be motivated to find out. Bill however knows [enough]
of the details, but he chooses to ignore them. That I'm
sure you understand better than almost anybody.

hhp

Hrant, can't you stay on topic? I didn't even mention Lexicon. But if there is a story to tell about that font and Roy, why don't you do everyone a favour and tell it? Somewhere else? Do a little webpage or a Wikipedia entry. It would interest a lot of people and would one hopes be a more permanent record than a blog posting.

It's a little interesting that Faul(es)haber has succeeded for quite some months now in imposing the impression, now revealed by Bruno Steinert to be false, that he is the 'designer' of Frutiger Next. Of course he isn't. At Linotype, even Zapf has an art director. There is someone on this thread who could tell us some stories about designing for Linotype with one of their art directors in charge. ( A Lino art director is not necessarily someone on staff, either; distinguished consultants are sometimes brought in.) It isn't necessary to go into details; suffice it to say that it can be a painful experience and may allow the designer almost no latitude for creativity. This may indeed be something of a corporate psychological holdover from Lino's old days when the designer was but a very small cog in a huge manufacturing process. The type designer as star is a recent phenomenon. Working for Lino could be an ego-bruising, but nevertheless a highly instructive experience.

Of course, one of the pleasures of working on a clone is that an art director is not needed; technical fidelity is the only requisite. That leads to a question: We seem to have established that Segoe is an exact duplication of Frutiger with the exception of one or two exceedingly minor details. I would be curious to know if anyone has looked at the spacing. Does that correspond to the data in hitherto released versions of Frutiger? It would be something, not much, if we knew that Segoe's designers had at least done their own spacing. It would say something, again not much, about intent. If the spacing is identical, for example, to Linotype's, that would enhance the impression that the font was expected to behave identically to Frutiger at a very deep level.

> can’t you stay on topic?

Maybe if it weren't so exceedingly boring.

hhp

> It’s a little interesting that Faul(es)haber...

Congratulations! You obviously like Goethe's mother tongue! The medieval compound "Faulhaber" denoted "having 'much' (faul -> viel = much) 'oats' (haber -> hafer = oats)". But the word "faul", if derived from the Indoeuropean root "pu" (compare the English cognate word "putrid"), denoted in the middle ages "the fragrance of a lady's privy parts". That's the euphemistic semantics of this word. Goethe used another expression :-)

> Does that correspond to the data in hitherto released versions

Both Frutiger & Frutiger Next and Segoe & Segoe UI have slightly different metrics. Furthermore, some glyphs of Segoe and Segoe UI are identical, whereas some other glyphs are minimally different.

BTW: When will you report about the legal opinion of the retired judge?

Hrant: Apparently you don’t know the details.

Actually, I do know most of the details: enough to give Roy Preston the benefit of the doubt regarding both his intentions and his methods. However, the fact remains the result, the typeface he submitted to Morisawa, is too close to Lexicon for comfort. As I've written elsewhere, I've been willing to give Steve Mattheson the benefit of the doubt to: maybe he didn't set out to create a clone of Frutiger, but what matters is the result and how closely it resembles another typeface. In the typical circumstances of judging a competition, these things may slip through from time to time; they should not slip through the process of selecting typefaces to license for major software products, which must be made more rigourous.

Adam: Altogether, such decisions are made on a per-project basis, and surely depend on the actual creative input of “the other” designer.

And on the marketability of the co-designer's name. Crediting a design to Adrian Frutiger and Akira Kobayashi, is a double-whammy for Linotype, linking to typeface to two very talented designers whose work is widely, and rightly, regarded.

He has seemingly agreed to hide his name behind the “Linotype Design Studio” label but now is trying to change reality retroactively.

I have to admit that I sometimes find the attribution to 'Linotype Design Studio' troublesome, not least because it is occasionally applied retroactively. What is the 'Linotype Design Studio'? It suggests a room with a group of people drawing glyphs, filling in character sets, something like the drawing departments of old. But the reality is that 'Linotype Design Studio' might refer to Linotype employees, or to freelance designers, or to other companies hired by Linotype. I understand why Linotype choose to use this attribution and, frankly, it is their privilege since they own the results and the contracts allow them to do this. As you note, Adam, the correct time to establish how a project will be credited is during contract negotiations. But as someone with an interest in history, I'm disappointed to see some interesting stories disappear behind this generic attribution. Sometimes these stories are interesting cases of international collaboration. Sometimes they involve designers of the calibre of Tim Holloway, who is in no way a lesser designer than Adrian Frutiger or Akira Kobayashi, but whose name lacks their marketing cachet.

> I do know most of the details

I don't think so. I was involved from way before
Roy even submitted anything, and still am actually.
If you knew as much as you should, I would know.

> what matters is the result

While I think what matters is the intent.

hhp

...intent

... result

Hrant, why don't you stop posting for two minutes and create some wonderful static, non-ripostable content about this interesting project?

Nevertheless as to intent and Segoe, that is an excellent point. However, I suspect it's something of a red herring even to pose the question as I shall try to explain if you can bear to bear with me. Because as I understand it, this font was already in Monotype's library of Frutiger clones (which also include Univers, used by HP, as well as Linotype clones designed by others). Part of Monotype's business model, apparently, is selling Linotype clones. I believe I am not mistaken in asserting that Segoe was available as a Frutiger clone before Microsoft came a-knocking? Am I not also right in assuming that Monotype marketed Segoe as a direct copy? Am I not further right in assuming that Microsoft asked for a few trivial changes to be made?

One must also consider the substantial body of intellectual property law that has been evolving on derivative works over the past two decades. If a work can be shown to be derivative, then it is infringing. From this point of view, Myriad would, we may suppose, be found infringing. In the base weight, there are a few characters that are different from Frutiger, and the differences are slight, though real. It is clearly a highly derivative work, unusually so, even for type.

But as regards intent, Myriad is in a different category from Segoe altogether. Developed over a three year period, it was not commissioned to resemble Frutiger, was not intended to be Frutiger, did not start off as Frutiger. It only became Frutiger towards the end of a long, painful developement process when Robert discovered that he simply could not come up with a good design of his own. The sans serif is not his metier, and nor, for that matter, is originality. These are not the qualities which make him an interesting and a good designer.

In the case of Segoe, it is obvious that the font was created either by directly appropriating and manipulating the digital data with the intent of disguising not the design but the origination of the data points, or it was created by tracing over the outlines with the intention of matching them exactly but creating new data points. Whichever it was (and I think Linotype's analysis favours the former technique), it is a very different process from the painful journey that Adobe underwent.

