Core fonts for the Web web fonts

The Microsoft Core fonts for the Web included Andale Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Webdings as TrueType fonts. Though Microsoft no longer distributes these fonts, the old versions may still be redistributed freely. However, the EULA specifies that the fonts may not be modified in any way.

But wouldn't it be fun to use them as @font-face web fonts? But sadly the original, redistributable, format is only either .exe or .sit.hqx files...

With sufficient usage of JavaScript, random HTML5 features (blob URLs in dynamically generated stylesheet rules) and emscripten-compiled cabextract, anything is possible.

Why?

Why not?

Demo

http://bburky.com/Core-fonts-for-the-Web-web-fonts/demo.html

This downloads comic32.exe via XHR and then the emscripten-compiled cabextract extracts a TTF font. A CSS rule is dynamically inserted to use the font via @font-face.

Compiling cabextract

You must have emscripten installed.

1. Download cabextract 1.4.

   wget http://www.cabextract.org.uk/cabextract-1.4.tar.gz

2. Compile cabextract using emscripten.

   emconfigure ./configure
   emmake make
   emcc cabextract.o md5.o libmspack.a  mktime.o fnmatch.o -o cabextract.js

TODO: Recompile cabextract with optimization. Maybe use libmspack directly instead of cabextract.

License

This project is GPL licensed because it incorporates a compiled copy of cabextract which is also GPL licensed.

The fonts are licensed under Microsoft's EULA.