Someone asked me a semi-bizarre question today: the new fonts which are in Office 2007 and Windows Vista, especially Calibri (which, I must say, I think looks great)…
Can they be installed on older versions of Windows or Office?
I had never really appreciated all the work that goes into generating a decent font, including getting cross-industry support for stuff like building it into printer ROMs etc. It turns out there’s a whole Typography research group within Microsoft – if you’re interested in finding out anything more about fonts, I’m sure you’ll get it there…
Anyway, the answer to the question is two-fold…
- The Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and Powerpoint 2007 File Formats is freely available for Office XP and Office 2003, and includes not only the ability to read and edit Office 2007 format documents, but also the following fonts…
- Calibri
- Cambria
- Candara
- Consolas
- Constantia
- Corbel
- Otherwise, it seems the fonts can be licensed from Ascender Corporation if they’re designed to be used somewhere else (eg on a different platform, different application suite etc).