Monotype intended to make a literal copy of Frutiger from the start, and they succeeded. Adobe intended to create an entirely original typeface but one that was nevertheless generic in style. That was John Warnock's simple brief for Myriad: create a generic sans serif.

It only became Frutiger after a very long process in which the designer discovered that he couldn't do it to his satisfaction. One must give him credit for recognizing that, and for spending some years working towards that recognition.

The story of Myriad is an almost heroic, almost tragic narrative of a designer's discovery that he cannot do what he was commissioned to do. That is something we can all sympathize with. And we can learn from it.

We can also appreciate the many things that Slimbach (and to a much lesser extent Twombley) did to make Frutiger more flexible and useful. It is worth noting, too, that they probably would not have been permitted to do this had Adobe from the start licensed Frutiger for MM development. How they could have achieved this in an entirely ethical, above board fashion is not readily apparent to me. But again, as regards intent, they did not start off with Frutiger in mind, even if they ended, three years later, with Frutiger very much in mind.

The story of Segoe, by contrast, is one of pure pilfery from the very start. Segoe, after all, is only one of the Frutiger clones in Monotype/Ascender's portfolio. There is also the Univers clone, for example, an exact duplicate of that font, which they sold to Hewlett Packard. And there are others.

In other words, we may have to bring ourselves to accept that Segoe is not a unique case. A substantial part of Monotype's business for well over a decade has been the offering of precise Linotype clones to companies who don't wish to pay Linotype's fees.

The root of the problem isn't Segoe. The root of the problem is Monotype's business plan. The Univers/HP clone was only used for branding. It didn't gain mindshare. Only when Monotype's thefts (I will revert to my own preferred word here) became widely apparent on the public stage (which only happened in the case of Palatino/Book Antiqua and Frutiger/Segoe) did ethical and legal questions come to occupy our interest.

Let us even go a little further: had Monotype not stood up at ATypI and presented Book Antiqua as an entirely original design in type history to a distinguished audience which included Hermann Zapf, and had Microsoft not, again, quite publicly presented Segoe as an original design to be considered as such by historians, and had Microsoft furhter not attempted to register the design as legal, we would not be discussing the matter today.

In both these cases, the crime of fraud was quite openly practised. It is this which accounts for our ire.

While I think what matters is the intent.

The only intent that matters when a typeface is published, i.e. made licenseable, is the intent to publish. The thought process that went into producing the typeface is irrelevant, the intent of the designer(s) in producing the typeface is irrelevant, because the decision to publish is in no way dependent on those creative intentions. The creative intentions are part of the process of creating the typeface, not the process of publishing it.

Even more so, such intentions are irrelevant to the decision to license a typeface. You do not license an intention, you license a thing, a product, a result. And the decision to license a typeface must be based on the nature of that thing, not on the real or stated intent of the person who made it. You have to look at the result, the thing. You have to forget all the claims about how it was made, whether they are true or not, and ignore the all explications of the ways in which it is different from other typefaces, and really look at the bloody thing with an honest eye -- and sometimes with a microscope -- and ask 'Is this thing original enough?' And sometimes the answer is no -- sometimes despite the best intentions to create something original and non-derivative -- and then you just have to set that thing aside and go look elsewhere. You have to, because the best intentions don't change the fact that the thing is a clone.

If Dolly the sheep were created by accident, every cell in her body would still tell you that she's a clone. The intent is irrelevant to what the thing is.

> The only intent that matters when a typeface is published ...

Then you have nothing to complain about.

hhp

> The only intent that matters when a typeface is published, i.e. made licenseable, is the intent to publish. The thought process that went into producing the typeface is irrelevant

Mr. Hudson's view of American law is in conformity with my view of European law concerning font forgeries. Although there are certain types of forgeries, where also the intent or deliberateness to produce is relevant, e.g. the producing of forged bank notes (which is a crime even if they are not published, i.e. circulated), this deliberateness to produce is not relevant as far as art forgeries and font forgeries are concerned. This, of course, only applies to criminal law. In civil law, e.g. with regard to the decision of the invalidity division about Segoe, no intent is required by Bill Gates and all other Microsoft people. Here negligence is sufficient. Negligence means: "Bill Gates should have known that Segoe is a forgery", while deliberateness means: "Bill Gates knows that Segoe is a forgery".

This is really a long-winded thing. There are two issues John's brought up that are interesting though. When Steve worked on this face he did not copy anything, I'm sure of that 'cause I know Steve and that's just not what he's about. The other point is the one where we say, well, what was Frutiger, (the face). It was a typeface family originally designed to work only on Linotype machines.

As such, the contours would have been placed, in each and every detail, to work perfectly with a specific appearance on Linotype machines. What happened subsequently, with Frutiger output to any and all devices that'd take it, with no design compensation in the ps upgrading, means that Frutiger output in 1994, looks a whole lot different and with multiple appearances than Frutiger 1984, rather stable type.

So now, if you take an outline that's a 1984 Frutiger clone, add a new rasterizer, hints, and modifications to the outline for those technical "upgrades", now what have you got? How does Frutiger at 14pt 96 dpi CT, compare to Segoe at 14pt 96 dpi CT? Still the same face? Still a knockoff? Win in court? Stop. Bill, remember how sorry you were when you did this "you stole a font" to me?

Miguel Sousa

David: If someone had come up to you — let's say 5 years ago, or at least long before this story had become an issue — with an unidentified printout of Segoe, asking for your comments on his/her original type design, what do you think you would have said?

Compared to most of you guys I am a mere rookie, a newcomer in the typographic scene. Nonetheless, I know exactly what my first reaction would be: "Why are you showing me Frutiger?"

> It was a typeface family originally designed to work only on Linotype machines.

On which Linotype machines?

The many old Linotype catalogs that I have do NOT contain the Frutiger font.

John, I really like your discussion with regard to intent. It is excellent but it seems to be situated outside the substantial legal issue of intent. I see it more as an ethical view than a legal view. I really wish I could get more into this, and the whole derivative art issue as well. Uli, I haven't had any time to talk to anyone, I hope I will in the next few days.

David, you raise issues that could turn some of our assumptions upside down. What you say about Steve has resonance and is exactly what I would have said - before this.

Your points about original design versus later adaptation are also exceptionally well-taken, as are those about me and hastiness. Moreover, would you agree that it is possible to take two identical fonts, space them differently, and come up with two equally valid products that look quite different in print? But that's a red herring.

Yes, it is important to consider the technological evolution of a typeface. However, here, our assumption is that all Frutiger clones, from Bitstream on downwards, are fairly rigidly based on Linotype's photo masters. All the adaptation that is going to be done has already been done, or nearly so, for photo. Here, also, to be specific, we are talking about Segoe in print, not about Segoe in CT2, and not about Segoe UI, except as it is a clearly derivative product of Segoe.

