Font (&licensing) Question

[Lloyd Dupont]

My application is displaying multilingual text.
When the user file is loaded on another computer and the font is not found I
fallback to FontFamily.GenericSansSerif
But this font doesn't support unicode :-( at least it display the default
glyp (a rectangle) for many chineese characters.

I was thinking to use "Arial Unicode MS" as the default font.
However it's not found on all computer.
So I was thinking to embed it into my application (or better: ship it,
although that would increase the complexity of the installer).

Is it allright?
I mean such a name makes me think it's allright (lawful) to deploy this font
on all MS platform, but if I open the Font file it says:
"Digitized data copyright (C) 1993-200 Agfa Monotype Corporation. All rights
reserved. Arial(R) is a trademark of The Monotype Corporation which may be
registered in certain jurisdictions."

Any thouhgt?

 

[SharpCoderMP]

as for me i think you should ask them (monotype corp.)

i face font issues all the time but on adifferent field.
i work for a digital printing company and they have all the time
problems with fonts that are used in their clients designs.
it usually looks like this:
client buys library of fonts. then he uses one of this fonts in his
design that sends for priniting.
and then he says: guys, could you please change one word before printing?
and the answer is usually: no sir, we cant - you are using font that we
don't have.
so he says: $#%@^#%^#$^%% in that case i'll send you that font.
and the response is: please note that most of the fonts are copyrighted
- make sure that you have rights to distribute subjected font.

usually client ends up correcting his work on his own.

probably if you embed your font within your app there should be no
problem. but if you make this font avalible for others to use it
directly that's not allright
or you can always try searching for similar font that is freely
avalible. with fonts the broblem is that to create a good one you need
*alot* of work. so if you spend so much on creating one why would you
give it away freely?

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

My application is displaying multilingual text.
When the user file is loaded on another computer and the font is not found
I fallback to FontFamily.GenericSansSerif
But this font doesn't support unicode :-( at least it display the default
glyp (a rectangle) for many chineese characters.

I was thinking to use "Arial Unicode MS" as the default font.
However it's not found on all computer.
So I was thinking to embed it into my application (or better: ship it,
although that would increase the complexity of the installer).

<URL:http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/permission/default.mspx#EGAA>

 

[Lloyd Dupont]

Thanks both for your interesting answers!