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Frequently Asked Questions About Fonts
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Frequently Asked Questions About Fonts
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The comp.fonts FAQ
Version 2.1.5.
August 14, 1996
Compiled by Norman Walsh
Copyright (C) 1992-95 by Norman Walsh <[email protected]>. The previous
version was 2.1.4.
Portions of the OS/2 section are Copyright (C) 1993 by David J.
Birnbaum. All rights reserved. Reproduced here by permission.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.
Subject: Table of Contents
1. General Information
1.1. Font Houses
1.2. What's the difference between all these font formats?
1.3. What about "Multiple Master" fonts?
1.4. Is there a methodology to describe and classify typefaces?
1.5. What is the "f" shaped "s" called?
1.6. What about "Colonial" Typefaces?
1.7. What is "Point Size"?
1.8. Where can I get ... fonts.
1.9. Where can I get fonts for non-Roman alphabets?
1.10. What about fonts with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) s...
1.11. How can I convert my ... font to ... format?
1.12. Are fonts copyrightable?
1.13. Typeface Protection
1.14. File Formats
1.15. Ligatures
1.16. Built-in Fonts
1.17. Glossary
1.18. Bibliography
1.19. Font Encoding Standards
1.20. PostScript
1.21. TrueType
1.22. Unicode
1.23. Can I Print Checks with the MICR Font?
1.24. Rules of Thumb
1.25. Acknowledgements
1.26. A Brief Introduction to Typography
1.27. A Brief History of Type
1.28. The Role of National Orthography in Font Design
1.29. Interesting Fonts
1.30. Pronounciation of Font Names
1.31. What is it?
1.32. Equivalent Font Names
1.33. Digital Type Design Tools
1.34. Type Design Firms
1.35. What does `lorem ipsum dolor' mean?
2. Macintosh Information
2.1. Macintosh Font formats
2.2. Frequently Requested Mac Fonts
2.3. Commercial Font Sources
2.4. Mac Font Installation
2.5. Mac Font Utilities
2.6. Making Outline Fonts
2.7. Problems and Possible Solutions
2.8. Creating Mac screen fonts
3. MS-DOS Information
3.1. Frequently Requested MS-DOS fonts
3.2. MS-DOS Font Installation
3.3. What exactly are the encodings of the DOS code pages?
3.4. MS-DOS Font Utilities
3.5. Converting fonts under MS-DOS
3.5.1. Converting Mac Type 1 fonts to MS-DOS format
3.5.2. Converting PC Type 1 and TrueType fonts to Mac format
3.5.3. Converting PC Type 1 fonts into TeX PK bitmap fonts
3.5.4. Converting TeX PK bitmaps into HP LaserJet softfonts (and vice...
3.5.5. TrueType to HP LaserJet bitmap softfonts (HACK!)
3.6. MS-DOS Screen Fonts (EGA/VGA text-mode fonts)
4. OS/2 Information
4.1. Preliminaries
4.2. Fonts under DOS
4.3. Windows
4.4. Differences between Windows and OS/2
4.5. Installation under Windows and Win-OS/2
4.6. FontSpecific PostScript Encoding
4.7. AdobeStandardEncoding
4.8. AdobeStandardEncoding under Windows (and Win-OS/2)
4.9. AdobeStandardEncoding under OS/2
4.10. Consequences for OS/2 users
4.11. Advice to the user
4.12. OS/2 2.1 and beyond
5. Unix Information
6. Sun Information
6.1. Fonts Under Open Windows
6.1.1. Does OpenWindows support Type 1 PostScript fonts?
6.1.2. Improving font rendering time
6.1.3. Making bitmap fonts for faster startup
6.1.4. Converting between font formats (convertfont, etc.)
6.1.5. Xview/OLIT fonts at 100 dpi
6.2. Where can I order F3 fonts for NeWSprint and OpenWindows?
7. NeXT Information
7.1. Tell me about NeXTstep fonts
7.2. Tell me more about NeXTstep fonts
7.3. Porting fonts to the NeXT
7.4. Font availability
7.5. Why can I only install 256 fonts on my NeXT?
8. Amiga Information
9. Atari ST/TT/Falcon Information
9.1. SpeedoGDOS
9.2. Atari File Formats
9.3. Frequently Requested Atari Fonts
10. X11 Information
10.1. Getting X11
10.2. Historical Notes about X11
10.3. X11 Font Formats
10.4. X11 Font Server
10.5. Fonts and utilities for X11
11. Utilities Information
11.1. How do I convert AFM files to PFM files
11.2. PS2PK
11.3. TeX Utilities
11.4. MFPic
11.5. fig2MF
11.6. GNU Font Utilities
11.7. Font Editors
11.8. The T1 Utilities
11.9. Where to get bitmap versions of the fonts
11.10. Converting between font formats
11.11. Getting fonts by FTP and Mail
11.12. MetaFont to PostScript Conversion
11.13. How to use Metafont fonts with Troff
11.14. PKtoBDF / MFtoBDF
11.15. PKtoPS
11.16. PKtoSFP / SFPtoPK
11.17. PostScript to MetaFont