One thing which might help to clarify the issue would be the answer to these questions:

Did Monotype have a specific Frutiger and/or Frutiger Next clone in its OEM library? Who 'designed' it?

Did Monotype have other specific Linotype clones in its OEM library? Who designed them?

Micromillimetre for micromillimetre, how close are Segoe and Frutiger?

I think what you are touching on here is fair use. This is an area in which your thinking is highly evolved, since a lot of your library is based on well-thought out and impeccably provenanced fair use adaptations of earlier designs. I could not possibly overstate my admiration for the absolutely above-board manner in which you have always done this. But isn't it perhaps just a bit too much of a stretch to postulate that others think as you do and do as you do? You have provided the exactly correct model for how to do this. I need to be convinced that Monotype is following your pattern here. Are they? We have asked Microsoft and Monotype/Ascender to speak up. Where are they?

As a postscript, let me give a small illustration of Font Bureau's modus operandi in this respect, from my own experience. In 1993 or 1994, I made my second baby font, a fairly literal adaptation of an 18th century early Didot. As I didn't know then how to draw digitally, I used Linotype Fairfield as my digital basis - with its designer's (Kazcun's) knowledge and informal consent - he was an early mentor. It wasn't Fairfield, far from it. But it had enough of Fairfield remaining for David to say, sorry, we love it, but it's too close to Fairfield.

Believe me, guys, it would have taken a real expert to know that Fairfield was involved in this substantial redesign. But David saw through it at once. And no, that wasn't the kind of thing that he would put in his library.

So I learned how to digitise from scratch. Nothing could be easier, really, once you catch on to it. And I developed the font a lot further, in many directions. It now has nothing whatever to do with Fairfield. Hey David, wanna see it?

And David, on a serious note, do you think that any of the kind of rigorous aesthetic and ethical thought you put into your work has anything to do with the production of Segoe?

On the subject of the modern legal movement towards rewarding the originator of all derivative art, the New York Times has an instructive front page story today, entitled 'In the Jungle, the Unjust Jungle, a Small Victory'. Were these principles to be applied to typefaces, a high bar would be set, far higher than what most of us think 'fair use' constitutes.

Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/international/africa/22lion.html?ei=50...

This could be where typeface law will some day evolve. It is easy to see that that might not be in the best interests of the industry.

> ... intent

As regards Mr. Troop's interesting motivational hypotheses about the making of Segoe and Myriad, it might be also of interest for Mr. Troop to learn that in European copyright handbooks the following two psychological theories concerning "innocent" copyists are discussed by law experts:

1) Cryptomnesia

The term cryptomnesia (which was also contained in the old Webster's Third New International Dictionary) is defined as "the appearance of memory images, which are not recognized as such, but which appear as original creations".

With regard to a hypothetical "innocent" copyist of the font Frutiger, cryptomnesia would mean that the "innocent" copyist studied and memorized the letter forms of Frutiger a long time ago, e.g. by repeatedly using this font for typesetting advertising headlines. Now much later when he starts to design a "new" font, the "innocent" copyist "automatically" draws these Frutiger letter forms from memory, because he does no longer remember that he once used and memorized the Frutiger letter forms. In other words, the "innocent" copyist thinks that he is creating "new" letter forms, while in fact he is only reproducing existing letter forms memorized long ago.

Some psychologists and law experts claim that the phenomenon of cryptomnesia may happen, whereas others reject this as psychological nonsense.

2) Double Creation

Whereas patent law is based on the principle of priority with the consequence that two identical patents are not allowed, copyright law does not know this principle of priority. Therefore, at least theoretically, two different persons, if they do not know each other's works and provided they (completely independently from one another) both create exactly the same work, they will both become copyright owners of the same identical work.

For very short and simple works, e.g. for TV and radio jingles (technically musical works consisting of a few notes only) double creation has been regarded as possible, although I do deny that. For instance, for jingles consisting of 8 tones out of 12 different musical-scale tones (c, cis, d, es ... h) there are, mathematically speaking, nearly 20 million (exactly 19,958,400) different combinations of 8-tone jingles.

In any case, the German copyright law requires in the rare hypothetical cases of double creations that the "innocent" double creator proves that he really made a completely independent double creation (onus of proof).

As I mentioned earlier, I don't think cryptomnesia is possible in type design.
For instance, if a dozen type designers were asked to recreate the Frutiger A, it's unlikely that any would match the exact angles, overshoot, stem taper, height of the crossbar, and stem thicknesses. And to do the same thing for the whole alphabet would be impossible.

No, the nature of the game is direct reference: copying and modifying outlines, or tracing.

Uli's discussion of Cryptomnesia and double creation helps us deepen our thought and hone in more sharply on the issues. Others will correct me if I am wrong here, but I don't think it is conceivable that either crytomnesia or double creation are viable defenses either in the cases of Myriad or Segoe, since it is obvious that the designers were consciously and intimately familiar with Frutiger. Not only that, but their colleagues, managers and associates were consciously and intimately familiar with Frutiger.

There is no one in the entire type industry who is not consciously and intimately familiar with the design of Frutiger.

On the contrary. What we are seeing here is that intellectual property ethics and law are moving faster than we are. Many of us may have some painful adjustments to make in the years to come. I think much of what John had to say, for example, is beautifully worked out in and of itself, but doesn't take into account the context of what is legally and ethically happening in the rest of the world.

Again, this only comes into focus so acutely in the case of Frutiger/Segoe because it is so intimate a part both of Microsoft's corporate image and so intimate and critical a part of the highly evolved, highly complex product on which it is staking its success for the next decade. Microsoft's dilemma is that it cannot succeed if its product cannot legally be sold within the European Union.

And again: were this a matter of a knockoff used for corporate ID (for a company somewhat less prominent than MS), one that was never registered as an original design or trademarked, no issue would arise because nobody would know about it.

Microsoft is in a mess. Its legal strategy is in shambles. I don't see what ultimate choice they have but to settle with Linotype and I predict this will quietly happen, as it nearly did last year.

And that will be good. Linotype deserves the money. Frutiger deserves the money. I only hope he gets it before he dies. Given how bad Microsoft will look if they drag this out until Frutiger is no longer alive, I encourage Microsoft to move towards a very rapid settlement.

To be blunt, Si, and all the rest of you at Microsoft, if you get Frutiger on board now, he's an asset and you'll be heroes, although you'll be poorer heroes: by a penny per OS you sell. But if you wait until he's gone, you'll always be seen as Pontius Pilate. Is that the outcome you desire? Can you live with that outcome on both the personal and corporate levels?

