Ascender Corp., which specializes in multilingual and custom font development, will offer PostScript Type 1 versions of several Web fonts, including Georgia, Tahoma, Verdana, Comic Sans, Nina and Trebuchet, which were only available previously in TrueType format.

Ascender also will offer Windows core fonts and the multilingual fonts Microsoft Corp. currently supplies in the TrueType format.

Although this is not the first time that users have become able to license fonts without buying a Microsoft product, it is the first time Microsoft has licensed these fonts to a font development and licensing firm, said David Kaefer, director of business development in Microsoft's intellectual property licensing group.

"We did this because it's becoming more and more important for Microsoft's customers to have these fonts tailored to their needs, environments and devices, and be able to use them on platforms other than Microsoft's," he said.

The deal is especially appealing to designers, creative professionals and publishers, who have long preferred the PostScript Type 1 format over the TrueType format, said Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst at JupiterResearch of Jupitermedia Corp., based in New York. It's especially convenient for design shops, which often have PostScript and PDF workflows that demand Type 1 format, he said.

Software and hardware developers, which often use fonts in their products, can use the fonts to achieve Windows compatibility. Others may need a font with multilingual characters for specific geographic markets. Still others may want fonts that look good on screens of varying sizes, such as mobile phones, PDAs or digital TVs.

Enterprises of all types also can take advantage of the availability of fonts, especially those requiring fonts for use in non-Windows environments. Licensing fonts in this way allows all users to have the same basic set of fonts. "That helps with document compatibility and eliminates issues such as pages reflowing, because not everyone has the same set of fonts on their workstations," said Bill Davis, vice president of marketing at Ascender of Elk Grove Village, Ill.

For those with specific needs, Ascender also has the capability to customize any Microsoft font by changing, combining or extending the character set.

"If they wanted a typeface in Greek and Cyrillic and it wasn't available, we could do that," Davis said. "In many cases, we're just paring down a font that might have a lot of multilingual character sets to just a certain section that the customer wants."

With this announcement, Microsoft continues on the path of licensing its intellectual property. In addition to announcing the IP licensing agreement with Ascender, Microsoft recently has forged deals with other companies.

Inrix Inc. of Redmond, Wash. is licensing predictive real-time traffic technology from Microsoft Research to deliver next-generation traffic information services. In addition, hardware vendors including D-Link Corp., BridgeCo AG, Lexar Media Inc., I-O Data Device Inc., GoVideo and SMC Networks Inc. have licensed intellectual property from Microsoft to increase the functionality of products in the home wireless networking market.

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