11.18. Mac Bitmaps to BDF Format
12. Vendor Information
�
Subject: 1. General Information
Many FAQs, including this one, are available by anonymous ftp from
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The posted version of the FAQ is organized in a quasi-digest format so
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All trademarks used in this document are the trademarks of their
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Standard disclaimers apply.
Subject: 1.1. Font Houses
This section will be expanded on in the future. It contains notes about
various commercial font houses.
Adobe Systems, Inc.
===================
Adobe Systems Incorporated develops, markets, and supports computer
software products and technologies that enable users to create, display,
print, and communicate electronic documents. Adobe licenses its
technology to major computer and publishing suppliers, and markets a
line of type and application software products.
Compugraphic
============
See "Miles, Agfa Division"
designOnline(tm)
================
Home of Alphabets, Inc., designOnline is the online resource for
design. The majority of the interactivity is happening on [their]
FirstClass server, currently available by dialup and across the
Internet.
Miles, Agfa Division
====================
Compugraphic which was for a while the Compugraphic division of Agfa,
is now calling itself "Miles, Agfa Division" (yes, the Miles drug
company), since CG's off-shore parent Agfa has been absorbed by Miles.
So typographically speaking, Compugraphic, CG, Agfa, A-G ag, and Miles
all refer to the same company and font library. Their proprietary fonts
are still CG Xyz, but the name is Miles Agfa.
Quadrat Communications
======================
Quadrat Communications is a digital type foundry based in Toronto,
Ontario, Canada. [David Vereschagin] began creating and designing type
a few years ago, intrigued by the new possibilities presented by
Altsys's Fontographer software. [His] first project was the plain style
of Clear Prairie Dawn, a sans serif text face, which took three years
to complete. As well as designing [his] own faces, [he's] also
available for the creation of custom faces.
Subject: 1.2. What's the difference between all these font formats?
This question is not trivial to answer. It's analogous to asking what
the difference is between various graphics image file formats. The
short, somewhat pragmatic answer, is simply that they are different
ways of representing the same "information" and some of them will work
with your software/printer and others won't.
At one level, there are two major sorts of fonts: bitmapped and outline
(scalable). Bitmapped fonts are falling out of fashion as various
outline technologies grow in popularity and support.
Bitmapped fonts represent each character as a rectangular grid of
pixels. The bitmap for each character indicates precisely what pixels
should be on and off. Printing a bitmapped character is simply a
matter of blasting the right bits out to the printer. There are a
number of disadvantages to this approach. The bitmap represents a
particular instance of the character at a particular size and
resolution. It is very difficult to change the size, shape, or
resolution of a bitmapped character without significant loss of quality
in the image. On the other hand, it's easy to do things like shading
and filling with bitmapped characters.
Outline fonts represent each character mathematically as a series of
lines, curves, and 'hints'. When a character from an outline font is
to be printed, it must be 'rasterized' into a bitmap "on the fly".
PostScript printers, for example, do this in the print engine. If the
"engine" in the output device cannot do the rasterizing, some front end
has to do it first. Many of the disadvantages that are inherent in the
bitmapped format are not present in outline fonts at all. Because an
outline font is represented mathematically, it can be drawn at any
reasonable size. At small sizes, the font renderer is guided by the
'hints' in the font; at very small sizes, particularly on
low-resolution output devices such as screens, automatically scaled
fonts become unreadable, and hand-tuned bitmaps are a better choice (if
they are available). Additionally, because it is rasterized "on
demand," the font can be adjusted for different resolutions and 'aspect
ratios'.
