haccme@milton.u.washington.edu (Thomas Ridgeway) (03/02/91)
In article <1991Feb28.234316.1@euler.claremont.edu> dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) writes: [irrelevant material deleted] > > cmr is based slavishly on Monotype Modern No. 8A >and in that original, the f-ligatures were omitted in the 5pt >font to enhance readability at the smaller sizes. > >-dh I don't think I actually disagree with Don, but since we have put the word `slavish' into play, let us quote the master: [Computer Modern Typefaces, p. vii.] Another piece of luck came my way in 1984, when I learned that the original bronze patterns used to make the molds of Montype 8A were in San Francisco. For years I had been working with indirect and imprecise informa- tion about the fonts that had stimulated this work. First I had worked from photographic blowups of letterpress original pages from The Art of Computer Programming; then Richard Southall had prepared enlargements from original proofs he had located in England. At last I found the actual 80-year-old pat- terns that had generated the metal type. The present owner of these patterns, Mr. Othmar Peters, kindly consented to let me borrow them while I was prepar- ing the final draft of Computer Modern, and I learned much by measuring them with calipers. It never was my intention to make a slavish copy of any parti- cular typeface, but the chance to work with these real artifacts made it possible to understand many of the intentions of the original designer. If this brief excerpt tempts anyone to rush right out and buy his/her own copy of C.M.T. to see what other pearls of wisdom are concealed therein, then my inflicting this bit of verbiage on the poor suffering usenet bandwidth may possibly be forgiven. cheers, Tom - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Thomas Ridgeway, Director, Humanities and Arts Computing Center/NorthWest Computing Support Center * Go ahead, ask me about UnixTeX * 35 Thomson Hall, University of Washington, DR-10 Seattle, WA 98195 phone: (206)-543-4218 Internet: ridgeway@blackbox.hacc.washington.edu - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -