Has anyone here ever been bitten by MSFT typography issues? If you're
someone who writes primarily business-data applications, as I
usually do, probably not. But if you have ever ventured into Unicode
territory, as I did recently, and have needed to use glyphs that do not
appear in the basic system fonts, you might have encountered the problem
where your users do not have a needed font.

They might even be missing a font that MSFT documentation lists it as one
of the "default" fonts installed by the O/S. Users can delete fonts,
fonts can get corrupted, etc etc.

But you as a developer are not permitted to ship a required font with
your application (unless you have obtained a license to do so from a
commercial foundry).

Even in cases where the users already have a valid license to use the
font in question (by virtue of their having a licensed copy of the O/S)
you as a developer are not permitted to include the font with your
application, not in any way, shape, or form, now way no how, neither as
an embedded resource nor as a font in the PrivateFontsCollection.

The only legal way AFAIK to get a missing font onto a target PC is for
the user to reinstall Windows! This strikes me as a crazy situation.
Perhaps someone has a reasonable explanation for this? Or at least knows
the history behind it?

Tim Romano