The question isn't whether you will settle, but when.

"David: If someone had come up to you — let’s say 5 years ago, or at least long before this story had become an issue — with an unidentified printout of Segoe, asking for your comments on his/her original type design, what do you think you would have said?"

It's too close to Frutiger for our "print" library, why don't you do an online face:)"

"Hey David, wanna see it?"
Sure!

"And David, on a serious note, do you think that any of the kind of rigorous aesthetic and ethical thought you put into your work has anything to do with the production of Segoe?"

Oh, that wasn't serious? Yes, I do believe that as far as resolution resistant designs go, Madison and Co. do as much work in figuring out the right design as we do in our print fonts.

"For instance, if a dozen type designers were asked to recreate the Frutiger A, it’s unlikely that any would match the exact angles, overshoot, stem taper, height of the crossbar, and stem thicknesses. "

I think that question is clear, and the answer is no, they would not make the same A. But, if they were all told that the A had to be on 37/54ths of an em, and that 100 unit stems would be required to produce a proper "book" face, then they would all be extremely close, and some, if enough we solicited, would be exactly the same. That, in a technologically constricted world, is what happens.

I've been on all sides and the middle of these arguments time and time again, and I tell you, nothing anyone says, (besides me of course), makes sense, until you've got them both on a light table and you can trace the differences and similarities to genuine typographic motives, (not including of course, "can you make me a copy?"), or you can't.

'until you’ve got them both on a light table and you can trace the differences and similarities to genuine typographic motives'

Fair enough. So, has anybody here actually done that? And David, would it count if I took the two fonts into Fog 5, one font in the foreground, other in the background, scale to match, and examined at 800%, 3200%, whatever? I really wish someone else would do that. After all this talk, I'm afraid of what I might find!

> scale to match, and examined at 800%, 3200%, whatever?
> I really wish someone else would do that (Mr. Troop)

I wonder why you do not that yourself, if you think it is that important.

In the UPS case, a reduction to 95.3 % (= a reduction by 4.7 %) of the glyph coordinates of the forgery "UPS Sans" yielded the glyphs of the font "FF Dax". But this reduction was only the first "crude task" performed by the font forgers who had been commissioned by United Parcel Service to forge the FF Dax font. Thereafter, as a second "refined task", these professional font forgers were ordered by UPS to make a few conspicuous modifications to a small selection of glyphs, as has been demonstrated by me on pages 9 and 15 in my documentation http://www.sanskritweb.net/forgers/barmen.pdf

> and sometimes with a microscope (Mr. Hudson)

No court judge in Europe would examine a font with a microscope. The decision of the invalidity division of the sixth of February 2006 has clearly shown that fonts are compared by the invalidity division (and by European law courts, for that matter) with the naked eye, not with microscopes and similar tools. Such tools (microscopes, X-ray, chemicals etc.) are applied in art forgery cases, but not in font forgery cases, where ordinary printed alphabets typeset in ordinary point sizes and viewed with the ordinary human eye is all that is required in order to arrive at the conclusion that two different fonts "should be considered identical" (see invalidity decision).

PS: Here is an example of cryptomnesia. I have just wondered why I write "naked eye". Did I "create" this expression? Apparently not. I now think that I once seem to have read this saying: "Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with the naked eye". But did this saying really have this wording? Was it "...with the steady eye"?

A very preliminary impression, comparing Lino/Adobe Frutiger to Segoe UI. Steps are 1, open Segoe UI in Fontlab, 2, convert to PS, 3, open in Fog 5, 4, place Lino Frutiger in background, 5, scale 98.04% to match x-height. Frutiger is slightly wider and slightly heavier, making a direct comparison difficult without adjusting weight and horizontal scale. Even so, several lowercase glyphs are, in what seems to be the common consensus, too close, but there are some differences and it is clear that there is not the intention, here, to make an absolutely literal copy. However, this is Segoe UI, not Segoe, and has been further altered for UI purposes. There are many, many similarities, and there are differences. It seems hardly conceivable that the font was drawn without reference to Frutiger, but how and to what extent, I can't conclude at this early date. I would appreciate hearing the impressions of someone more skilled in font forensics. The last time I checked a font for signs of literal pilfery was several years ago when I checked Le Monde against several cuts of Times New Roman and discovered and published indisputable evidence of point pilfering from a specific cut of Times New Roman that Adobe shipped with Illustrator 6. I see no evidence of point pilfering with Segoe, but then, it would be hard to do that given that one is in PS format and the other in TT, and I am comparing PS to a TT conversion whose quality I have not tested. However, the difference in design between Times and Le Monde is far greater than the difference between Segoe UI and Lino/Adobe Frutiger. The purpose of the Le Monde analysis was to discover if Porchez was telling the truth when he first asserted that he had point pirated, or whether he was telling the truth when he later denied it. I concluded and illustrated that the first statement was the true one. In either case, it was indisputable that the designs were substantially different. Here, the purpose is not to discover if point piracy exists, since it is beyond my skill to do that cross-format, but to discover if design piracy exists. Between these two fonts I will only for the time being adopt the phrase used I think by both John and Adam, that the fonts are too close. I can't find my other Segoe fonts, so the rest will have to wait until tomorrow. I also don't know what the differences are in the base weights of Lino/Adobe Frutiger and Linotype Frutiger Next, so those comparisons have to be made too.

By the way, I'd like further to point out that when I sent my Didot to David years ago, that was in the days when we still sent paper samples only. David's eyes detected its digital derivation from Fairfield without the benefit of computer software. That guy doesn't need to look at points to figure out what's going on!

Speaking only for myself: if I had to take the idea I have in my head of Frutiger, and draw something to it as close as I could, without being permitted to consult large printouts of Frutiger or anything I could trace over, I don't think I could come up with something that was as close to Frutiger as Segoe UI is. But that's all I can say. Others have completely different skill sets and I am sure there are many who could do a better job of this hypothetical task than me.

Again, there are some German display types of the 1920s that have some pre-Frutiger features. Were I to adapt one of these bold and compressed fonts to a normal weight, as I have sometimes thought of doing, I doubt that the result would be considered to be a Frutiger clone. But that's just me.

'Such tools (microscopes, X-ray, chemicals etc.) are applied in art forgery cases, but not in font forgery cases, where ordinary printed alphabets typeset in ordinary point sizes and viewed with the ordinary human eye is all that is required in order to arrive at the conclusion that two different fonts “should be considered identical” (see invalidity decision).'

