'We are screwed!' Fonts eat a bullet in Microsoft security patch
Windows users were surprised to find that a Microsoft security update stopped fonts from working on their PCs. Security update KB2753842 has killed certain fonts on PCs where it has been installed, rendering many of them unusable, and causing problems for designers and businesses who rely on using the types in their work. …
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Re: There are HUNDREDS of fonts that do that
And there, in a nutshell, is the reason why the other 99% of the population will never, ever, care about fonts as much as the people posting here.
Most of us can get by with only half a dozen fonts and (truly, you'll have to trust me on this, because I just know you won't believe it) cannot tell the difference between the hundreds of fonts you mention and frankly couldn't give a shit even if we could.
What we do notice, of course, is when your chosen font displays our text as a series of black "character not found" rectangles. That's *far* more annoying than Comic Sans.
So ... Arial gets my vote simply because, as another poster has already mentioned, it is most likely to actually contain a glyph for the character.
@Flingobingo
"This is true - Comic Sans may be offensive to many IT folk but it is used for good reason in education."
Comic sans hasn't necessarily drawn ire from people because of an innate dislike for the typeface - it's commonly due to the fact that it's used inappropriately in many office environments because a manager thinks it makes them appear "on the same level" and "casual" when giving orders to staff, or because people think that it will make an otherwise shit boring event seem fun and relaxed - eg. "casual brunch" with the accounting team.
"Snugglesville School Fete - cupcakes and lemonade 50c each, or three for a dollar!" = makes sense to use comic sans
"Anyone caught using the printer for personal items will be given an official warning and be charged for the use of toner!" = Don't fucking use comic sans
Hmm....doesnt bode well to patch testing prior to general release MS!
To be fair, if they have to test against Corel Draw, then the will have to test against the other 20 million packages out there.
For god's sake, use bloody GIMP or Paint.Net if your that tight you're using software from 1990's cover disks.
Err...
So MS screwed up their testing, but the end users still blindly installed a fix to a production machine, without testing.
Either they make money from these machines and should test fixes before installed, or they don't and are just willy waving about how inconvenient it is.
Latest release 8 months ago. Hardly '90s software...
My brother still uses it daily at his day job. Hard to switch when you've got years of work saved in that format.
CorelDraw is a vector illustration/page layout tool and a powerful one at that. No image editing program can be expected to do what it does. You probably don't need it. Most people don't need it any more than they need, say, a CAD program but that hardly justifies the bizarre hate its getting here.
For the love of god please
tell me <insert font I don’t like for snobbery reasons here> was affected.
I love it that people can be so upset by fonts - much cheaper than statues in public places.
For those who can't see the dangers...
Think about all the fonts that may be smuggled onto your system every time you view a video that you have downloaded (cough, cough). For subtitled media the danger is clear, but even non-subtitled media could be deliberately infected with a "poisoned" font as some video players render embedded fonts to an internal buffer when the video is loaded.
Well just gone thorugh all the fonts on my web designer GF's machine.
The update was installed on the 12th. She loves her fonts does this girl.
All of them work fine. No issues using them in Word or Photoshop.
Works fine for us ...so the problem must be you!
@Jason
Most likely you guys are using ttf fonts ?
I was trying MS Expression Design and also noticed everything simply worked, then fired up Gimp and even there everything works (though I don't like the way the Gimp requires you to type the name o/t font first) then I checked my font library.
'tis all ttf (true type; ttf) which is different from the mentioned fonts like opentype (otf), and the mentioned postscript type (pfb).
Re: Well just gone thorugh all the fonts on my web designer GF's machine.
Punchline:- she uses a Mac...
Re: Well just gone thorugh all the fonts on my web designer GF's machine.
Actually no, then she wouldn't had that problem and, she might actually have used proper postscript fonts.
Corel never got into the mac market even though they tried twice to lure over the professionals to their software.
But professionals are professionals, they use proper tools, corel never succeeded in that. But it amazes me that some of them used Macromedia products, they almost suck as bad as Corel.
Those be high quality commentards at GrahicsUnleashed.
Many Reg articles could benefit from their inclusion :)
If you really hate someone
Teach them to understand bad kerning
https://xkcd.com/1015/
So if the fonts are being patched ...
Does that mean that the Windows kernel is *all* patches now?
Re: So if the fonts are being patched ...
It has been for a decade. Weren't you told?
wtf...
For a site that calls itself <quote> THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE FOR GRAPHIC USERS </quote> it's a complete eyesore!
It looks like it was designed in Frontpage '98, and they've even changed the colours of the scrollbars...
Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should*...
Re: wtf...
"they've even changed the colours of the scrollbars"
Well, that's what you get for using an out-of-date non-standards compliant browser. :P
I just hope it's IE7 and not 6 or I'll be collecting the troops for a witch hunt!
Re: wtf...
It's actually IE9 on Windows 7...
The home page doesn't do it, but if you go to the 'About' page (http://www.unleash.com/aboutupi/) it does!
Re: wtf...
Interesting, I was under the impression that the ability to change IE's scrollbars was removed in IE8 although I'm not sure where I got that from and I am having difficulty finding any evidence of it - other than a post on stack overflow, but that's the only mention.
I must be wrong. :(
Re: wtf...
That truly is a poor website. I think they are "graphics" in the way a sign maker does "graphics". There, that's about the only nice and constructive thing I can say about it to avoid me having to press the "anonymous" button. :P
May contain Comic Sans related humour
Comic sans walks into a bar & orders a drink.
The barman says, "I'm sorry, sir, we don't serve your type in here."
/tumbleweed
@CountZero Re: "May contain Comic Sans related humour" Sorry, I did not get........