Werenfried Spit adds the following remark:
Well designed fonts are not scalable. I.e. a well designed 5pt font is
not simply its 10pt counterpart 50% scaled down. (One can verify this
by blowing up some small print in a copier and compare it with large
print; or see the example for computer modern in D.E. Knuth's TeXbook.)
Although this fact has no direct implications for any of the two
methods of font representation it has an indirect one: users and word
processor designers tend to blow up their 10pt fonts to 20pt or scale
them down to 5pt given this possibility. Subtle details, but well...
LaserJet .SFP and .SFL files, TeX PK, PXL, and GF files, Macintosh
Screen Fonts, and GEM .GFX files are all examples of bitmapped font
formats.
PostScript Type 1, Type 3, and Type 5 fonts, Nimbus Q fonts, TrueType
fonts, Sun F3, MetaFont .mf files, and LaserJet .SFS files are all
examples of outline font formats.
Neither of these lists is even close to being exhaustive.
To complicate the issue further, identical formats on different
platforms are not necessarily the same. For example Type 1 fonts on
the Macintosh are not directly usable under MS-DOS or Unix, and
vice-versa.
It has been pointed out that the following description shows signs of
its age (for example, the eexec encryption has been thoroughly hacked).
I don't dispute the observation and I encourage anyone with the
knowledge and time to submit a more up to date description.
It has further been suggested that this commentary is biased toward
Kingsley/ATF. The omission of details about Bitstream (and possibly
Bauer) may be considered serious since their software lies inside many
3rd-party PostScript interpreters.
The moderators of this FAQ would gladly accept other descriptions/
explanations/viewpoints on the issues discussed in this (and every
other) section.
[Ed Note: Liam R. E. Quin supplied many changes to the following
section in an attempt to bring it up to date. Hopefully it is a better
reflection of the state of the world today (12/07/92) than it was in
earlier FAQs]
Henry Schneiker <reachable electronically?> wrote the following
description of the differences between several scalable font
technologies:
((( semi-quote )))
There has been a lot of confusion about font technologies in recent
times, especially when it comes to Type 1 versus Type 3 fonts, "hints,"
PostScript compatibility, encryption, character regularizing, kerning,
and the like.
* Encryption (eexec)
All fonts produced with Adobe's font technology are protected
through data encryption. The decryption is provided by the `eexec'
(encrypted execute) PostScript operator and, until recently, was
only present in Adobe's licensed PostScript.
Adobe has published the details of the Type 1 font format in the
`Black Book', Adobe Type 1 Font Format (version 1.1), Adobe
Systems Inc., 1990. The encryption was mainly used because of
font copyright problems; unencrypted fonts can also be used, but
these tend to use an efficient binary encoding, also in documented
the Type 1 book, and so are still not readable PostScript.
* Type 1, Type 3, and Type 5 font formats
There are generally three font formats used in Adobe PostScript
printers: Type 1, Type 3, and Type 5. Type 1 fonts are Adobe's
downloadable format. Type 3 fonts are third-party downloadable
format. Type 5 fonts are the ROM-based fonts that are part of your
printer.
There is no functional difference between a Type 1, Type 3, or
Type 5 font. A Type 3 font can do anything a Type 1 or Type 5 font
can do. The only real difference between them is where the
`BuildChar' routine comes from. For Type 1 and Type 5 fonts it's
built into the printer. For Type 3 fonts it's built into the font.
In other words, anything a Type 1 font can do a Type 3 font can
also do.
[Ed note: the reverse is not true. Type3 fonts can do things that
Type1 fonts cannot. But they aren't hinted...]
When PostScript is asked to generate a character, PostScript looks
in the font's dictionary for FontType. If FontType is 1 or 5
PostScript executes an internal routine that knows how to
interpret the font data stored in CharStrings. If FontType is 3
PostScript executes the routine BuildChar from the font's
dictionary to interpret the font data (often stored in
CharStrings).
However, each BuildChar routine is written to read data formatted
in a method convenient to the vendor. Adobe, Altsys, Bitstream, and
Kingsley/ATF all format their font data differently and, hence,
have different BuildChar routines.
[Ed note: relative hard disk efficiency of Kingsley vs. Adobe fonts
deleted on 12/07/92]
Type 5 fonts are special in that they often include hand-tuned
bitmaps for the commonly used sizes, such as 10- and 12-point.
