Tom 7 Radar: Public Service Announcement

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Public Service Announcement (11 Feb 2002 at 22:07)

A few weeks ago some dude named Paul F Stack representing Agfa Monotype and the International Typeface Corporation threatened to sue me over a program I made five years ago called embed. This program lets you change a flag in TTF files that says whether you can embed the fonts in your word processing documents. (If the flag is set, then you need to copy the font along with the document.)

He claimed something vague about Copyright infringement. Of course, this is totally retarded since I made the program for use with my own fonts and I have nothing to do with Monotype or ITC (except perhaps for competing with them). I wanted to give other freeware font developers access to the tool as well...

Anyway, I am not particularly worried since he hasn't explained himself any further after my reply (apparently Stack is somewhat notorious as a windy font cop). If necessary, I suppose I can get my university to help me out. I just wanted to let everyone know about the program and the threats since I really despise legal bullying, especially with regard to intellectual property. If you do too, why not grab a copy of the program and source, and share it with a friend? (But don't use it to violate your font licenses. Just download free fonts instead...!)

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Jason Scheirer (hsa250.pool009.at001.earthlink.n) – 02.12.02 19:46:08

Should we start some sort of embed.c mirror project? =)

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Tom 7 (user-uivenuo.dsl.mindspring.com) – 02.12.02 23:57:25

Feel free... maybe it's a good lesson to teach those who like to threaten legal action.

In this case, the software is so embarassingly trivial that it seems pretty sad to treat it like something illegal... but there you have it. Copyright law is crazy.

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Anonymous (roc-24-24-34-10.rochester.rr.com) – 02.21.02 10:22:58

Very cool utility! Thanks!

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hansel (dhcp065-024-066-224.columbus.rr.com) – 01.27.03 06:54:02

hey tom! thanks for the little program.
very interested in your embed tool.
i have created some cool pixel fonts.

but no luck running 'embed'.
doesnt run at all in win xp.
tried it on win98se machine and as soon as i type
anything on the command line...i get an error message.
"This MS_DOS program has terminated....."

any further tips are appreciated.

relaxzoolander@hotmail.com

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Tom 7 (h-69-3-248-16.phlapafg.covad.net) – 02.03.03 20:40:49

You can't run it by double-clicking an icon; you have to start up a command prompt (MS-DOS prompt) and run it from there. You can do this by going start...run... "cmd" (win xp) or "command" (win98). Then you should cd to the directory where the program is (the font has to be there too), and run it. ie:

cd \downloads\embed\
embed tomsnr.ttf

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