[9.7] What if I need to use a font that the user may not have?

Macintosh bitmap fonts may be placed in a resource file and opened with OpenXLib or OpenResFile to allow your movie to use them. Alternatively, you can provide the fonts separately and ask the user to place them in their Extensions or Fonts folder before running your movie.

[Windows **** ?]

In all cases, care must be taken over copyright issues. Both bitmap and outline fonts remain in the copyright of their creators. If you wish to include font files with your movie, you must negotiate the right to do so with the copyright owner.

There are three ways to circumvent this:

  1. use only fonts you've designed yourself<
  2. use freeware fonts whose authors place no restrictions on distributing them
  3. use pictures instead.

The appearance of the letters of a font is not copyright, only the font itself. If you convert text into a bitmap picture, the picture may be freely distributed. This also allows you to nicely anti-alias (that is, smooth out the jagged edges of) the letters, if your pict is at higher than 1-bit resolution. The downside, of course, is that the text ceases to be editable, and your file size and possibly memory requirements will increase.