Other sizes are generated from the outlines in normal fashion.
Don't confuse Type 1, Type 3, and Type 5 fonts with Bitstream's
Type A, Type B, Type C, and Type F. They are not the same and
serve only to confuse the issue.
* Resolution `hints'
When a character is described in outline format the outline has
unlimited resolution. If you make it ten times as big, it is just
as accurate as if it were ten times as small.
However, to be of use, we must transfer the character outline to a
sheet of paper through a device called a raster image processor
(RIP). The RIP builds the image of the character out of lots of
little squares called picture elements (pixels).
The problem is, a pixel has physical size and can be printed only
as either black or white. Look at a sheet of graph paper. Rows and
columns of little squares (think: pixels). Draw a large `O' in the
middle of the graph paper. Darken in all the squares touched by the
O. Do the darkened squares form a letter that looks like the O you
drew? This is the problem with low resolution (300 dpi). Which
pixels do you turn on and which do you leave off to most accurately
reproduce the character?
All methods of hinting strive to fit (map) the outline of a
character onto the pixel grid and produce the most
pleasing/recognizable character no matter how coarse the grid is.
[Ed note: deleted some paragraphs that are no longer true. Times
change...]
* Optical Scaling
Optical Scaling modifies the relative shape of a character to
compensate for the visual effects of changing a character's size.
As a character gets smaller, the relative thickness of strokes,
the size of serifs, the width of the character, the
inter-character spacing, and inter-line spacing should increase.
Conversely, as a character gets larger, the relative thickness,
widths, and spacing should decrease.
Contrast this with linear scaling, in which all parts of a
character get larger or smaller at the same rate, making large
characters look wide and heavy (strokes are too thick, serifs are
too big) while small characters look thin and weak.
* Kerning
As applied to PostScript fonts, kerning refers to kern pairs. A
kern pair specifies two characters (e.g., A and V) and the
distance to move the second character relative to the first. The
typical use of a kern pair is to remove excessive space between a
pair of characters. However, it may also be used to add space.
* PostScript clones
There are currently several printer manufacturers on the market
with PostScript clones. To be viable, a PostScript clone must
comply with the `red book' (PS Language Reference Manual).
In order to avoid paying royalties to Adobe, and because Adobe's
Type 1 font format was originally proprietary, many PostScript
interpreters use some other font format. Sun uses F3, and some
other vendors use Bitstream's Speedo format, for example. The
only real problem this causes is that the widths of characters
(the `font metrics') may vary from Adobe's, so that programs that
assume the Adobe character widths will produce poor quality
output. Bitstream fonts used to be particularly bad in the early
days, but they and most or all of the other vendors have solved
those problems.
* Apple TrueType [Ed note: formerly "Royal (`sfnt')"] format and
System 7
Apple's new System 7.0 supports a new format of outline font that
will allow high-quality characters of any size to be displayed on
the screen. TrueType stores font outlines as B-spline curves
along with programmed resolution hints. B-spline curves are faster
to compute and easier to manipulate than the Bezier curves used in
PostScript.
Adobe is not going to support Apple's new format by converting the
Adobe/Linotype library to B-spline format. There are two reasons
for this: First, there is no support for font encryption (yes, the
hooks are there, but nothing is implemented). Second, Adobe does
not want to dilute PostScript and its font library. However, the
Macintosh is too big a market to simply turn away from. Therefore,
Adobe will provide its Font Manager to display its own fonts on
the Mac screen. Apple ships Adobe's ATM for this purpose.
((( unquote )))
Subject: 1.3. What about "Multiple Master" fonts?
Multiple Master Fonts are an extension to the Adobe font format.
providing the ability to interpolate smoothly between several "design
axes" from a single font. Design axes can include weight, size, and
even some whacko notions like serif to sans serif. Adobes' first
Multiple Master Font was Myriad - a two-axis font with WEIGHT (light to
black) on one axis, and WIDTH (condensed to expanded) along the other
axis. In the case of Myriad, there are four "polar" designs at the
"corners" of the design space. The four designs are light condensed,
black condensed, light expanded, and black expanded.
Given polar designs, you can set up a "weight vector" which
interpolates to any point within the design space to produce a unique
font for a specific purpose. So you can get a "more or less condensed,
somewhat black face".
Multiple Master Fonts can be used on any PostScript printer. Multiple
Master Fonts need a new PostScript operator known as makeblendedfont.