Of course everything I have just written about my preliminary but time-consuming comparison is more or less invalidated by this . . .

As I have suggested before, many of us in the font industry have some catching up to do. The EU needs to have common IP laws to the greatest extent possible; in practice that means that the laws most favourable to artists/creators will be adopted. Corporations with international product lines will have to comply with EU standards (just as DVD-burner manufacturers have just had quite painfully to retool to comply with EU standards), and eventually, US and British laws will probably follow suit, long after US and British manufacturers have had to. The ethics many of us have spent a long time working out are not likely to meet the standards Uli has described above. I can imagine this having some good effects and some bad effects for the type industry.

But, if they were all told that the A had to be on 37/54ths of an em, and that 100 unit stems would be required to produce a proper “book” face, then they would all be extremely close, and some, if enough we solicited, would be exactly the same.

Good point David. If a type designer is asked to better the performance of a particular font (with quite specific parameters of usage), wherever he/she starts, the result is going to be, to all intents and purposes, the same typeface -- if not the same font. It's a testimony to the virtue of the original typeface. I've done that, started with a different font, massaged it to the client's needs, and even though no point piracy was involved, it ended up in a state where a forensic typographer could probably have proved that some piracy was involved. But the typeface was the "open source" Century (much of it indistinguishable from Bodoni), and in a display usage that Benton or Bodoni could not have envisaged. I wouldn't have attempted the same kind of thing with Frutiger.

So a lot of responsibility falls on the creative director of the vehicle for which the typeface is intended, and the brief given to the type designer. If a brand's typography is predicated on a certain type of layout that demands a Frutiger-ish typeface, that's asking for trouble. To avoid trouble, an older typeface should be used, or a genre with more flexibility, or best of all, a fresh kind of layout that prompts an original type design.

Why does an OS typography have to be generically bland? Apple has consistently pointed the way in terms of GUI style, and MS has followed. But the types (with the exception of Chicago) have dragged up the rear. Apple's present OS face is a bit Optima-ish and slightly old-fashioned. The door is wide open for a new "square" or techno OS face, surely the widespread use of pixel-fonts on web sites has paved the way. Companies whose software products are up-to-date end up using vintage typefaces. The pride-of-place given to type revivals and the millstone of traditionalism drag down typography, and have a lot to answer for.

> Apple has consistently pointed the way in terms of GUI style

Not when it comes to the type, not for the past few years.
Apple now lets us down at almost every turn. Myriad?! Sheesh.

hhp

Not when it comes to the type,

As I said, "but the types ... have dragged up the rear."
In one sense, Lucida Grande is progressive, in bringing a new degree of subtlety to the table (eg ascender taller than cap height), but as a classic face with Optima-like proportions and contrast, it is going backwards to go forwards.

'Why does an OS typography have to be generically bland?'

Because we are all using the computer to express our thoughts and from the OS we want the closest thing to transparency we can attain?

I actually don't think Frutiger is a good choice for the interface. Frankly, nothing beats Helvetica/Arial for me -- except Geneva. I don't want the interface font doing anything to distract me.

For my DOS word processor, XyWrite, I like but don't love Lucida Console at 28 points on a 1920x1200 screen, which gives me about 40 lines of text. So many more wonderfully transparent text fonts seemed to exist in the bitmap, monospace days, real triumphs of style and getting the most out of the least. There was real creativity when you were confined to an 8x10 grid or whatever it was. And now . . . creativity . . . reach for what - - - Frutiger? ? ?

How about this goal: the font that places the minimum distance between me and the machine? I have a feeling that wouldn't look much like Frutiger or any of the other sans serifs we think we know and understand. There's a problem here: we're approaching the screen from too much of a print perspective. We need a clean slate with a clean screen perspective that doesn't owe anything to print.

OK, here's a progress report. Let me tell you one thing, Fontlab 5 works like a dream for this kind of examination. The base weight of Segoe (not Segoe UI) is, as I pointed out for Segoe UI, a little narrower and a little lighter than Lino/Adobe Frutiger. The same is true for Segoe. How to arrive at a true picture of what might and might not have been manipulated?

I took unconverted PS files of Segoe, Segoe Bold, Segoe condensed, and Segoe Bold condensed, and in less time than it takes to describe, I had a multiple master. I put Frutiger in the Mask layer and then scaled it 98.04% as before, hz and vt. With Fontlab, it's a cinch to slide until you get one of several possible good matches to Frutiger, which here is about 146 for weight and 1157 for width.

In the screen shot, the red outline represents Frutiger, the dark green outline represents Segoe, and the grey fill represents the interpolation/extrapolation between the four Segoe weights which constitute the MM.

What relevance does this have? What conclusions can we come to? I have no idea. Here's the screen shot. More to come if anyone's interested.

> we’re approaching the screen from too much of a print perspective.

Indeed, after all this time & talk, we still have this problem.
We have yet to admit the fallacy that is WYSIWYG.

hhp

Uli: No court judge in Europe would examine a font with a microscope.

I wasn't talking about a court, I was talking about a process for prevention at the pre-licensing stage. I don't see much point in me stating legal opinions because I'm neither a lawyer nor a judge. So I'm focusing on the question 'What can be done, practically, to prevent this kind of thing from happening?' Of course, this presumes goodwill, i.e. that a company like Microsoft wants to do the right thing or, at least, wants to avoid getting into this sort of mess, being accused of these kinds of things, paying lots of money to lawyers, and having judges in important foreign markets decide against them.

When I made reference to a microscope, I was alluding to the kind of forensic analysis that is sometimes necessary to detect a process of deliberate, concealed derivation. Any moderately experienced typographer can look at Segoe and Frutiger side-by-side and come to the conclusion that the former looks very much like the latter, even if some may disagree about whether it looks too much like the latter, or whether the coincidence of the outlines is significant in a type designed primarily for screen, or whether the intent to copy is deliberate, or whether the licensing is evidence of deliberate intent or negligence.

But the number of people who can authoritatively say, for instance, that Bengali typeface X is derived from Bengali typeface Y is quite small, and the if the derivation is concealed by changes to some details or proportions a close forensic analysis is necessary to determine the relationship of the two designs. A court might not look closely enough. The typographic community that is discussing Segoe at such length might not know or care enough about Bengali typography to interest itself. But the questions of originality, derivation, intent and negligence are the same, and should be addressed at the typeface selection stage, before the licensing contracts are signed, before the fonts are shipped in beta products, before the lawyers get involved.

