tomczak@harvard.ARPA (Bill Tomczak) (10/26/85)
Someone recently posted the supposedly wonderful Boston font
to net.sources.mac. This being one of my major interests in
the mac, I, of course, immediately installed it on my mac to
try it out. I was pretty disappointed. How are we defining
letter quality here? As far as I'm concerned, the quality I
can get out of a judicious use of New York or Geneva is much
better than anything I could produce with Boston.
Is there something I don't know about that I should know? I
would be interested in hearing others comments. As always,
please send e-mail and if there is enough interest I'll post.
bill tomczak@harvard.{HARVARD.EDU, UUCP}hal@ecsvax.UUCP (Hal Hunnicutt) (10/28/85)
I have experienced problems using the recently posted and much acclaimed Boston font. When I tried to put a quote in a paper by putting in an extra set of rulers and indenting the quote an inch to set it off, the printout messed up when it began printing the text that followed the quote. MacWrite began putting about 1 1/2 inches between each word and whatever was left at the end of each line went off into limbo. I changed it to Geneva and it worked fine. Anybody had this problem? Oh well, I liked Geneva better anyway... -- "You see, Elvis can't read contracts. All Elvis knows is, no Ferrari, no more rides with the top down." --Sonny Crockett
lamy@utai.UUCP (Jean-Francois Lamy) (10/31/85)
> I have experienced problems using the recently posted and much > acclaimed Boston font Lucky you... Both versions of BinHex (the meat grinder and the big arrow) didn't like it on both tries... Would any kind soul mail it to me? -- Jean-Francois Lamy Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Departement d'informatique et de recherche operationnelle, U. de Montreal. CSNet: lamy%utai@toronto.csnet UseNet: {utzoo,ihnp4,decwrl,uw-beaver}!utcsri!utai!lamy CDN: lamy@iro.udem.cdn (lamy%iro.udem.cdn@ubc.csnet)
tomczak@harvard.ARPA (Bill Tomczak) (11/06/85)
Awhile back I asked "what's so hot about the Boston font?" I got a few responses and thought some of you might be interested in seeing them. In summary: It seems I'm making a distinction now between 'letter quality' and 'readability'. I wouldn't know how to go about testing the readability, and frankly don't know what consitutes letter quality other than my own biases and (mis)information. In general, I felt like most people agreed, more or less, with my assesment. So if anyone out there is expecting letter quality output from their image writer, be warned that the Boston font may not really satisfy you. However, it IS a nice font and it is generally agreed to be better than what comes with your Mac. It's worth a try. So, herewith, the responses and my comments.... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- >[The New York] font is really >nice, I think, but it just doesn't come out very well on the ImageWriter. >ON the LaserWriter it's just awesome, but if you print stuff in New York-12 >and Boston-10, both in high quality mode, you can see a pretty big difference >(at least I thought so enough to switch completely to Boston). Boston-9 >is also very nice. Boston-12 is just too big. Well, I tried Boston-10 and still wasn't all that impressed. I'll grant that it's a bit cleaner than New York, but not enough for me to start raving about letter quality on the imagewriter. It has quite a ways to go before calling it letter quality. I would still assert that to get letter quality you'll have to go to a laserwriter. I agree, ALL the laser fonts look great! (on the laserwriter). But we're talking about letter quality on an imagewriter. I remain unconvinced. >[Boston is] especially [good] at 12 pt. and 9pt. (if you have 18 & 24 >installed too, of course). >It is not letter quality but very readable. Serif typefaces tend to provide >more visual cues and therefore seem to be easier/faster to recognize. That >gives Boston a slight edge over Geneva. It looks a little clearer than NY >on my Imagewriter. Perhaps you were hyped about this font and got your hopes >raised too high. Which just about sums up my own thoughts. Letter quality has some very exacting standards to live up to. The readability issue is being addressed by someone designing digital fonts. I forget his name but there is an article in one of the recent MacWorlds. He developed Lucida and Pellucida for DEC VAXstation screens. If anyone wants the specific article reference, send me e-mail. >Actually, I was quite impressed with Boston font. I have told many of >my friends here about it, and am going to provide a few of them with >a copy. As far as I can tell, the printing is superior to many of the >diablo printers I've seen. > >It is sometimes even nicer than Laserwriter output, since the >Imagewriter copy looks less xeroxy ("impact" printing). > >But then again, maybe I'm not a good judge of print quality after all. Well, I can see the point. Who knows, I may find an appropriate use for this font yet. >I agree with your assessment of the Boston font. I used it for some writing >assignments but soon decided that there are better fonts available at no >cost (e.g. Geneva). > This may be a stupid question, but I hope you did install >the large sizes (18,20,24) as well. I find Boston in high >quality much more readable than Geneva and nicer than New York. >The added advantage is that in 9 and 10 point the results >correspond to elite and pica typewriter type. Of course, >this is just a personal opinion. I'm one of those who doesn't believe in stupid questions. However, I did install the larger sizes. If the previous didn't make it clear, I will state it explicitly here. I see readability as a different issue than letter quality. Are there any official definitions out there? And I *don't* mean personal opinions. I would be interested to hear what a professional typographer has to say on the subject or quotes from typography manuals/resources. Sorry for the length. It didn't seem to fit well into a yes or no kind of summary. bill tomczak@harvard.{HARVARD.EDU, UUCP}
sbm@purdue.UUCP (Steven B. Munson) (11/16/85)
There was an article in the November MacWorld about a small
company co-headed by a guy named Charles Bigelow that works in typeface
design. Bigelow is working in digital typeface design (for computer
screens and laser printers), and made some interesting comments about
rules for readability and Macintosh fonts. Here is the interesting
part of the article, copied without permission (I hope I don't get
arrested for this). I deleted the references to figures (sorry I can't
reproduce those for you, though) and the account of Bigelow's life
history until 1982.