The current crop of Multiple Master Fonts supply an emulation of this
operator so the printer doesn't need this operator.
A short tutorial on Multiple Master Fonts and makeblendedfont appears
in PostScript by Example, by Henry McGilton and Mary Campione,
published by Addison-Wesley.
Danny Thomas contributes that there are a few PostScript interpreter
(version)s which have bugs that appear with the emulation of the
makeblendedfont operator used to support Multiple Master fonts. There
weren't many exhibiting this problem, though it may have happened even
with one Adobe interpreter.
Subject: 1.4. Is there a methodology to describe and classify typefaces?
There is a standard, Panose, but it is mostly ignored by typographers
(not because it's bad, just because they don't need it). The Panose
system is documented, among other places, in the Microsoft Windows 3.1
Programmer's Reference from Microsoft Press.
The ISO also has a scheme, but it is not Panose.
At least one book by a respected authority, Alexander Lawson, Printing
Types: An Introduction, describes another, less rigorous system [ed: of
his own], which is exposited in "An Introduction" and used without
exposition in his later "Anatomy of a Typeface".
There is another book, Rookledges International Typefinder, which has a
very complete system that uses tell-tales of individual glyphs as well
as overall style to index most known faces right in the book.
J. Ben Leiberman has another book on type face description.
Terry O'Donnell adds the following comments:
The current ISO system was initiated (I believe) by Archie Provan of
RIT--a successor to Mr. Lawson. Whereas in typographic practice or
teaching--only a high level classification is necessary - times have
changed and the current ISO system aims to accomplish something beyond
the high level. A major goal is to aid software to help users make
selections. For example, a naive user might ask for all fonts on a font
server which have a Roman old style appearance. Another goal would be
to help users with multi-lingual text: a user creating a document in
English using e.g. Baskerville wants to know what Arabic or Japanese
language font on his system/file server would harmonize well with the
Baskerville. It is not all in place yet--but the more detailed ISO
classes--and the current addition of non-latin typefaces--are an
attempt to address this issue.
A second goal is to help with the font substitution problem. Neither
ISO or Panose address the metrics issues in font substitution--but both
might aid software in picking the nearest style of available available
fonts.
Subject: 1.5. What is the "f" shaped "s" called?
Both the "f" with half a crosbar (roman) and the integral sign (italic)
are called long-S.
Subject: 1.6. What about "Colonial" Typefaces?
Why does colonial printing have that "Colonial" feel?
=====================================================
Colonial type was either very roughly treated by moist salt air on the
crossing and in colonial port cities, or was copied locally by tacky
techniques (such as driving used foundry type into soft lead to make
very soft deformable matrices), and the paper was very rough, which
abrades both the serifs and the hairlines. So except for the best work
done with new, european types, the serifs were much smaller, even
broken off, than the original founder/punchcutter intended. Thins
could be abraded by rough paper to nothingness, esp after humid salt
air had leached the hardener out of the alloy.
Peter Honig contributes the following alternative explanation of the
roughness of colonial types:
The roughness of early fonts was caused by several factors: Type was
quite expensive and was used for many years (even if somewhat damaged).
Also, printing presses would only be set up to print one side of one
folio at a time, so you would not need to set more than a couple of
pages at once. This meant that the printer did not need as many copies
of each character, however, each character got used very frequently.
The early casting techniques did not produce as perfect or consistant
examples as we have today. That is, the face of a character might not
be quite planar with the page, or its sides might not be quite
parallel. Lastly, the inks of the past were not as advanced those of
today.
What fonts are good for mock-colonial uses?
===========================================
For example, what fonts have the following features: old-style figures
(non-lining numbers), the long s character, slightly irregular shapes
(a la type produced by colonial printers), and a decent complement of
ligatures. And what about free or cheap faces like this?
I don't know if any exist with all of 1-5. As I believe you get what
you pay for, especially in fonts, I haven't looked at free and
cheap-copy fonts.
Microsoft's expansion set for their Win3.1 optional fonts has Garamond
Expert & Expert Extensions, which has a good complement of ligatures
and I think I remember it having the long ess too. I forget about
OSFigs; it should tho'. Monotype's metal faces "16th Century Roman"
and "Poliphilus" may be available in digital; if so, they imitate early
presswork with early and are very close to what one wants.