................the point of that joke.*
*All right, I know I should be ashamed of that pun, I'll get my coat.
Re: @CountZero "May contain Comic Sans related humour" Sorry, I did not get........
Can't claim its mine, it's from the book "Just My Type" interesting book too. Esp with the hate filled section on comic sans...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-My-Type-About-Fonts/dp/1846683025/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355741169&sr=8-1
I went to that site..
All I can say is "Arrggh, my eyes!".
Fonts are evil
Folks,
We're talking about fonts sent down by the devil, sent to infestate human society and bring about the end of the world.
We must trust Microsoft here. To not to is to lose faith in the system and invite Lucifer into our hearts.
If anyone know what they're doing, Microsoft does... That's why we need to trust them and believe that their programmer knew what he was doing, instead of being a corporate drone, only caring about watching the clock until home-time and spewing out whatever code allowed them to have an easy life and go home early.
I believe them. That's why I'll walk into the gas chambers if they tell me I need to because it's the best thing to do and it's in my best interest.
I have faith in the system.
It's also why Tony Smith is the sole beneficiary of my will.
Re: A very long night
Imagine being sat at a bar, alongside the four people who down-voted me. And Tony Smith.
By the end of the night, I'd be calling at least one of them, "Spock". True.
Good fonts
Times New Roman is an excellent classic typeface - designed in England for The Times. Ubiquity and association with Microsoft have not done it any favours though. A lot of people seem to think that it is some horrible Microsoft invention and not a "proper" font. It is often used to produce ugly, barely readable work by the typographically illiterate - though this includes almost everybody these days. Now if I can just work out how to type an em dash on the Nexus 7 ...
Re: Good fonts
Strictly, TNR is a clone of the original Times Roman, made by Microsoft for Windows. But you are right, it is a classic font design.
It doesn't need much skill to produce a readable document with TNR, mostly just the size on the paper and the margins. I suspect there is an element of over-rigid specification in schools: print your essay in this precise style, and the teacher can see the amount of work you have done at a glance.
I had a good many pre-Unicode fonts, and I rather liked Garamond and Palatino. I know Palatino is used in some printed books I have. But I don't see those CDs full of fonts in PC World any more.
Re: Good fonts
"Strictly, TNR is a clone of the original Times Roman, made by Microsoft for Windows."
No!
Coat - mine's the one with the tin of Cow Gum in the pocket ...
Re: Good fonts
Ah yes, Garamond was usable and Palatino for some tasks, hmm I think ours where included in MacOS. But that's long ago, can't remember exactly.
Yet to receive a reply ..
"We've asked Microsoft for a comment, but have yet to receive a reply®.
They possible can't read your fonts ...
-------
Are these those new-fangled vectored graphics fonts?
Oh, that
1. They finally fixed the font rendering exploit bug? That only took nine years. I suppose in a few years they'll start looking at their gradient rendering engine. Or NTFS.
2. Oops, the fix broke their competitors applications but their own applications were recently patched to not be harmed in advance? Who could have expected that to happen? That's odd. I am shocked.
Re: Oh, that
Ancient, long-dead software held onto by a vanishingly small old userbase is an interesting definition of "their competitors applications."
Someone still uses Quark?
We still use CorelDraw & Quark - WE ARE SCREWED!
There, fixed it for you.
I thought the world's entire stockpile of nasty fonts had been used up by the original Myspace. In magenta on a puce background. Aaah! Sweet innocence of yoof.
Re: Disdain for free stuff...I still use Cool3D occasionally for texturing and tweaking true type fonts for banners.. Just because it was free on a cover disk, didn't make it any less useful for rapidly creating sets of unique graphics. The UI was way ahead of the game in the late 90s. Horses for courses.
Perhaps this is a bit mad but
How about if there is an issue with certain fonts having an issue that may permit an exploit to be carried out
Wait for it.....
The people who produce the font should fix their side of the issue.
How crazy is that?
We had to ban several fonts which crashed 2 out of the 3 RIPs that we ran as they where doing some real nasty stuff (and don't even mention what Freehand used to do to any RIP I ever encountered)
After playing about with embedding code withing postscript fonts and fractal fonts and the like back in the 90s I can understands the MS position.
Re: Perhaps this is a bit mad but
A malicious attacker can construct a file that causes an overflow in the font parser. It's nothing about fixing known fonts. This is a security vulnerability.
Re: Perhaps this is a bit mad but
Ah those memories. Unfortunately maker of freehand overtook adobe.
let me just check the fonts are still working on linux
.... yep
Re: let me just check the fonts are still working on linux
Yes, and don't you just love ncurses :-)
Re: let me just check the fonts are still working on linux
There are fonts on Linux?
You *should* install this patch
The issue is that someone malicious could create a specially structured OpenType font file (using Adobe Compact Font Format [CFF or Type 2] font outlines - OTF can contain either CFF or TrueType outlines), presumably where some field indicates a larger size than it should. They can then use that file from a web page, for example with Web Open Font Format (WOFF) download. It doesn't have to be a genuine font, it could be used for one letter on the page, all that matters is that the browser tries to render it.
Because this only affects the Adobe CFF parser, any bugs won't affect most fonts on most people's systems - the Windows- and Office-supplied fonts are either TrueType or OpenType using TrueType outlines. However, most graphics professionals use one or more OpenType fonts, for their advanced features. The fonts using advanced OpenType features usually use CFF outlines rather than TrueType.
Writing one's wrongs?
With fonts like that, who needs enemies?
Isn't the bigger story here they still make Corel Draw? I thought that died decades ago.
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