IS Angelina.ttf really a freeware font?

December 6, 2006 7:36 AM

I am trying to determine if a Truetype font called "Angelina" is really a free/freeware font, or if it's just been stolen from somewhere else. Any advice?

It's on just about every free font site, but there's no credit or info that I can find anywhere. And it's a very common name, so I'm not getting very far with google in tracking down a creator. Free font sites seem pretty dodgy - I'm not going to trust that it's freeware just because they have it available for download.

posted by chr1sb0y to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Just checking: you mean there's no copyright info embedded in the file itself? (e.g. when you double-click on it in Windows)
posted by winston at 7:58 AM on December 6, 2006

You could try running it through Identifont to see if the same font comes up with a different name (i.e., the name of the real, commercial font).
posted by jjg at 8:00 AM on December 6, 2006

There are oodles of handwriting fonts around because they're relatively easy to make. Angelina is close to Linotype's Feltpen but is clearly not an exact copy
posted by zadcat at 8:02 AM on December 6, 2006

ask this question in the typophile forums and you'll have a reliable answer in no time at all.
posted by krautland at 9:09 AM on December 6, 2006

"You could try running it through Identifont to see if the same font comes up with a different name (i.e., the name of the real, commercial font)."

In the US, that wouldn't necessarily mean anything. You can make a font that looks exactly like a commercial font -- font appearances aren't protected by copyright here. But the actual code is. So you can't pirate a commercial font, but you can create an exact copy of it and use that instead. Theoretically that could have happened here.

This doesn't necessarily apply outside of the US, though.
posted by litlnemo at 4:14 PM on December 6, 2006

If this cached message board post is to be believed. The answer is no. Someone named Angie (or Angelina, I guess) designed it years ago for in-house use only. She says it's owned by "a greeting card company" and should never have been released publicly.

I'm not sure about bookmarking google cached pages. If that doesn't work I found it with this search.
posted by O9scar at 11:38 AM on December 7, 2006