From: verdy_p (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Wed Jan 14 2009 - 06:16:24 CST
"Ruszlan Gaszanov" <ruszlan@ather.net> wrote:
> John H. Jenkins wrote:
>
> >I can pretty much guarantee that Apple would not go along with such a
> >scheme. Apple has no real desire to have its logo interchanged in
> >plain text. (Which leaves the question—which I cannot answer—as to
> >why we continue to include it in our fonts.)
>
> I can hardly see how Apple can prevent its logo being interchanged in plain
> text considering that it is included in all legacy Macintosh charsets. As
> long as plain text in those charsets is being interchanged, it is entirely
> up to the end users whether to interchange this particular character or not.
> If Apple feels this way about its logo, it shouldn't have encoded it in its
> OEM charsets in the first place.
I can't see why Apple would restrict users to interchange data safely using Unicode instead of its legacy 8-bit
encodings, and not be allowed to render the received character correctly, given that both the sender and the
recipient may already use a system that includes a OS licenced with the necessary fonts. What Apple is protecting
is the design of its logo, not the binary code used to represent it over the wires. Even if this logo got an
encoding, this encoding would not necessarily need to include a licence for using the distinctive glyph : Unicode
is not licencing the fonts needed for rendering any encoded abstract character, and Apple is not the owner of code
points or the data associated with it (the normative character properties).
Even the representative glyph could be hidden from the Unicode charts, or could just show a distinctive substitute
like the name of the logo in a square. Only Apple could then either design or licence fonts containing the prefered
glyph (but no Mac users would be affected, given that they already have a licence for these fonts; in addition,
Apple has allowed developers to display the characters in their printed documentation needed for the user guide of
softwares built for the Mac: the licence is part of the licence for the development tool, or part of a design test
to get the logo "built for the Macintosh" on the sold boxes of CDROM/DVD packages or keyboards, or in font packages
built for the Mac).
Apple is more concerned about the usage for something else that designating a function of the Apple computers or
OSes (there are restrictions, but this is not an absolute prohibition of use (otherwise it would be impossible for
other vendors to sell softwares made for the Macs). I think that the same is true for the Windows logo: the
condition of allowed uses are limited, but are not a complete prohibition, they are regulated by the terms of the
licence that users must respect (every other usage requires an explicit agreement and a licence).
If Apple or Microsoft did not even want even anyone to use only the terms "Apple" or "Windows" (which are generic,
except that they have a capital which is not distinctive at the begining of sentences), then nobody would even be
able to discuss about their existence (so the value of these protected trademark names would be completely void).
So I don't see what is restricting Unicode to encode a "CORPORATE APPLE LOGO" (with a representative glyph just
showing the word "APPLE" in a square or circle) or a "CORPORATE WINDOWS LOGO" (with a representative glyph just
showing "WINDOWS" in a square or circle), without more information (there may exist in the chart description some
notes stating that the actual logo is protected by copyright and should be used only on systems that have an
installed licence of the Apple or Microsoft product, and allowing others, such as the designers of alternate fonts,
or independant publishers of books or websites, to use the alternate representation that does not use any element
of the protected graphic design).
It would even be possible to replace these actual logos by the glyphs of other "similar-looking" characters (a big
open O for the Apple logo, a filled, black diamond split into four parts for the Windows logo) : these should
probably be no confusion possible given the expected usage (such as displaying the keystrokes needed to achieve a
documetned function, including in the documentation). This is quite similar to the process of substiting the
missing glyphs for rendering some characters by those fallback characters taken from compatibility mappings.
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