"A commercial supplier [not yet sampled] is Image Club Graphics in
Calgary (1-800-661-9410). It is called Caslon Antique. It is supplied
as both roman and italic, together, for $25. They advertise in
MacWorld/MacUser/MacBlah. I am unable to tell from abcDEF123 if the
numerals are old-style, but I think not. Ligatures? long-S? Not yet
known. Guillemots, though, are there. ... Letraset, circa 1977,
showing a Caslon Antique with modern numerals, no ligatures, and only
UKPounds and German ss extensions." [Ike Stoddard]
NB: Caslon Antique is not a Caslon per se: "The last Caslon to mention
is that ubiquitous but unrelated Caslon Antique, which possesses no
similarity whatsoever to the original. This old reprobate was
introduced by Barnhart Brothers of Chicago under the name Fifteenth
Century. Its negative reception lasted until about 1918, when, with a
simple name change to Caslon Antique, it became the most commonly
selected type for reproductions of colonial American printing. It is
now seen in everything from liquor advertisments to furniture
commercials" [Lawson, 1990,Anatomy]
Miles Agfa (Compugraphic) has always had a Caslon Antique; I don't know
if it is available for TrueType or Type 1, but Agfa has been doing
TrueType bundles at reasonable prices. [wdr]
Peter Honig contributes the following suggestions:
Name Year Irreg. Long S OSfig Comment ---
--- ----- ----- ---- ------
* Poliphilus A cleaned-up reproduction of type from 1499. It's only
slightly irregular and does not contain the long S, but does have
old style figures. From Italy, founded by Francesco Griffo.
* Old Claude An exact reproduction of Garamond from 1532. It is
irregular and does not contain the long S, but it does have old
style figures. From France, founded by Claude Garamond.
* Blado An exact reproduction of type from 1539. It is irregular
and does not contain the long S, but it does have old style
figures. From Italy, founded by Antinio Blado (designed by
Ludovico delgi Arrighi).
* Van Dijck An exact reproduction of type from the 1660s. It is
irregular and does not contain the long S, but it does have old
style figures. From Holland, founded by Van Dijck.
* Adobe Caslon A cleaned-up reproduction of type from the 1720s. It
isn't irregular but it does contain the long S, old style figures,
and several ligatures. From England, founded by William Caslon.
Blado, Poliphilus, and Van Dijck are available from Monotype. Adobe
Caslon is available from Adobe. Old Claude is available from Letter
Perfect. In my opinion, Old Claude is font that is worthy of close
attention. Although it lacks the long S, it is VERY accurately
reproduced. Although Adobe Caslon is not irregular, it has a great set
of authentic ornaments from the Renaissance and Baroque. It is also the
only set that I am aware of, that has the long S and its ligatures.
[Bill Troop notes: I do not believe that Monotype ever had a font called
16th Century Roman. You are thinking of a private face created by Paul
Hayden-Duensing for his private press based on old Italian punches. It
is very rough indeed, but I can assure you no Colonial printer had a
typeface as stylish.
Poliphilus does indeed exist in digital form, and is fairly faithful,
but again is far too stylish to give the proper feel of US Colonial
printing. Nor is Antique Caslon, so called, anything to do with the
Caslon types used by American printers-except those who used this bogus
type at the end of the 19th century.
Monotype Bell is a faithful copy of a font that was actually used in
the US, but it is far more modern than the Caslon types. Nobody has yet
done a really authentic Caslon, and it is a curious fact, but none of
the Caslon revivals, in any of metal, photo, or digital formats, has
ever been based on the best Caslon sizes. I have been toying with such
a revival.
Monotype Van Dijk can hardly be called a faithful copy of a metal font;
the outlines are far more regular, for instance, than what Monotype did
for Bell. In addition, the less interesting forms of the lower case f
and f-ligatures were chosen for the digital version, and the alternate
f was not supplied. That makes it a very uninteresting font to use in
digital form. In addition, the italic has been unbelievably badly
spaced in the digital version. (Harry Carter complained about the
spacing in the 13pt Roman in the metal version.)
For anyone wishing to recreate the feel of early-to-mid 18th century
printing, a battered, sensitive revival of Caslon would be desirable.
The Giampa version is interesting, but is based on a poor model. ]
What fonts could a colonial printer have had?
