Report and comment February 15, 2002 Leslie Cabarga's flap

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¶ Leslie Cabarga, an independent commercial font designer, who runs Flashfonts.com, posted this page on his web site. To quote him: FREE FONTS sites on the web are so plentiful you may wonder, "Why should anyone ever pay for a font?" Generally speaking, most Free Fonts are... drawn by amateurs, students and hobbyists. drawn by professionals, purchased at some point and then distributed free--illegally--over the web. professional, proprietary fonts that have been copied or autotraced and renamed to disguise their identities. professionally designed fonts given away by the professionals who designed them, or the companies that license them in order to promote sales. Thus, most Free Fonts are usually either poor-quality amateur fonts or stolen property being pirated. The reason for this is that the creation of a high-quality, full-character-set font is such a laborious process that those designers who make a living creating fonts simply can't afford to give their work away for free. If you ask, "What is the difference between a quality, professional font and a poor quality Free Font?" the answer is "One to two months." That is, it takes about 4-8 weeks to bring a font from rough concept to a flawless final product, properly rendered and fully kerned. At left, screen shots of bad web fonts, illustrate the difference between amateur and Free Fonts and fonts of professional quality.

The reaction

¶ The reaction on "alt.binaries.fonts" was swift and understandable. I guess Leslie must not have been aware of the work of Apostrophe, Graham Meade, Manfred Klein, Cybapee, Dieter Steffmann, Nick Curtis, and so many others, too numerous to mention. I find that hard to believe, but it appears that way. The freeware fonts produced by these artists are top of the line. They have full character sets, often with alternate characters and small caps versions. The outlines are pure and smooth as a baby's cheeks. Apostrophe has made several multiple master fonts. Dieter Steffmann is a Fraktur font expert unlike any commercial typographer I know. Manfred Klein is an artist with a capital A. The statement by Cabarga is just plainly misleading. I have found this pattern in many commercial foundries. Microsoft's list of links misses the sites of these professionals, but is quite complete when it comes to links to commercial vendors. Coincidence? I don't think so. The pattern is repeated time and again. Convenient omissions? Yes. So it is necessary to balance the scales---I hope that many people find their way to my comments, so that we can set the record straight---there are plenty of top notch original non-pirated freeware fonts out there.

Graham Meade

¶ Graham Meade speaks on alt.binaries.fonts: A couple of questions though, such as what the hell is a 'professional' designer who is selling his fonts, and making scathing remarks about freeware designers and font piracy, doing by opening someone else's fonts in a creation program. All indications from commercial developers claim this as breach of copyright and an infringement on their rights. This begs a response as it smacks of double standards and piracy on his part. His basis of theory has a grain of truth in what was intended, that being there are a number of 'developers' out there sponging off the rest with piracy and bad fonts, but he should (a) think carefully on what he is going to say. (b) not generalize regarding freeware designers (c) look carefully at his [own] work (d) check out a variety of freeware foundries (e) stop buggering around with other peoples copyright and work by illegally tampering with it (to wit, opening them up) and (f) avoid naming and displaying other people and their work. And after he has gone through all these steps (g) keep his mouth shut because he seems to like putting his foot in it.

Leslie Cabarga

¶ Leslie Cabarga replies: I deleted the link to that page (and just took it down) from my site because I decided that it would be better not to offend anyone. I don't know how to access alt. binaries.fonts or what that is. A news group? How do I dial into the smear campaign begun by that guy "Milan Zrnic" whose fonts epitomize what I was talking about? I wrote that because people had emailed me as to why my fonts were expensive when free fonts were plentiful. And then I have also had my fonts pirated so I did have a legitimate reason for having a grudge. Yet, I have had friendly relations with a few of the font designers out there so I thought better of my comments, even though as I stated, my criticisms provided direct clues to anyone designing fonts roughly who would wish to learn how to improve them. I merely had the nerve to state what all professional font designers feel. When I started going to free font sites many of them reminded me of porn sites with pop-up windows and come-ons and it just cemented my feeling that these were trashy enterprises. I wonder what the feeling would have been if instead of a criticism I'd offered lessons in how to use Fontographer and made the same observations? The writer MeG has made some good points that I didn't think of when I posted the (now removed) free fonts criticism page. For me to use 4 screen snaps of other people's letters (out of Fontographer) from their free fonts was in itself piracy. It was also insensitive of me not to realize that the same designers of those fonts might see what I'd done and be offended. And pissed. I started going around to more font sites and do now acknowledge that there are many high quality free fonts out there. And many quality sites (beyond the trashy ones). My intention was to explain to the many customers who had asked me why my fonts were not free, and I also had a grudge against all the sites that had pirated my fonts over the years. I am someone who loves to hear why my work sucks because I savor insights into how I can improve myself. So I've always assumed people are like me and will be glad to get pointers on how to improve their type. However, my criticisms were insultingly written, not constructively offerred. I regret the whole thing and apologize to the font community. Leslie Cabarga

Graham Meade again

¶ Graham Meade's reply. The apology was a brave response. The main problem is that there is a perception among people that freeware fonts are all rubbish and pirated. While this type of thing is rampant (in freeware, shareware AND commercial foundries) it is a perception that is wrong. Leslie C. mentioned things that were probably influenced by this perception. I also feel that commercial foundries unfairly slander and ignore freeware developers (whilst ripping them off with piracy in some cases), when in a number of cases, the freeware font is just as good as a commercial font. Just because people do not want to charge for a font, that does not make those fonts any less useable. THAT is what people who sell fonts have to realise. Just because you (generic, not specific) sell fonts that does not imbue a god given right to state that freeware fonts should be ignored. Also, no matter what you are told, all designers of fonts, irrespective of what they tell you, as at some time have pirated fonts, altered fonts, etc. If someone has a copy of my nine steps of font creation I posted about nine months ago, I would appreciate a reposting. This is a truth, not an assumption, nor a generalization. Graham Meade

Copyright © 2002 Luc Devroye School of Computer Science McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 luc@cs.mcgill.ca http://luc.devroye.org/index.html