01.14.11
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. █
| I 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 | |
| Instead 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.svg | Jan 14 00:02 | |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Error processing the URL: HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden | Jan 14 00:02 |
| I see something else. | Jan 14 00:02 | |
| When I looked the issue up , I found ” Microsoft Unicode BMP only” | Jan 14 00:03 | |
| http://www.fonts2u.com/liberation-serif-bold.font | Jan 14 00:03 | |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: Liberation Serif Bold font .::. Size~: 38.13 KB | Jan 14 00:03 |
| So 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 | |
| On the funny side, I also noticed that Microsoft is a big Linux user http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=social.answers.microsoft.com | Jan 14 00:04 | |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: Netcraft What’s That Site Running Results .::. Size~: 12.39 KB | Jan 14 00:04 |
| ” 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_Networks | Jan 14 00:05 | |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: F5 Networks – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .::. Size~: 51.47 KB | Jan 14 00:05 |
| DaemonFC | twitter, There’s a word for that….. | Jan 14 00:05 |
| DaemonFC | “Oops! :)” | Jan 14 00:05 |
| DaemonFC | they’re so petty they’ll even screw up the fonts in a document someone made without MS Word | Jan 14 00:06 |
| most of those kinds of screw ups are intentional. there’s no reason for Microsoft to not carry and render common free software fonts | Jan 14 00:07 | |
| DaemonFC | You never know what you’ll get when you trade documents with an MS Office user | Jan 14 00:07 |
| DaemonFC | or what will happen when they go to open yours | Jan 14 00:07 |
| DaemonFC | good thing OOXML is such an open standard and always works the same way twice | Jan 14 00:08 |
| you can be sure that nothing will ever interoperate with Microsoft, not even Microsoft. | Jan 14 00:08 | |
| DaemonFC |  |
Jan 14 00:08 |
| DaemonFC | yeah, 2010 finally supports the OOXML ISO standard, but only for reading | Jan 14 00:08 |
| DaemonFC | if you get a valid file in Office 2010 and save it, it uses the same broken format as Office 2007 | Jan 14 00:09 |
| Well, the real answer is to tell the person on the other end to just get Open Office. | Jan 14 00:09 | |
| DaemonFC | so 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 again | Jan 14 00:09 |
| They do a free download and install or you spend $400, and have to find a VM with Winblows on it. | Jan 14 00:10 | |
| DaemonFC | it’s pointless to support the valid standard for import when there’s nothing that can actually create a compliant file | Jan 14 00:10 |
| DaemonFC | including their own product | Jan 14 00:10 |
| DaemonFC | makes me wonder why they did it | Jan 14 00:10 |
| DaemonFC | I still save to Word 2000′s binary format | Jan 14 00:11 |
| DaemonFC | because it’s the only way to be sure they’ll open in newer versions of MS Office | Jan 14 00:12 |
| cubezzz | just use ASCII | Jan 14 00:12 |
| Microsoft 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 |
| I use ODF for my work. | Jan 14 00:12 | |
| or plain text via email. | Jan 14 00:12 | |
| DaemonFC | Indiana says that it’s acceptable for government agencies to use OOXML, ODF, or PDF | Jan 14 00:12 |
| cubezzz | ok, sometimes I do use pdf | Jan 14 00:13 |
| DaemonFC | but all you ever get from them is OOXML | Jan 14 00:13 |
| why did they start using OOXML? | Jan 14 00:13 | |
| cubezzz | I’ve never used OOXML | Jan 14 00:13 |
| DaemonFC | the state is schizophrenic | Jan 14 00:13 |
| cubezzz | embrace -> extend (you are here) -> | Jan 14 00:13 |
| DaemonFC | they use OOXML, at the same time they transition their websites over to Apache on Linux | Jan 14 00:13 |
| You can be sure they get a lot of complaints. | Jan 14 00:14 | |
| DaemonFC | they’re also migrating to W3C compliant pages on those sites | Jan 14 00:14 |
| DaemonFC | but about half the sites haven’t switched over yet | Jan 14 00:14 |
| You should complain to them. | Jan 14 00:14 | |
| DaemonFC | so you need Internet Explorer to open half, and a compliant browser to get the compliant pages IE won’t load | Jan 14 00:14 |
| DaemonFC | it’s a clusterfuck of Microsoft and Open Source | Jan 14 00:15 |
| DaemonFC | a train wreck | Jan 14 00:15 |
| Tell them that it is wrong to be forced to buy a $400 text editor. | Jan 14 00:15 | |
| DaemonFC | I don’t know what they’re doing, I don’t think they do either | Jan 14 00:15 |
| They might be making a mess on purpose. | Jan 14 00:16 | |
| DaemonFC | I have to keep a copy of IE 6 in Wine around for when I have to access some state websites | Jan 14 00:16 |
| DaemonFC | it’s terrible | Jan 14 00:16 |
| The lesson to learn is that Microsoft does not mix. | Jan 14 00:16 |
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