One more comment about that e. What would it now take to turn Frutiger into an exact duplicate of Segoe? Not much. I got a pretty exact match by moving a few handles exactly 10 or exactly 20 units, and by moving one point exactly 10 units. Two things make me uncomfortable: (1) how easy it is to move handles 1 and 10 unit increments in Fontlab with the cursor keys--a feature suggestion for which I am responsible; (2) that it is possible to get from here to there with just a few 10 or 20 unit pushes of the arrows via the cursor keys -- in other words, less than ten keystrokes altogether. Again, what does this mean, if anything? Again, I have no idea. 'Je n'impose rien; je ne propose rien: j'expose' -- if I may make use of a rather mischievous bit of imposture.

Have I just succeeded in reverse-engineering Segoe? I don't know. I doubt it.

For one thing, I suspect that other characters would require different interpolation/extrapolation settings to get a good match -- and for evidence of a purely mechanical or purely cynical copy we need to see global manipulations at work. For another, I am not experienced in this kind of analysis, so I can't tell how significant any of my findings, so far, are. For example, I have discovered that it is quite easy to match the Frutiger and Segoe e. But I have not tried the same experiment with 30 or 40 other fonts and with other characters. What if it were nearly as easy with some of those? Then what I have shown here would have little significance. On the other hand, if it were very difficult to accomplish the transformation with many other fonts, then I think I would (might) have found out something that was at least a factor worth considering within a larger frame. Finally, let's not forget the astonishing passage in one of Walter Tracy's books where he shows how Monotype in the 1930s only had to change a few characters in Gill Sans to come up with an effective lookalike for Futura. That's important for two reasons: because Gill and Futura are supposed to be so different philosophically and practically (the one 'geometric', the other 'humanist' -- that latter being a word I would like to see excised from the type vocabulary as it is so value laden that it will inevitably be misused); and because it shows - shucks! - that Mono was already doing this way back when.

I wonder if it's possible to say that Linotype was always the more successful company, and that Monotype was always looking for ways to get a piece of Lino's cake? I don't know enough about the financial and competitive history of the companies to hazard a guess there.

So after all of this, I'm left with what we started out: (1) the feeling clearly articulated by John and Adam, and shared by most others, that the fonts are too close; (2) Linotype's victory with the EU; (3) Microsoft's legal acknowledgement that the fonts are identical -- at least within the terms of that tribunal.

I guess I should have a look at the italic of Segoe and Frutiger Next, but I'm not looking forward to it. I do have work to do!

"After all this talk, I’m afraid of what I might find!"
The usual procedure is "ready, aim, fire."

"Such tools (microscopes, X-ray, chemicals etc.) are applied in art forgery cases, but not in font forgery cases"

Too bad, it might require chemical sampling of the brain to know for sure if a font is a forgery.

"If a type designer is asked to better the performance of a particular font (with quite specific parameters of usage)"

Well, that too, but fonts designed from scratch, not too long ago, had these kinds of preconceived, specific requirements. Iconic fonts, like Chicago the bitmap, and Highway Gothic aka Interstate, were designed under constraints so tight, if you did them again, you'd do them again...

> ... Bengali typeface X is derived from Bengali typeface Y...

Sorry, I cannot help you here. My field of research is Sanskrit, not Bengali. Furthermore, I would consider it inappropriate to deal with fonts used by languages I have not learned. Ne sutor supra crepidam.

> I would consider it inappropriate to deal with
> fonts used by languages I have not learned.

While I consider it the responsibility of a type designer
to look beyond language and directly into script.

Dzour nsdink shidag khosink: jamanagut guh gorsuntsunesgor.

hhp

> So after all of this, I’m left with what we started out: (1) the feeling clearly articulated by John and Adam, and shared by most others, that the fonts are too close; (2) Linotype’s victory with the EU; (3) Microsoft’s legal acknowledgement that the fonts are identical — at least within the terms of that tribunal.

In this thread, there have been used so many inappropriate law terms (pilfery, piracy, plagiarism, theft etc.) that it was not possible for me to comment them all. Since Mr. Troop quoted Goethe, I assume that he can read my German documents at my website, so that he can read the full legal details in German language.

For those who cannot read my German documents concerning the legal situation of fonts in Germany (e.g. my documents kunstwerke.pdf, computerprogramme.pdf etc.), I mention here briefly that "on principle" ("grundsätzlich", i.e. in most cases) fonts are NOT copyrightable in Germany. Therefore, with regard to the Segoe case, I always used the legal term "forgery" and never used the legal term "infringement" ("copyright infringement" or "design infringement"), because Frutiger and Frutiger Next are neither protected by the German copyright law (UrhG) nor protected by the German design law, for different legal reasons. Therefore, Frutiger Next could not be registered as a design by the German Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (aka "Heideldruck") which is the owner of the subsidiary Linotype GmbH.

1) If Frutiger and Frutiger Next were protected by the German copyright law (Urheberrechtsgesetz), then Heideldruck could sue Microsoft for damages (which would be much much higher than "one penny per OS sold ") on the grounds of copyright infringement (§ 97 UrhG) and in addition could enforce by court that Microsoft does not sell Windows Vista with Segoe.

2) If Frutiger and Frutiger Next were protected by the German design law (Geschmacksmustergesetz), then Heideldruck could sue Microsoft for damages on the grounds of design infringement (§ 41 GeschmMG) and in addition could enforce by court that Microsoft does not sell Windows Vista with Segoe.

The decision of the invalidity division only has the effect that Heideldruck, which was not allowed to register the fonts Frutiger and Frutiger Next as design, could achieve the annulment of the illegal registration made by Microsoft which had deliberately deceived the registration office when it registered its forgery "Segoe" as "new" and "novel" design.

> Since Mr. Troop quoted Goethe, I assume
> that he can read my German documents

For somebody so well-versed in the nitpickings of multinational
legalese, that logic is about as sound as Apple's typography...
I have this friend you should meet: he sings entire Greek folk
songs, but doesn't understand the language one bit. I guess he
might be Illegal in Germany though.

hhp

Uli, Hrant is right, I have some literary German, but my practical and legal German is almost hopeless. I am still trying to figure out exactly what the possible implications of Uli's coinage Heideldruck might be. Druck can mean many things, including printing, being under pressure, browbeating, etc. Uli, give us a hand.

I see here two great summations of the issues here. Uli's

'The decision of the invalidity division only has the effect that Heideldruck, which was not allowed to register the fonts Frutiger and Frutiger Next as design, could achieve the annulment of the illegal registration made by Microsoft which had deliberately deceived the registration office when it registered its forgery “Segoe” as “new” and “novel” design.'

and David's

'Too bad, it might require chemical sampling of the brain to know for sure if a font is a forgery.'

