Microsoft WEFT - Online Dynamic Font Repository (from ie chat)

This came up briefly at the IE chat today:
MS Web Embedded Font Technology (WEFT) is a really cool tool that almost no one seems to know about or use. Basically - so long as you have the fonts installed - it creates .eot files of the fonts you used so they are viewable by anyone online - even without the fonts installed

For a quick example - i used the fonts VGA Rounded and Geometr706 Md BT on my website:
www.jgrant.com/grin

*here is a copy paste - not sure if it will work:

VGA Rounded Geometr 706.

Anyway - you shouldnt need those 2 fonts installed in order to see them.

When i first tried this - i couldnt believe it. How many sites only use arial,verd, tahoma, times, impact,comic sans trebuchet etc only - when in reality the whole web could be a typography heaven.

At the ie meeting i was informed it would be hard to do because of copyright issues surrounding the fonts in question.

What i wanted to re-iterate though was the idea of re-creating the most popular of all typefaces - much like Corel did to Adobe in the TTF / ATM wars.  Sure they wernt as "crisp" but they looked the same and were free.

What if - MS paid a team of designers to "clean room" design at least 100 of the most popular fonts - rename them - and make them part of an online DB of fonts that work with IE ( and IE ONLY)

So Futura Bold might = Microsoft Future Bold in DB
( user just uses Futura - IE would determine font matching to MS font)

I think opening up the world of type to the masses - especially with the advent of CSS would not only be noble, but also a killer feature for IE.

In regards to the WEFT tool itself - that should be better integrated with frontpage as well. So instead of opening weft - and answering the wizards complicated questions about "what directories you want to "allow" to have the fonts in - FP could just see what fonts your using - budle up all the .eot files - and add the requesite <style embed etc> tags into the document. 

If it REALLY really is neccesary to know the server for copywrite issues - try to make it easier to specify than it is now.
*FP would know where youre publishing too correct?

Hey Bill Hill (typography guru) what do you think?


ps - worst case scenario: how about a new Font pack with even 20 new fonts - ideally installed through winupdate

Maybe WEFT has advanced, but when I was looking into it (couple years ago -- for displaying non-English web pages), it wasn't ready for primetime. It worked, but rendering was slow. When you selected a WEFT rendered text, it was noticeably slow -- and would crash the browser at times.

Turned out, we went back to what worked. Downloading TrueType fonts -- which also a problem, as different font are encoded for different code page.

i find that everyone has broadband (at least that i know) so its more or less a non-issue

in the old days - Corel ( around the time of Corel 2!) Copeland was determined not be strongarmed by adobe for Postscript fonts - so he just ripped them off - and replicated them.

adobe was fumming mad - but all of a sudden Corel 3 came out with like 500 fonts ( unheard of at that time on PC)

i think the same sort of thing could be done now - in regards to web

"Hey did you hear the new IE supports over 500 dynamic fonts?!"

now dat would B cooool

* plus the more people used them the more theyed end up in cache