=============================================
According to D.B.Updike in the classic reference "Printing Types: Their
History, Forms & Use", he indicates that most colonial work was with
types of the Caslon Old Style fonts and cheap copies of same in the
18th C. Before that, it would have been the older Dutch & English
faces, almost always lagging English tastes. If you can find the
Oxford Fell types, they are classic Dutch-as-used-by-englishmen.
Anything with a Dutch moniker and the Oldstyle adjective is probably
ok; Van Dijck if you find it, say (died 1673).
Ben Franklin recommended Caslon faces. But these were not available in
England before 1720, first full broadside in 1734. Lawson declares that
the first printing of the Declaration of Independance was in Caslon.
Wilson's Scotch Modern was the "modern" font that surfaced in quantity
in america. If the Scotch Roman your vendor has is sort-of like-Bodoni
but nicer than his Bodoni, that's it. It wasn't available until late
1700s, though.
Subject: 1.7. What is "Point Size"?
This article was constructed from a posting by William D. Ricker from
Sep 1992.
In general terms, point size is a relative measure of the size of a
font. It used to have a more concrete meaning in the "old days" of
typeography.
In the world of Photo-typesetters and digital fonts, the distance from
the top of the tallest ascender to the bottom of the longest descender
is only an approximate lower bound on the point size of a font; in the
Old days, it was almost always a firm lower bound, and there was warning
on the exception.
Point-size is the measure of default or minimum inter-baseline
distance; inter line distance in absense of leading, a/k/a "set solid".
If you don't know if the text was set solid or leaded, you can't tell
the point-size with a measuring glass unless you know if the type design
includes built-in space betweed adjacent, set-solid lines.
Exceptions to the points size equals ascender to descender size rule:
* In metal, there was usually a little room between the highest and
lowest corners of the face and the body size, so that the Matrix
was completely molding the face and not relying on the mold-body
to form a vertical side to the printing face--since a bevel or
beard is desirable for impression and strength.
* If the designer of a face thinks it should always be set leaded,
s/he may choose to include the minimal leading in the design, in
which case it is included in the base point size, and no capital,
lowercase-ascender, or lowercase-descender will get very near the
edges.
* In some faces the capitals are taller than the ascenders, and
others vice versa. (Vertical sticks on capitals are called stems,
not ascenders.) A minimum point size estimate would normally be
the height of the font's "envelope", to borrow from
Avionics/Aeronautics.
* The point size of a "Titling Face" may not include descenders; in
which case the Q's tail hangs off the body as a vertical kern.
Such a face in metal usually has "Titling" in the name, although
sometimes the fact that only capitals are available is all the
hint given.
([William D. Ricker's] metal font of Ray Shaded, cast on a Monotype
Display caster, has "vertical kerns" if you will: the hanging
shaded tail of the Q and some punctuation below the 24pt body,
because it has no lower-case. It might be better described as
being 36/24, thirty-six point type cast on a twenty-four point
body, since the cap A is about the height and density of a
Ultrabold 36pt A in many other fonts. It would be called 36/24
Caps if a lowercase had been cast on a 36 point body, but since
only UC was ever cut, as UC-only titling, it was standardly issued
and refered to as a 24 point titling--much to the confusion of
non-cognoscenti.)
* The Continental Point, a/k/a the Didot point, (and its Pica Em
equivalent, the Cicero) is just a hair longer. 15 Ciceros=16
Picas, 15 Didots=16 Points. So type which is imported or cast
from imported matrices has been, and still is, cast on the next
size larger body in anglo-american points. So an 11D/12 or 12D/14
type will look larger than a similar 12pt font but smaller than a
simlar 14pt font, by about a point of fixed built-in leading that
the designer didn't intend. What happened when these faces were
converted to photo and digital composition, I don't know. (I
could find out.) Probably some were scaled to American sizes
proportionally from the european masters, some copied from the
American castings with built-in leading to ease conversion, and
some were probably done both ways at different conversion houses.
Net result: unless you know it's Adobe Times Roman or whatever and just
want to know what point size & leading options were, you can't measure
the size with a definition and an optical micrometer. The defnition is
embodied/manifested in the typesetting "hardware", even if it is
software, not the product.
Knuth's Assertion
=================
What about Knuth's assertion that point size is "a more-or-less
arbitrary number that reflects the size of type [a font] is intended to
blend with"?
