Ten Mincho – Great font and ugly Adobe
I recently stumbled upon a very interesting article by Ken Lunde (well known from CJKV Information Processing book) on a new typeface for Japanese called Ten Mincho, designed by Ryoko Nishizuka and Robert Slimbach. Reading that the Kanji and Roman part is well balanced, and the later one designed by Robert Slimbach, I was very tempted to get these fonts for my own publications and reports. But well, not with Adobe 🙁
From the Ten Mincho Blog
The fonts are available at TypeKit, but a detailed study of the license terms and EULA gave me to cold shivers:
These are not perpetual licenses. You won’t have direct access to the font files, so you will need to keep the Creative Cloud application running in order to keep using the Marketplace fonts you’ve synced.
A few things to know about fonts from Marketplace
So may I repeat:
- You pay for the fonts but you can only use them while running Creative Cloud.
- You have no way to use the fonts with any other application.
- Don’t even think about using the fonts on Linux with TeX.
- We can remove these fonts at our free will from your library, that is not perpetual license.
Also when you purchase the fonts you are warned in the last step that:
All sales are final. Sorry, no refunds. Please contact us if you have any questions before purchasing.
So not only can you not use the fonts you purchased freely, you also cannot ask for reimbursement.
Adobe, that is a shame.
Yes, a shame.
PS a suggestion. Should this edit be made:
So not only can you use the fonts you purchased freely
->
So not only can you not use the fonts you purchased freely
Thanks, fixed.
Hi there. I’m Typekit’s business manager. Ten Mincho (and its Latin companion, Ten Oldstyle) are available for any Typekit subscriber to use at no additional cost. They are both part of the Typekit library that comes with a paid subscription to Typekit and most Creative Cloud subscriptions. (Typekit is included with most CC plans.)
Fonts synced to your desktop via Typekit are effectively installed in your desktop OS — available to use in most applications, Adobe or otherwise. You can use them to publish documents (e.g. PDFs), and as web fonts.
You’ve quoted help text for Typekit Marketplace, which is a way for those without a paid subscription to purchase access to fonts that paid subscribers get. (It’s also a way for anyone to purchase fonts unavailable in the Full Library.) Yes, it has some restrictions that one won’t find with a typical desktop license, but the Typekit terms of use are quite similar to Adobe’s font EULA with regard to publishing options — and Typekit also includes web use.
Typekit is a subscription service, so it’s fundamentally different than a traditional perpetual license. It’s great for lots of people, but not for everyone. We are planning on making Ten Mincho available with a traditional EULA in the near future. My advice to those subscribing to Creative Cloud is to try it out, since it’s part of the subscription. Anyone who prefers a standard, perpetual desktop license should be able to get it that way eventually.
Hi Christopher,
thanks for your comment. Yes I am aware that the font is available for CC paid subscribers. The problem is that people without it, nor with any CC application (in particular no Windows or Mac OS) have not chance to use the fonts.
I am member of the Japanese TeX Development team and we try to make high quality Japanese fonts (commercial and non-commercial) usable for users of TeX. That is most Morisawa, HIragino, Kozuka etc fonts can be used as long as they are purchased/installed.
Unfortunately, Ten Mincho as it is now only in subscriptions service, cannot be supported.
Fortunately Ken sent me a tweet saying that as soon as technical details are cleared the fonts will be available as OTC. Looking forward to it.
All the best
Norbert