🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1hpn3oINN8bi@transfer.stratus.com> mcote@celine.sw.stratus.com (Mike Cote) writes:
>
>I just got SoftKeys Key Fonts/PRO which has even more fonts than the straight
>Key Fonts package.
>
>Like was said before, there are a lot of renamed look-alikes.  There's a version
>of Palatino and one of School-Book that I find very useful.

This is not a flame directed at you, Mike, but rather at the ripoff artists
who produce these collections.

Creating a font that is identical in character appearance to an existing
type-designer's work and THEN giving it a name that is only a few characters
different from the original font (e.g. Palamino for Palatino, Optim (or
Optane in the KeyFonts Pro package, for what appears to be the same clone)
for Optima) is so close to being theft that it's not even funny.  Although
the KeyFonts fonts aren't direct clones (i.e. pirated software) of the existing
fonts, they infringe on the rights of the designer just as much. 
 
Every time KeyFonts sells one of those packages, they deprive the original
designers, their heirs, or the holders of the licenses of their royalties.

Not only that, but the work is significantly lower quality than that in the 
original fonts.  In general the letterspacing in the KeyFonts typefaces tends
to be poor, resulting in uneven, difficult to read and unprofessional final
copy.

For further discussion of the merits (or demerits) of KeyFonts and other
knockoff font collections, I refer you to articles posted in comp.fonts
this past November (sorry, can't be more specific from memory).

Feel free to flame back--and yes, I recognize that budgets for "real" fonts
(i.e. Adobe quality and price!) can be tight--by email; direct followups
to comp.fonts.

Tim Jarrett (toj8j@fermi.clas.virginia.edu)
.