ath@prosys.se (Anders Thulin) (10/26/90)
For some reason type designers began to create quite restricted type
faces. I'm thinking of faces with italics as wide as the 'roman',
and with stunted descenders instead of full. I have a notion that this
began with the introduction of the Linotype machine, although I'm not
entirely certain.
With the new methods of typesetting (optical and digital typesetting)
these restrictions seem strange and somewhat oldfashioned.
So, why are so few new type faces 'old' - why don't the latest type
faces on the market use narrow italics and full descenders?
Only inertia? Or are there other reasons?
--
Anders Thulin ath@prosys.se {uunet,mcsun}!sunic!prosys!ath
Telesoft Europe AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Swedenglenn@huxley.huxley.bitstream.com (Glenn P. Parker) (10/27/90)
> So, why are so few new type faces 'old' - why don't the latest type > faces on the market use narrow italics and full descenders? > > Only inertia? Or are there other reasons? There are plenty of Bitstream fonts that might be classified as "old" in the sense you describe, but they often get mangled by the people that use them. Probably the most common problem is that the fonts conform to restrictions in an unsophisticated preview medium, e.g. Microsoft Windows, which don't allow characters to overlap or exceed a fixed bounding box. Also, many font encoding systems don't know what to do with "alternate" characters that offer the user a set of expressive variations on a single character. Instead, people just pick the standard (most boring) version of each character and throw the rest away. I'm not even going to consider the artificially obliqued fonts the Macintosh provides. -- Glenn P. Parker glenn@bitstream.com Bitstream, Inc. uunet!huxley!glenn 215 First Street BIX: parker Cambridge, MA 02142-1270
tim@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Tim Bradshaw) (10/27/90)
>>>>> On 26 Oct 90 07:17:35 GMT, ath@prosys.se (Anders Thulin) said: > For some reason type designers began to create quite restricted type > faces. I'm thinking of faces with italics as wide as the 'roman', > and with stunted descenders instead of full. I have a notion that this > began with the introduction of the Linotype machine, although I'm not > entirely certain. Yes it was due to the linotype machine. The original linotypes could not handle kerning (in its original sense of characters overlapping via the use of kerns on the types, as well, I suspect, as kerning in the modern sense of adjusting spacing between characters). The monotype machines *could* handle this I believe but I think that linotypes were cheaper or something? > So, why are so few new type faces 'old' - why don't the latest type > faces on the market use narrow italics and full descenders? Well... I wonder what proportion of faces that one sees are actually `new' and what proportion are simply re-implemented linotype or older faces? --tim Tim Bradshaw. Internet: tim%ed.cstr@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk UUCP: ...!uunet!mcvax!ukc!cstr!tim JANET: tim@uk.ac.ed.cstr "...wizzards & inchanters..."