laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (11/30/84)
From: Dan Mills <DBM@SU-AI.ARPA>
[reprinted from "The National Inquisitor"]
CHILD ABDUCTED BY WILD FONT
(Silicon Valley)
Nine year old Donna Marie DiAngelo was delighted when her dad brought home
a new "personal laser printer" for the DiAngelo family home computer. "With
this `productivity device' our family will have more effective printed
communication," said Hamilton ("Bud") DiAngelo to his happy household.
But the dream turned into a nightmare when little Donna Marie tried to print
out her Christmas letter to Santa. As the compact marking engine was humming
away on her text page file, Donna Marie tried to open the device to see "Where
all the little pixels go," and before the eyes of her horrified parents she was
dragged into the innards of the system by a wild font.
"It was absolutely horrible," sobbed Betty DiAngelo, "that thing just reached
right out with one of its extruders and snagged poor Donna Marie on its
wicked serifs." "Just like hauling in a fish with a gaffing hook," said Bud
DiAngelo, an avid angler in happier days. "There wasn't a thing we could
do."
The DiAngelos struggled in vain to pull Donna back into the safety of the
family den, but the sturdy font was too strong for them. Despite the
screams of the terrified child, the DiAngelos were unable to extricate Donna
Marie from the clutches of the renegade "Lucida" font. Their daughter was
sucked into the software. When police and fire department rescue squads tried
to go into the printer after Donna Marie, they were halted by an impenetrable
maze of bizarre characters, and ultimately driven back by a mind-boggling
font file format. "Those extended ASCII sets and proprietary font encodings
are real `bears'," said Captain Bert Powers of the Silicon Valley Thought
Police. Authorities are reluctant to turn off the table-top printer to analyze
Donna Marie's whereabouts in the system because, "She might still be in RAM,"
as Captain Powers explained it.
The font's co-creator, internationally famed typeface designer and Stanford
Professor Charles Bigelow, was called in as a consulting expert to help in
the rescue of Donna Marie. "The Inquisitor" asked Professor Bigelow how such
a thing could happen. "You have to understand that this is a new font, just
out of beta test," explained Prof. Bigelow. "It's a young, vigorous, husky
design, with a lot of stamina and strength. People have to be ready for its
clarity and power. It apparently overwhelmed little Donna Marie." Local
authorities asked Bigelow why tragedies like this haven't happened with
other laser printer fonts. "You have to remember," answered Bigelow, "that
most other laser fonts are just worn out veterans of obsolete analog metal
typography."
"For example," he explained, "Times Roman is 53 years old and Helvetica is
27 years old, but it's seen a lot of column inches." Most readers don't
realize it, but those weary old fonts are really past retirement, but have
been pressed back into service because of a lack of imaginative, innovative
designs for digital technology. Basically, those over-worked hot-metal typeface
designs are like a toothless old lion, arthritic with age and limp with
exhaustion. The Lucida fonts, in contrast, are full of excitement, with a rich
variety of expressions and a forceful impact for the new generation of
communicators."
As Bigelow talked, he and his partner, former free-spirit modern dancer
calligrapher Kris Holmes, were arming themselves with the tools of their
trade -- 9H mechanical pencils, drafting film, reducing glasses, digitizer
tablets, cubic splines, and bitmap editors ("In case it gets really rough --
like we meet up with the jaggies!") -- and preparing to go into the printer
controller after little Donna Marie. "We think it's the Serifed Italic that's
got her," said Bigelow, "and that alphabet can be really tough; but Kris knows
how to handle it -- after all, she learned her cursive from Lloyd (`Calligrapher
Laureate') Reynolds." With Kris Holmes leading the way, and Bigelow reciting
a Latin incantation about St. Francis of Griffo, they went off into the printer
at a 45-degree angle.
In the future, the DiAngelos plan to use only sans-serif typefaces for print
out by their younger children. "The Lucida Sans Roman seems safe enough,"
said Betty DiAngelo, "but then it's hard to know what to expect in this new
era of digital typography." And she glanced anxiously at the deceptively
innocuous looking little printer, from which occassional chanting and
muttered imprecations could still be heard.laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (12/03/84)
From: Brian Reid <reid@Glacier> Let me offer an explanation of all this, for those not in the know. Dan Mills (DBM@SU-AI) is the production manager for the Bigelow and Holmes typographic studios in San Francisco. Chuck Bigelow and Kris Holmes have recently released a new family of fonts, named Lucida. I have heard typography people around Stanford pronouncing it "looSEEduh". Lucida is the first decent font that was designed explicitly to be used with medium-resolution laser printers (e.g. 300dpi). I have seen a type sample of Lucida printed on an Imagen 8/300 on laid paper, and it is absolutely dazzling. Nary a vile blob in sight. I always knew that B&H were miracle workers, but it is nevertheless impressive to have an actual sample miracle. Based on various things that I have seen and heard, I am guessing that the story here is that Imagen has licensed Lucida from Bigelow and Holmes, and will be offering it as a 300dpi font on their various laser printer products. Not only that, but a recent edition of San Francisco Magazine named Chuck Bigelow as one of the "100 most exciting people in the San Francisco Bay Area." Pretty good judgment for a magazine set in Palatino.