Webfont options

TPTQ Arabic offers two different ways of using fonts on the web. TPTQ Arabic Webfont service is the simplest option, ready to use in minutes. Clients receive CSS code for using fonts online, and manage their project via TPTQ Arabic online account. Actual font files are hosted on a remote network of servers (CDN), and clients don't have direct access to the files. This removes the complexity of serving the right font formats to the right browser. With the Webfont service, clients receive 500MB of free font bandwidth per months. If the website exceeds this limit, clients will pay for the extra bandwidth. In our experience, 97% of websites never exceed the free allocated bandwidth limit. If you are not certain how much traffic your website generated, you can always use the Free Webfont trial licence to get some data about your website's font use.

Read more about Webfont service (and watch the demo video).

For very large website we offer another option - Self-hosting webfont licence. This is a more costly webfont licence, where the client manages the assets and has a full control over the files. It requires some programming skills as the fonts files will be installed on your own server, following our instructions. You can choose from two implementation methods, either using PHP scripts, or HTTP referrer script. Both ways are safe and reliable, and prevent fonts from being copied casually. Self-hosting license fee is one time cost, there are no additional monthly or yearly annual charges.

Do you allow self-hosting of webfonts?

Yes, we do.

While in most cases we recommend using TPTQ Arabic webfont service, some clients require self-hosting of font files on web servers, which we allow provided the fonts are installed following special instructions. You will need to acquire a Server Licence.

Font Subsetting

To make the webfont files as small as possible, we remove some inaccessible glyphs, and users can specify languages to support. Licensed fonts can use as many as 5 languages, trial licences work with a single language. You can also specify custom sets, and preview the glyph set directly. Besides the letters needed to render the specific languages, we add following glyphs automatically to every language: !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@[\]_{|}†¢£§•®©™¥¿¡–—“”‘’¤‹›‰€«» ‹›

Canceling monthly subscription

If you'd like to cancel the monthly webfonts subscription, simply log in to your account, go to My Webfonts, and either Disable, or Delete the active project. Alternatively, you can keep it Active, setting the Monthly Budget to 0 Euro (in Stats).

Extra bandwidth

When reaching the limit of free 500MB per month, you will receive an invoice at the end of the month for the bandwidth that go over the free limit. There is currently no way to pre-pay the bandwidth, you receive an invoice after exceeding the limit.

You will be asked to pay by a credit card for the first monthly payment, and future extra bandwidth payments will automatically charge your credit card.

Text renders in Caps only, what to do?

TPTQ Arabic webfont system offers a possibility to apply Small Caps replacing the standard lower case letters with true small capitals. Sometimes people accidentally turn this feature on, which results in seeing all capital text. You can turn the Small Caps on and off at any time directly in your Account > Webfonts. Because we use a large network of distributed servers, changing the settings take a few hours. In some cases it may take up to 24 to update all the servers and files.

Can I change the billing address for the monthly subscription?

Yes, you can change the billing details at any time. Log in to your Account, and go to My Webfonts. Click on the tab Users, and enter the email address of the new user. The new user must have a TPTQ Arabic account with this email address. The new user will receive an email and will need to confirm the change.

Problem with anti-aliasing

A few users reported on issues with anti-aliasing of webfonts. Almost always these issues were local, and impossible to reproduce on other computers. While we don't know exactly the source of the problem, the problem seems to be caused by the OS, and not the fonts.

Using external monitors on MacOS is a possible problem, there is a bug in Snow Leopard that disables LCD font smoothing, and there is a Terminal command that fixes it. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090828224632809

This is a known Webkit bug — any text with @font-face applied will be rendered without anti-aliasing if there is a text element without anti-aliasing applied preceding it. The bug is described here: http://konstruktors.com/blog/web-design/3190-webkit-bug-anti-aliasing-for-font-face-fonts/

If you experience a similar problem, please report the specific applications and OS that you use.