'What oft was thought but n'er so well expres't'. What can we really know about what happened here without being inside the heads of the principal actors? Do they themselves any longer know what they did, or why? We only have their actions, and what we can deduce from their actions, which is something but not everything.

Finally, a bit of literary criticism. Hofmannstahl has Klytemnästra memorably speak, 'Was die Warheit ist, das bringt kein Mensch heraus' which I would loosely translate as, 'What truth is, mere mankind cannot know, only the Gods can.' I'm adding the glosses 'mere' and the phrase about the Gods because I think the context demands it. But the question arises, is K speaking the truth when she says we cannot know it?

We have all the elements of a 21st style Greek tragedy here. The clock's ticking for Adrian, whose font is the improbable subject of our drama, and we are still in considerable suspense as to what the other actors have done, will do, and why.

Funny thing, though, as it plays out: the Dreyfusard is not normally a silent crittur.

I think it's a mistake to attach too much importance to "point piracy".

On the one hand, a good principle, because it really is a huge time-saving cheat to take someone else's outlines and tweak them.

On the other hand, in my own work, almost all my fonts (in widely differing styles -- way further apart than Gill Sans and Futura) were made by modifying one of my other fonts, self-piracy.

By saying that point-piracy is theft, it kind of absolves "mere" analog imitation and tracing, and dubious bad intent and convenient self-deception, from that stigma and responsibility.

> I am still trying to figure out exactly what the possible implications of Uli’s coinage Heideldruck might be. Druck can mean many things, including printing, being under pressure, browbeating, etc. Uli, give us a hand.

It is neither a joke nor a mystery. That's how here TV and Press call this big printing maschine factory (with 24,000, in words twenty-four thousand employees), which wholly owns this very very tiny Linotype GmbH font outfit (with only circa twenty full-time employees).

The complete legal company name "Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG" was too long for newpaper headlines, hence they coined:

Heidel[berger] Druck[maschinen AG] => Heideldruck

see e.g. http://boerse.ard.de/content.jsp?key=dokument_145842

Great point, Nick. I have always distinguished between point piracy, which is unimportant unless you make an issue out of it by fibbing about it, and design piracy, which annoys me much more. The two are completely different. I too have sometimes point pirated from myself. However, entirely philosophically, I would propose that where possible, fresh digitisations should be made. I think you are more likely to get into a design's skin when you digitise it afresh. Obviously, however, time does not always allow that, and not every project is so important. That said, I have wasted an awful lot of time in the past by drawing individual serifs, etc. etc. etc. What a waste of time. Missing the forest for the trees. But hey, I wasn't, like many of us, ready to see the forest at first.

> For somebody so well-versed in the nitpickings of multinational
legalese, that logic is about as sound as Apple’s typography…

Who says that legal thinking is logical thinking?

I think you are more likely to get into a design’s skin when you digitise it afresh.

I agree, sort of. A lot depends on how close the source and the derivative are, and how clear an idea you have of what the new design is all about. If the new design idea is insufficiently resolved, and for want of decision reiterates features of the prior, rather than merely using its outlines for convenience, then there can be problems.

> you are more likely to get into a design’s skin when you digitise it afresh.

While I would offer the following paradox:
When you digitize it, you lose it. Because no digitization technology
can be perfect - like think of Raph's and others' issues with beziers.

hhp

'While I would offer the following paradox:
When you digitize it, you lose it. Because no digitization technology
can be perfect - '

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with Fog 4/5's floating point points - that gives you pretty infinite flexibility, and FontLab can deal with floating points, no doubt more in the future. And that's just talking about classic Postscript limitations. Furthermore, you are assuming that the designer's idea is greater than conventional digitisation allows, which is pretty unlikely.

'like think of Raph’s and others’ issues with beziers.'

The issue isn't what you can achieve, but how easily. You can draw with Raph's techniques and convert to Bezier, and vice versa. As long as you have the patience to deal with the technical demands of the drawing system you are using, you can accomplish anything you want - it's just that there's a bit more labour involved. But I think that's true of every system.

I don't think the problem is digital per se, but the specific limitations of 1,000 em traditional postscript. There are plenty of ways to get round that, even now.

When you say no digitisation process is perfect you might just as well say no printing process is perfect, no rasteriser is perfect, no eye is perfect, no art, no soul.

When Edith Wharton lay on her deathbed, she discussed Balzac with her friend Elsina Tyler, who asked how she could possibly admire Balzac so much, as he was such a poor stylist. Wharton replied, 'You might just as well say that the streets are paved with cobblestones.'

But do these issues belong here? And would someone besides me please volunteer to do some Frutiger Next/Segoe Italic comparisons? Or can it be conceded that we don't need them? Can anyone suggest predecessor designs that might be of interest? I am still not entirely confident I have got my head around David Berlow's discussion of sans italics in TBR/TBF, with the interesting observations about teardrops and male and female something or others. One of the things that is valuable about that small essay is that it provides some new and useful analytical terminology for type taxonomy.

> I see nothing wrong with Fog 4/5’s floating point points

1) Sure there's something wrong: stuff hits
the fan when you actually output the font!
2) I'm not talking about the coarseness of the grid, but the [mis]guiding effect of the tool (the cubic, and especially quadratic, bezier) on the design. Because humans are naturally inclines to save time/effort, the limitations/preferences of the tool go way beyond the hypothetical.

> that’s true of every system.

Yes, but a given system can be more or less attuned to what the designer wants to accomplish, as well as what the designer typically tends to accomplish.

hhp

http://www.fontblog.de/files/category-2.html

Well now, Mr. Troop?

> but baulked at Linotype’s price: one penny per OS sold.

At the German FontShop blog

Linotype GmbH's general manager Bruno Steinert declared yesterday in German:

"Die 1 cent-Geschichte ist frei erfunden und entbehrt jeglicher Grundlage. Es ist bedauernswert, daß solche Lügen ohne weiteres Hinterfragen mit Begeisterung im Web weiter werbreitet werden."

Literal translation: "The 1-cent story is entirely fabricated and totally unfounded. It is regrettable that such lies are enthusiatically promulgated on the web without any examination."

Well now, Mr. Troop? Why did you promulgate the "one penny per OS sold" story?

> Too bad, it might require chemical sampling of the brain to know for sure

In order to find out your motivation for your promulgation of the "one penny per OS sold" story you only need to make a chemical sampling of your own brain.

I got this information in 2004 from a source at Linotype.
I have the interview on tape. I will not disclose my
source.

