Core fonts for the Web was a project begun by Microsoft in 1996 to make a standard pack of fonts for the Internet. It was terminated in 2002.[1][2] It included the proprietary fonts Andale Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Webdings, all of them in TrueType font format packaged in executable files (".exe") for Microsoft Windows and in BinHexed Stuff-It archives (".sit.hqx") for Macintosh. These packages were published as a freeware under a proprietary license imposing some restrictions on usage and distribution.[3] They are still available from some third-party websites. The project included some of the latest TrueType versions of the fonts available in 2002. Updated versions of the fonts released in following years were not published as a freeware and are usually available only after purchasing a license or as a part of some commercial products.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Contents |
The fonts were licensed to Microsoft by Monotype Corporation or designed for Microsoft by Microsoft's own font designers or external designers. The fonts were designed to:
These design goals and the fonts' broad availability have made some of them extremely popular with web designers. However, these proprietary fonts (or some of them) are not distributed with some modern operating systems by default (e.g. in Android, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris or some Symbian versions)[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] and they are substituted by other fonts (e.g. by free software fonts, such as Liberation fonts, Ghostscript fonts,[20] Droid fonts, DejaVu fonts and others). All of these fonts in their latest versions are installed by default in latest versions of Mac OS X (e.g. Mac OS X 10.4 and newer), but older versions of Mac OS X did not install some of them by default (e.g. Andale Mono, Impact) and old versions of Mac OS also did not include many of them (e.g. Arial).[4][21][22] Some of these fonts are also not installed by default in iOS (e.g. Andale Mono, Comic Sans MS, Impact, Webdings).[23]
While the project has formally ended, the benefits of using broadly available fonts remain: to increase the likelihood that content will be displayed in chosen font or in a metric-compatible alternative. In addition to the Core fonts for the Web, some newer fonts, such as those packaged with Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org or other software could form a new canon of core fonts. Broader web browser adoption of the web fonts specification may ultimately render the notion of core fonts obsolete by allowing the real-time downloading and display of specific fonts.
The project was terminated in August 2002, allegedly due to frequent EULA violations. A Microsoft spokesman declared in 2002 that "Microsoft has also found that the downloads were being abused — repackaged, modified and shipped with commercial products in violation of the EULA." "Most users who wanted the fonts have downloaded them already."[1][24][25] However, that same EULA allows redistribution if the packages are kept in their original format (.exe or .sit.hqx) and original filenames (e.g. times32.exe) and not used to add value to commercial products.[3][26] As a result, these packages are still available for download on third-party websites under the terms of the original web fonts end user license agreement.
The EULA referenced below also requires[27] that a copy be applied to transferees. The EULA is therefore directly linked to on, for example, the documentation page for the Sourceforge "corefonts" download package.[28] If a third party offering the fonts for download does not offer a copy of the EULA, the legal status of such a download is questionable. However, a copy of the EULA is obtainable via the FAQ maintained on Microsoft's typography website and from some other third-party websites.[2][3][26]
For Windows, the fonts are provided as self-extracting executables (.exe); each includes an embedded cabinet file that contains a font file in TrueType format (.ttf). For the Macintosh, the files are provided as BinHexed Stuff-It archives (.sit.hqx). It is not allowed to rename, edit or create any derivative works from the executables (e.g. arial32.exe) or archives (Arial.sit.hqx), other than subsetting when embedding them in documents.[3][26] The fonts can be installed and used on non-Windows or non-Macintosh operating systems, so long as they are distributed in original form (original .exe files or .sit.hqx files) and with original name (e.g. arial32.exe). A cabinet file can be extracted in end-user's system with an appropriate software, if such a software is available.
