Buying a Font

[dthomsen8]

Originally Posted by ktinkel

Phil Shaw, the guy whose CodeStyle site tracks which fonts are available on which platform (so you can hope to spec fonts on

The CodeStyle site is very helpful. I have been looking over the fonts, and thinking about how I specify fonts in Dreamweaver.

Suppose I would like to see how something looks in Helvetica, which is mostly a Mac font, but I am developing in Windows. Apparently I need to buy Helvetica rather than expect it somehow for free, which is the case with many Windows fonts supplied with WinXP or MS Office products.

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Setting...notype.com.URL

is a reference to the Linotype page for Helvetica Roman type.

If I buy the $22 or $29 individual font, rather than a whole family for several hundred dollars, I have questions:

1) Will I get a font called helvetica.ttf, or some variation on that?

2) If I specify "helvetica" in HTML, do I get whatever font name I just bought, for sure?

3) Suppose I specify "helvetica" but also bold, or italic, elsewhere in a style sheet, does that font I bought produce an apparent bold or italic helvetica, or should I have otherwise bought that whole family, or some part of it, to get those to appear on a web page?

Fonts can be confusing, but fortunately for forum members, we have people here who know far more than I ever will about fonts.