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Font Folio 10
Under the title "Font Folio 10: Pay More For Less", Bill Troop laments Adobe's 2499 USD Font Folio 10 release in 2003. Bill starts this way: "According to the press release for Adobe's Font Folio "Open Type Edition", the new edition can be obtained as an upgrade for existing owners of Font Folio 8 or 9, for merely $2,499. What does this upgrade offer? Multi-platform and multi-lingual functionality, as well as wonderful tricks such as expanded glyph sets and optical weights. So far, so good." He then lists the four problems with this release. - Problem No. 1 is the non-standardized feature set of OT fonts. Only a very small number of the included fonts offer expanded glyph sets and optical weights. The user expecting to find Bauer Bodoni or Garamond No. 3 with additional ligature support will be disappointed. Non standard charactersets constitute a recipe for customer confusion.
- Problem No. 2 is that the entire Berthold library has been removed since FF 9.
- Problem No. 3 is no multiple masters, which Adobe just stopped selling.
- Problem No. 4 is that at the core of this "upgrade" transaction between Adobe and its existing Font Folio licensees lies another devaluing of the product already owned by customers. As an owner of Font Folio 8, Adobe offers to charge me $2,499 for a font license that is more restrictive than what I already have. Now only the Adobe "originals" ship with an editable embedding license, while all the Agfa, ITC, Linotype and Monotype fonts have new licensing which permits just read-only embedding. And this is now technologically enforceable. I can't help but wonder about the reaction of major advertising agencies and service bureaus when they find out that they have the privilege of paying for their font licensing to be more restrictive. I think they will keep on using Type 1.
Bill goes on to say: "Years ago I wrote on the OT list at length about the evils of digital signatures in fonts. It is simply a new copy protection ploy, and as everyone has known since the mid-1980s, copy protection = no sales. Supporters argue that the primary purpose of dig sigs is to help customers by allowing them to validate the "integrity" of fonts. Indeed? Vive l'Open Type!"
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EXTERNAL LINKS
Font Folio 10
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
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INTERNAL LINKS
David and Goliath ⦿
Garalde or Garamond typefaces ⦿
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