MacWorld, November 1985, pp. 122-24:
In the digital room [at Bigelow & Holmes, the above-mentioned
company], two Bigelow and Holmes typefaces--Pellucida and Lucida--
have been digitized for computers. Pellucida is designed for
computer screens and has already been released for DEC's VAXstation
100, a bit-mapped display workstation used with VAX minicomputers
for programming and engineering applications. Bigelow and his
colleagues are now adapting the typeface to the Macintosh screen.
Lucida is the counterpart of Pellucida and is the first font family
designed especially for laser printers. Lucida is now available
for the Imagen series of laser printers, but Bigelow says it could
be implemented on Apple's LaserWriter or the Hewlett-Packard
LaserJet.
According to Bigelow, "The key to designing digital fonts is
to adhere to the principles of readability found in traditional
typeface designs while tuning the details and features of the
design to the digital medium." Bigelow explains that Macintosh
fonts are versions of traditional typefaces that were originally
designed for typesetting equipment with 1200-plus dots per inch of
resolution. But much of what is typed into computers never reaches
high-resolution printers, and the quality of such fonts falls short
on computer screens, which have much lower resolutions.
The Macintosh screen, for example, has the best resolution of
nearly any personal computer but produces only 72 dots per inch.
Because of the low screen resolution, fonts are plagued by subtle
flaws in characters caused by incomplete reproduction of pixels,
spaces between letters that cave in, and slight alterations in
consistency and harmony between the height and width of each
character. Those problems make reading text on the screen
difficult and can even cause eyestrain.
Bigelow notes that the tendency has been to minimize the
stair-stepping effect, or jaggies, of digital typefaces at the
expense of altering the underlying shape of the characters [as with
the Chicago font]. "With that approach, you end up with a face that
doesn't follow the traditional design principles because, based on
studies of the human visual system, shape recognition is more
crucial for readability than eliminating the jaggies," Bigelow
says.
Another characteristic of traditional typefaces is contrast
within characters, meaning the vertical strokes are thicker than
the horizontal strokes. Geneva, for example, is a simple sans
serif typeface, and the underlying shape of the characters is
clear. However, Geneva lacks contrast; every character in 12-point
plain text is 1 pixel wide. As a result, Geneva's texture is
insubstantial. Text doesn't automatically flow past your eye as do
high-quality typefaces that follow established design principles.
Pellucida, on the other hand, preserves the contrast found in
traditional typefaces. Pellucida in 12-point is 2 pixels wide
vertically and 1 pixel wide horizontally.
Pellucida also has simple serifs, but its designers didn't
attempt to render the more delicate wedge-shaped serif of an analog
typeface like Times Roman. New York, on the other hand, looks too
much like a traditional serif typeface. Because the digital medium
makes it difficult to render serifs gracefully, the serifs of New
York characters appear somewhat crude.
Who said MacWorld never has interesting articles? Some interesting
notes: I have always known that I didn't really like Geneva very much,
but I didn't know there was a "scientific" reason why; also, the comment
about serifs explains why the Boston font is so appealing--it has simple
(square) serifs, imitating the look of a typewriter. I don't think the
fact that all the strokes are the same width (one pixel wide) detracts
from its look, because many letter-quality printers have the same
characteristic. This may explain why so many said it gave the ImageWriter
letter-quality output; even though you can still see the dots if you
look very closely, the letters are shaped like those of a daisy-wheel
printer.
Just one other thing--I was surprised to see that, even though
Pellucida follows all the rules of readability (at least those
mentioned in the article; I'm no expert), I consider it to be kind of
ugly-looking. I guess there is a difference between readability and
good looks. I would welcome further comments; I find this intriguing
after taking for granted the fonts I see every day.
Steve Munson
sbm@Purdue.EDU
sbm@Purdue.CSNETbriand@tekig4.UUCP (Brian Diehm) (11/19/85)
In article <1087@arthur.purdue.UUCP> sbm@purdue.UUCP (Steven B. Munson) writes: > Just one other thing--I was surprised to see that, even though >Pellucida follows all the rules of readability (at least those >mentioned in the article; I'm no expert), I consider it to be kind of >ugly-looking. I guess there is a difference between readability and >good looks. I would welcome further comments; I find this intriguing >after taking for granted the fonts I see every day. Actually, the example of Pellucida does NOT follow all the rules they state. Furthermore, I thik Pellucida, at least from the examples they show in the article, is totally unreadable. Some of the specific examples of improvements actually make the silly thing harder to read. A few years ago I heard a talk by representatives of a major type-designing house in Germany. I came away convinced that the human factors associated with typeface design are complex, often counter-intuitive, and generally make the whole discipline an art form. The attitude of these people was that Donald Knuth, and the tex/metafont system, revealed the depth of their in- norance in the field. I've noticed more recently that Douglas Hofstadter (sp?) has discussed this, but has more cautiously limited himself pretty much to revealing the depth and dimensions of the problem. The impression I got from the MacWorld article was that these people are very eager and able - but they're amateurs. That doesn't mean they won't be quite successful someday, but the examples they showed and the principles they laid out are either extremely fundamental, or just plain wrong. The alternate possibility is that their work will be successful, and the very concept held by society of letter forms will evolve in their directions. I personally think the computers should evolve in our direction, not the other way around! -Brian Diehm Tektronix, Inc. (which corporation doesn't design typefaces!)