I was ignoring the whole one-cent per OS story because it seemed so improbable as to be irrelevant. Microsoft only ever pay a one-time fee for a font license, and everyone in the business knows that. Certainly Linotype know it because they had already licensed Frutiger to MS for the eBook reader. I don't know what the terms of that license were, but knowing that MS like to leave the door open, I would be very surprised if it didn't contain provisions for extension of the license. The strangest thing about Segoe is just how unnecessary it was if MS wanted Frutiger. I have little doubt that they could have had Frutiger, and it wouldn't have cost them an unreasonable amount.

I think the only way to make sense of that is to consider that MS did not want Frutiger, and actually wanted something new and fresh and original to be the flagship typeface of their new operating system. Splendid as Frutiger is, it is a design three decades old. How do you make a marketing splash about that? No, I think MS really wanted a new typeface, and maybe the people making the decisions there thought they were getting one. That Monotype delivered a Frutiger-look-alike doesn't necessarily mean that this is what Microsoft asked for. They could have asked for nothing more controversial, or more precise, than 'a new sans serif design suitable for use as a UI font'.

" Microsoft only ever pay a one-time fee for a font license, and everyone in the business knows that."

Though I understand the spirit of the statement, and the statement is true in spirit, it is not true in fact with the "ever" in place.

A subtle point, David, but a fair one. I know that Microsoft in the past entered into royalty paying arrangements, but I'm not aware of any recent examples of this, and they're pretty clear on their policy preference.

Mr. Troop's statement:

> Before commissioning Segoe, Microsoft did, Le Times has heard from Linotype, try to license Frutiger, but baulked at Linotype’s price: one penny per OS sold. Kudos to Microsoft for realizing that pennies add up to an unacceptable and unfair shareholder burden.
> I got this information in 2004 from a source at Linotype. I have the interview on tape. I will not disclose my source.

Mr. Steinert's statement:

> The 1-cent story is entirely fabricated and totally unfounded. It is regrettable that such lies are enthusiatically promulgated on the web without any examination. (Die 1 cent-Geschichte ist frei erfunden und entbehrt jeglicher Grundlage. Es ist bedauernswert, daß solche Lügen ohne weiteres Hinterfragen mit Begeisterung im Web weiter werbreitet werden.)

Either Mr. Troop's statement is a lie or Mr. Steinert's statement is a lie.
Therefore, either Mr. Bill Troop is a lier or Mr. Bruno Steinert is a lier.

FontShop quoted Mr. Troop, and Mr. Steinert at the FontShop blog therefore implicitly declared that Mr. Troop is a lier. Conversely, Mr. Troop implicitly declared that Mr. Steinert is a lier, because the alleged "penny-deal" would have been negotiated by Mr. Steinert himself, because, as I said in my previous posting to this thread, Linotype GmbH is a very very tiny font outfit with only circa twenty full-time employees plus a couple of occasional free-lancers, for instance the students Mr. Adam Twardoch and Mr. Daniel Reynolds and for instance the apprentice and presumed lier Mr. Erik Faulhaber, who claims to be the designer of "Frutiger Next", which is considered a lie by Mr. Steinert. The majority of these circa twenty full-time employees are simple clerks who do not make an "interview on tape". Therefore, in view of this tiny outfit, there remains only Mr. Bruno Steinert himself who could have given an "interview on tape", provided that Mr. Troop is not a lier who is telling us lies.

By using the expression "entirely fabricated and totally unfounded", Mr. Steinert declares that he did not negotiate at all with Microsoft concerning Segoe, thus by his unequivocal statement Mr. Steinert declares that he made neither a 1-cent licence offer nor a 1-penny licence offer nor a 2-cent licence offer nor a 3-cent licence offer nor any other licence offer. Provided that Mr. Steinert is not a lier, this would be in accord with German laws, because by German laws, the Linotype GmbH would not be allowed to negotiate a "licence" in view of the illegal forgery Segoe. If someone forges banknotes, you are not allowed to "negotiate" with the forger a "licence" for the "right" to distribute the forged banknotes. Likewise, if someone forges a painting, the author of the original painting is not allowed to "negotiate" with the forger a "licence" for the "right" to distribute the forgery of his original painting. Likewise, if someone forges a font, the author of the original font is not allowed to "negotiate" with the forger a "licence" for the "right" to distribute the forgery of the original font. But the author of the original font (in this case Mr. Adrian Frutiger) may try to claim damages and may try to claim that the forged font (in this case the forgery "Segoe") is not distributed.

Dan Reynolds

the students Mr. Adam Twardoch and Mr. Daniel Reynolds

I indeed did work at Linotype for some time as a student. However, since January I have been a full-time employee there.

"I’m not aware of any recent examples of this, and they’re pretty clear on their policy preference."

I'm certain there will be no more. The problem, was that if you earned per bundle royalties, you ended up with information that was nearly as valuable than the royalty itself. :-o

I assumed that when Mr. Troop said "for pennies per OS shipment", he meant that if you divided the one-time fee by the number of expected users, you'd get pennies per font.

I'm hoping now, that this issue will cease to twitch.

http://typophile.com/forum/1

> the students Mr. Adam Twardoch and Mr. Daniel Reynolds

Aha!! LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAAAAAAAAR!!!!

hhp

> Aha!! LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAAAAAAAAR!!!!

I am sorry, Mr. Paparazzi, for my completely incorrect spelling of the word "lier" (instead of the correct spelling "liar").

While I am learning correct English spelling, you may learn German so that you can correctly read this new German message by Mr. Steinert:

"Die 1 cent-Geschichte ist frei erfunden (von wem eigentlich?) und entbehrt jeglicher Grundlage. Linotype hat auch keine Klage erhoben sondern lediglich einen Einspruch im Rahmen des Registrierungsverfahrens erhoben. Es ist bedenklich, wie solche Erfindungen und Halbwahrheiten ohne weiteres Hinterfragen mit Begeisterung im Web weiter verbreitet und dabei auch noch weiter verfälscht werden."
(Mr. Bruno Steinert at http://praegnanz.de/weblog)

Spelling? Forget spelling.

What would be nice is if an education in Sanskrit came bundled with
an appreciation of some good ol' fashioned Eastern lateral brainwaves,
like using words in a pragmatic, human, and in the end useful way.

BTW, German is on my list. But it's competing with Dutch and Russian.

hhp

I’m hoping now, that this issue will cease to twitch.

Just when it's getting so surreal? I'm thinking of staging the last two dozen posts as an ATypI fundraiser.

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3601421

Here is a brand-new article by Brian Livingston
including a short interview with Steve Matteson:

For the "Q" and "&" etc. see also page 3 of file:

http://www.sanskritweb.net/forgers/segoe2.pdf

Uli