The latest fonts versions that were available from Microsoft's Core fonts for the Web project were 2.x (e.g. 2.82 for Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New for MS Windows[29]), published in 2000. Later versions (such as version 3 or version 5 with many new characters) were not available from this project. A Microsoft spokesman declared in 2002 that members of the open source community "will have to find different sources for updated fonts… Although the EULA did not restrict the fonts to just Windows and Mac OS they were only ever available as Windows .exe's and Mac archive files."[1]
Even though the fonts are available from some third-party web sites (such as an anonymous SourceForge project) and are included with Mac OS, Håkon Wium Lie (Chief technical officer of Opera Software) cited the cancellation of the project as an example of Microsoft resisting interoperability.[30]
In July 2007, Apple announced that it had renewed its licensing agreement with Microsoft for the use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts.[4][5][6][31][32]
The TrueType core fonts for the Web project included the following files under a proprietary license:[29][33]
| Filename | Name | Variants | Latest font's version available from Microsoft's Core fonts for the Web project | Copyright[9] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| arial32.exe | Arial for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.82 | Monotype Corporation |
| Arial.sit.hqx | Arial for Apple Mac OS | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.90 | Monotype Corporation |
| courie32.exe | Courier New for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.82 | Monotype Corporation |
| CourierNew.sit.hqx | Courier New for Apple Mac OS | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.61 | Monotype Corporation |
| times32.exe | Times New Roman for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.82 | Monotype Corporation |
| TimesNew.sit.hqx | Times New Roman for Apple Mac OS | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.91 | Monotype Corporation |
| arialb32.exe | Arial Black for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | extra bold | version 2.35 | Monotype Corporation |
| ariblk.exe | Arial Black for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 | extra bold | version 2.20 | Monotype Corporation |
| ArialBlack.sit.hqx | Arial Black for Apple Mac OS | extra bold | version 2.35 | Monotype Corporation |
| andale32.exe | Andale Mono for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular | version 2.00 | Monotype Corporation |
| mtcom.exe | Monotype.com for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 (later versions released as Andale Mono) |
regular | version 1.10 | Monotype Corporation |
| andalemono.sit.hqx | Andale Mono for Apple Mac OS | regular | version 2.00 | Monotype Corporation |
| comic32.exe | Comic Sans MS for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular, bold | version 2.10 | Microsoft Corporation |
| comic.exe | Comic Sans MS for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 | regular, bold | version 1.20 | Microsoft Corporation |
| ComicSans.sit.hqx | Comic Sans MS for Apple Mac OS | regular, bold | version 2.10 | Microsoft Corporation |
| impact32.exe | Impact for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular | version 2.35 | Monotype Corporation |
| impact.exe | Impact for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 | regular | version 2.20 | Monotype Corporation |
| Impact.sit.hqx | Impact for Apple Mac OS | regular | version 2.35 | Monotype Corporation |
| georgi32.exe | Georgia for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.05 | Microsoft Corporation |
| georgia.exe | Georgia for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 1.00 | Microsoft Corporation |
| Georgia.sit.hqx | Georgia for Apple Mac OS | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.05 | Microsoft Corporation |
| trebuc32.exe | Trebuchet MS for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 1.22 | Microsoft Corporation |
| trebuc.exe | Trebuchet MS for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 1.00 | Microsoft Corporation |
| Trebuchet.sit.hqx | Trebuchet MS for Apple Mac OS | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 1.15 | Microsoft Corporation |
| verdan32.exe | Verdana for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.35 | Microsoft Corporation |
| verdana.exe | Verdana for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 1.01 | Microsoft Corporation |
| Verdana.sit.hqx | Verdana for Apple Mac OS | regular, bold, italic, bold italic | version 2.35 | Microsoft Corporation |
| webdin32.exe | Webdings for Windows 9x, NT and Windows 2000 | symbol | version 1.03 | Microsoft Corporation |
| webdings.exe | Webdings for Windows 3.1 and 3.11 | symbol | version 1.01 | Microsoft Corporation |
In Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft introduced ClearType Font Collection, which consists of 6 font families: Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel. Version 1 of the fonts can be found in Microsoft's free Office 2007 viewers and converters, while version 5.00 of the fonts are shipped with Vista. However, these fonts are not widely used on web sites or widely accepted as successors of Core fonts for the Web.
Cariadings, the only Symbol encoded font in the ClearType Font Collection, was initially announced to be available with Vista,[34] but is unavailable in the final Vista release.[35] The font is available commercially from Ascender for $20.