Great idea...

Are you only interested in foundries that support both, or is this an either/or question. Also licenses may be hard to understand - but FAQ's not so much.

H&FJ case in point (for both points)...

What's involved in using fonts on websites?

HTML doesn't offer any way to force a web page to render itself in a typeface that the viewer doesn't have, but fonts can be used to create different kinds of images:

— Bitmap graphics (gif, jpg, png) There's no difference between using a font to create a printed page and using it to create a pixellated image. As long as the person creating the images has licensed the fonts, no additional license is needed.

— Vector art (swf) Because Flash files embed actual portions of a font's sourcecode within themselves, our font licenses require that designers observe some basic safety precautions when publishing Flash files. Text in Flash files must be static (not dynamic), the files must embed only a subset of the character set, and the "Protect from Import" option must be enabled when the files are generated.

— sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) sIFR is a great technology that brings rich typography to the web through a combination of Javascript, CSS and Flash. To use an H&FJ font with sIFR, purchase an additional single-computer font license for the webserver itself, and then configure sIFR's customize_me.as file in two ways to prevent unauthorized users from accessing the system: first, set the allowedDomains array to include only the domain of your website (instead of "*"), and then set allowlocal to "false" before publishing the .swf to the web.

The emerging @font-face tag within Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will hopefully lead to a secure technology that allows fonts to be used in web pages. But at this time, no such security measures exist, so the use of this tag with our fonts constitutes the illegal distribution of the font software. This type of use is therefore specifically prohibited under our End-User License Agreement.

If you are exploring other technologies that aren't covered here, please contact us at info@typography.com.

Via http://www.typography.com/ask/faq.php?faqID=15#Faq_15

All 11? fonts distributed under the OFL...

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL_fonts

Question: 1.2 Can I make web pages using these fonts?

Answer: Yes! Go ahead! Using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is recommended.

Via http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL-FAQ...

Good point. If the foundry has an FAQ then quote it as well. And either/or. But we should make it clear if it is either/or OR both. No?

Like Sii said: great idea!

I have two eula's (on MyFonts). The one that allows the @font-face declaration and sIFR from which Tiffany quoted is the "exljbris Free Font License Agreement" That EULA is only for the free weights/styles I offer on MyFonts.

The free fonts that can be downloaded directly from my site can be used under the same conditions, but I still need to do an update on my site to state that.

For @font-face I already set up a Wiki page:
http://www.webfonts.info/wiki/index.php?title=Fonts_available_for_%40fon...

I don't want to side track this thread, but can someone quickly tell me if there is a way to display @font-face on an iPhone? It seems it is not supported as yet in the iPhone 2.2.1 browser, so is there an alternative way?

/Claus

I don’t want to side track this thread, but can someone quickly tell me if there is a way to display @font-face on an iPhone?

Sure! That's why Apple included @font-face in the first place!
http://www.webfonts.info/wiki/index.php?title=%40font-face_support_in_Sa...

Let's compile a list of sIFR and @font-face friendly foundries

BTW: It's getting more complicated: There are now also other techniques besides sIFR and @font-face.
For example:
Typeface.js: http://typeface.neocracy.org
Cufón: http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/

Sii: "The emerging @font-face tag within Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will hopefully lead to a secure technology[...] But at this time, no such security measures exist,"

No such security measures exist, and since the font industry is in no position to change @fontface or anything but the fonts, only a OT/OFF permissions table, (or the entire industry ceding its ip), is going work. So, unless you have something actual to add, i.e. security that no one from founder to user has to ever trip over, Simon's fiction time is over.

Miss Tiffany: "Quote: You may use this font for Font-Face embedding, but only if you put a link to www.exljbris.nl on your page and/or put this notice /* A font by Jos Buivenga (exljbris) -> www.exljbris.nl */ in your CSS file as near as possible to the piece of code that declares the Font-Face embedding of this font."

They are trying to do part of what a permissions table would do, and part of what a good type mom would do for her sonny.

Good luck!

>Simon’s fiction time is over.

David I was quoting H&FJ! I even used the CITE tag like a good standards compliant person would do. Please direct your skepticism to Jonathan and Tobias.

Sure! That’s why Apple included @font-face in the first place!

Yeah, but it's not implemented in the version of Safari/webkit that is in the current iPhone OS – as far as I can gather. So I was looking for working alternatives. Anyone?

I just tried the Cufon method, but it crashes the iPhone Safari after a few seconds. I think the javascript processor load may be too high, the screen blacks out and Safari exits (not so gracefully) to the home screen.

