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Microsoft Discriminates Against Liberation Serif -- Claim

Summary: Somebody in the #techrights IRC channel claims that Microsoft stifles font interoperability

Can any of our readers please confirm if this is true? And if so, is it "just a coincidence" or intentional? It's clear what Microsoft would say -- pretty much the same thing is says when it wipes the MBR/all partitions upon Windows installation.



twitterI had an annoying thing happen the other day.  I tried to share with a Microsoft user, only to find out that Office 2007 displays a horrid font for Liberation Serif.Jan 14 00:01
twitterInstead of displaying the nearly identical Times New Roman or Liberation Serif, it displays some kind of win 3.1 era font.  I don't see this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Font_Comparison_-_Liberation_Serif_to_Times_New_Roman.svgJan 14 00:02
TechrightsBot-trError processing the URL: HTTP/1.0 403 ForbiddenJan 14 00:02
twitterI see something else.Jan 14 00:02
twitterWhen I looked the issue up , I found " Microsoft                                         Unicode BMP only"Jan 14 00:03
twitterhttp://www.fonts2u.com/liberation-serif-bold.fontJan 14 00:03
TechrightsBot-trTitle: Liberation Serif Bold font .::. Size~: 38.13 KBJan 14 00:03
twitterSo how's that for interoperability?  You can't cooperate with a malicious bully.  The bully will always do something nasty and blame you for the results.Jan 14 00:04
twitterOn the funny side, I also noticed that Microsoft is a big Linux user http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=social.answers.microsoft.comJan 14 00:04
TechrightsBot-trTitle: Netcraft What's That Site Running Results .::. Size~: 12.39 KBJan 14 00:04
twitter" F5's BIG-IP product is based on a network appliance (either virtual or physical), which runs F5's Traffic Management Operating System (TMOS), which runs on top of Linux." -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F5_NetworksJan 14 00:05
TechrightsBot-trTitle: F5 Networks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .::. Size~: 51.47 KBJan 14 00:05
DaemonFCtwitter, There's a word for that.....Jan 14 00:05
DaemonFC"Oops! :)"Jan 14 00:05
DaemonFCthey're so petty they'll even screw up the fonts in a document someone made without MS WordJan 14 00:06
twittermost of those kinds of screw ups are intentional.  there's no reason for Microsoft to not carry and render common free software fontsJan 14 00:07
DaemonFCYou never know what you'll get when you trade documents with an MS Office userJan 14 00:07
DaemonFCor what will happen when they go to open yoursJan 14 00:07
DaemonFCgood thing OOXML is such an open standard and always works the same way twiceJan 14 00:08
twitteryou can be sure that nothing will ever interoperate with Microsoft, not even Microsoft.Jan 14 00:08
DaemonFC:)Jan 14 00:08
DaemonFCyeah, 2010 finally supports the OOXML ISO standard, but only for readingJan 14 00:08
DaemonFCif you get a valid file in Office 2010 and save it, it uses the same broken format as Office 2007Jan 14 00:09
twitterWell, the real answer is to tell the person on the other end to just get Open Office.Jan 14 00:09
DaemonFCso even if the next Office actually spits out ISO OOXML, the first time an Office 2010 user opens and saves, it'll be screwed up againJan 14 00:09
twitterThey do a free download and install or you spend $400, and have to find a VM with Winblows on it.Jan 14 00:10
DaemonFCit's pointless to support the valid standard for import when there's nothing that can actually create a compliant fileJan 14 00:10
DaemonFCincluding their own productJan 14 00:10
DaemonFCmakes me wonder why they did itJan 14 00:10
DaemonFCI still save to Word 2000's binary formatJan 14 00:11
DaemonFCbecause it's the only way to be sure they'll open in newer versions of MS OfficeJan 14 00:12
cubezzzjust use ASCIIJan 14 00:12
twitterMicrosoft made a phoney open document format so they could pretend to meet government standards for software freedom and interoperability.Jan 14 00:12
cubezzz;-)Jan 14 00:12
twitterI use ODF for my work.Jan 14 00:12
twitteror plain text via email.Jan 14 00:12
DaemonFCIndiana says that it's acceptable for government agencies to use OOXML, ODF, or PDFJan 14 00:12
cubezzzok, sometimes I do use pdfJan 14 00:13
DaemonFCbut all you ever get from them is OOXMLJan 14 00:13
twitterwhy did they start using OOXML?Jan 14 00:13
cubezzzI've never used OOXMLJan 14 00:13
DaemonFCthe state is schizophrenicJan 14 00:13
cubezzzembrace -> extend (you are here) ->Jan 14 00:13
DaemonFCthey use OOXML, at the same time they transition their websites over to Apache on LinuxJan 14 00:13
twitterYou can be sure they get a lot of complaints.Jan 14 00:14
DaemonFCthey're also migrating to W3C compliant pages on those sitesJan 14 00:14
DaemonFCbut about half the sites haven't switched over yetJan 14 00:14
twitterYou should complain to them.Jan 14 00:14
DaemonFCso you need Internet Explorer to open half, and a compliant browser to get the compliant pages IE won't loadJan 14 00:14
DaemonFCit's a clusterfuck of Microsoft and Open SourceJan 14 00:15
DaemonFCa train wreckJan 14 00:15
twitterTell them that it is wrong to be forced to buy a $400 text editor.Jan 14 00:15
DaemonFCI don't know what they're doing, I don't think they do eitherJan 14 00:15
twitterThey might be making a mess on purpose.Jan 14 00:16
DaemonFCI have to keep a copy of IE 6 in Wine around for when I have to access some state websitesJan 14 00:16
DaemonFCit's terribleJan 14 00:16
twitterThe lesson to learn is that Microsoft does not mix.Jan 14 00:16

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