SII: "Please direct your skepticism to Jonathan and Tobias."
He who quotes a thing, controls a thing. ;)

and: "..a good standards compliant person would..."
We use "quotes" here to indicate the words of another — that's the typographic standard.

Besides which, as pointed out pointedly to Mr. FontLab last year, the EULA without a rights table is a plug without a socket — nice, but useless to me.

I'm just back from an interview on this topic that will be published soon. Part of that interview was a question of why "font designers" won't solve this problem, when "according to 'Microsoft'", that's where the problem lies.

Instead of bumbling around with you here on the topic, I'm going off to de-foobar what 'other's' have done to web type, one more client at a time. Perhaps, instead of being the most prolific poster on this forum, or being the most fickle iconographer of all typophile time, you Sii, might consider setting out to make a PERM table (for web linking and other permissions) so we can all be proud of you, (and only you).

Cheers!

Not only do you hijack the thread but you also shoot the #1 hostage!

Thanks! ;-)

Hmmmm, there are not enough bullets for the reading public, so what other hostage can you be holding?

You're welcome!

Hmmm. What kind of permissions table would there be? For example, could you have permission to download a font for use on a terminal, but not put it on a server? So the one with the web site would have to pay, but not the user?

In a way this restores the traditional thing that the publisher pays for the font, but not the reader...

I assume this could be policed with the kind of web crawler or spider that search engines use to index sites.

Is that the kind of thing you have in mind, David?

Yes William. Plus, it's the only solution that relies entirely on 'us'.

It does not yet solve the problems that W3C's management of fonts is close to typograclastic, the OSs have stolen the X dimension from our grasps and browsers think pixels are 'whatever'! but it's our way of saying, "We love you", to the whole darn reading world.

Cheers!

To come back to the original idea:

sIFR:
This would probably very useful for the users. Though a simple "yes" or "no" would not suffice since some foundries limit the use within Flash to static text fields and/or subsetting.

What about PDF embedding?
Many users are not aware that PDFs used online might require an additional license or might be limited to non-commercial PDFs.
For example Typotheque:
A license extension is available at the cost of $350 per year that allows Typotheque fonts to be embedded in any read-only PDF document.
Or our EULA at fonts.info:
You need an additional license to produce commercial PDFs like E-Books or PDF magazines.

@font-face
This would be useful although limited to EOT at the moment. As far as I know there is not one foundry yet that would allow @font-face in general for all fonts – not even exljbris.
Adobe (T. Phinney): Our current license terms allow for EOT usage (with a URL binding). Our license terms do not allow font linking to original format font files.

Alternative technologies (like Typeface.js, Cufón)
Would be interesting to hear about those from the foundries, but current EULAs don't mention any of those technologies. But we could probably assume commercial foundries don't allow them, because they require the fonts to be converted and uploaded (without protection) to a public webserver.

Alternative technologies (like Typeface.js, Cufón)

I’ll reiterate a point I’ve already raised about these: if they get used we’ll end up with people ripping font from them and distributing those fonts. That means fonts with a foundry’s names trademarks on the outside and a bunch of degraded letters, bad OT code, and bad naming tables on the inside (similar to the bad pirate fonts that appear to have come from Flash files). And the less intelligent users out there might assume that the foundry just makes crappy fonts. Personally, I’d rather just license for @font-face and let people stick to pirating the original.

How did I miss this thread?

David, have you posted your de-foobar treatise somewhere that I may have also missed?

Looking forward to a better looking internet.

Cross-posted:
http://typophile.com/node/57934
http://typophile.com/node/56316

Do these threads intend to produce something different than Ralf's wiki page?
http://www.webfonts.info/wiki/index.php?title=Fonts_available_for_%40fon...

... if not, and for the sake of community participation, perhaps that could be used as a starting point for a Typophile wiki page.

If the only difference between the list we're trying to assemble here and the list Ralf has begun is that we're attempting to cross-index licensing nuances with web technologies like sIFR, Cufón, and FLIR, I don't think it's worth the time. @font-face is ready to go. Focus on that list.

Based on the matrix that was worked up the first time I wrote about the EULA, another matrix can be done as well. It wouldn't be perfect and we'd have to allow for disclaimers, but I think it could work.

Joe, are we going to be able to get a grid?

Also, I'm wondering if it might be easier for me to collect the data via email instead of a thread on Typophile. Just because we can't seem to keep to the original intents. ;^) What do you think? Should I ask for email addresses and then send out a mass email querying on all parts?