That statement is true only in the context of MetaFonts. MetaFonts
(and this definition) are perfectly adequate for Knuth's purposes but
not fully descriptive of all of typography. And definitely not
conformant to established usage.
This is not meant to condemn heterodoxy, but just to warn that while the
ASCII markup notations in Knuth's "Second Great Work" [TeX and MetaFont]
are even more widely disseminated than his wonderful coinage of
mathematical notations in "The First Great Work" [The Art of Computer
Programming, volumes I, II, and III], MetaFont has not been accepted as
an encoding for all useful fonts for the future, and the defintions of
font characteristics in MetaFont context must be taken with a large
grain of salt when used with fonts outside the MetaFont font-generation
paradigm.
Knuth's quotation, when applied to a (non-MetaFont) font designer,
overstates the arbitrariness of the design choice; the designer was
stating in the old days that you'd need a saw, a file, or a caster with
his matrices if you wanted to use negative leading to set his type
closer than he wanted to see it set; and today, in Photo/digital
composition, the designer is either indicating the opinion of the
original metal-head or his own design advice as to what the minimum
distance between adjacent baselines should be.
Also, point size is very poor predictor of blending, except in a
mechanical sense in terms of not-overflowing the same rectangles. Some
faces to blend in the same line with 12 point type will need to be
10/12 or 14/12, due to differences in the way they fill the space.
(The overall leading should fit the body type.) Harmony and contrast of
overall color, shape, style, etc. are much more important considerations
for blending than body-size. (For two types to work together, there
must be sufficient harmonies between them to work together and
sufficent contrasts to be easily distinguished. See Carl Dair's books.)
If one wants to understand usage of typographical terms in the general
milieu, the Chicago Manual of Style's appendix on Typesetting for
Authors is a good capsule presentation of history and terminology; if
one wants the nitty-gritty on how digital type does, or at least
should, differ and be treated differently from just copies of metal,
see Richard Rubinstein, Digital Typography, MIT Press. On type in
general, consult D.B. Updike in a library (out of print), or
A(lexander) S. Lawson (who covers electronic type in his latest
revision!).
Subject: 1.8. Where can I get ... fonts.
Before I go any farther, let me extol the virtues of the Archie servers.
If you need to find something on the net, and you have any idea what it
might be called, Archie is the place to go. In North America, telnet to
"archie.rutgers.edu" and login as "archie". There are many other
servers around the world, any Archie server can give you a list of other
servers. There are better documents than this to describe Archie and
you should be able to find them from the above starting point. If you
have trouble, feel free to ask norm (via Email please, no need to
clutter comp.fonts with a query about Archie ;-).
In addition to the telnet option, several archie clients exist including
a very nice X11 implementation (Xarchie).
* Adobe Type 1 Fonts in MS-DOS/Unix Format:
ftp.cica.indiana.edu:/pub/pc/win3/fonts
ftp.cica.indiana.edu:/pub/pc/win3/fonts/atm
archive.umich.edu:/msdos/mswindows/fonts
* Adobe Type 1 Fonts in Mac Format:
mac.archive.umich.edu:/mac/system.extensions/font/type1
sumex-aim.stanford.edu:/info-mac/font
* Adobe Type 3 Fonts in Mac Format:
mac.archive.umich.edu:/mac/system.extensions/font/type3
* TrueType fonts in MS-DOS Format:
ftp.cica.indiana.edu:/pub/pc/win3/fonts/truetype
* TrueType fonts in Mac Format:
mac.archive.umich.edu:/mac/system.extensions/font/truetype
* TeX PK/PXL/GF fonts:
The TeX community has its own support groups that can provide
better answers to this question. The canonical list of MetaFont
fonts is posted occasionally to comp.text.tex. The comp.text.tex
newsgroup (or the Info-TeX mailing list, if you do not have access
to news) are good places to start. Email norm if you need more
specific information.
* LaserJet bitmap fonts:
wuarchive.wustl.edu:/mirrors/msdos/laser
Also on other simtel20 mirrors...
If you know of other archive sites (the above list is no where near
complete) or other formats that are available on the net, please let us
know.
The sites above represent places where shareware and public domain fonts
are available. Many, many typefaces are not available in shareware
form. And many shareware faces are less than adequate for a variety of
reasons, particularly at small sizes. It seems to be the consensus of
the comp.fonts community that "you get what you pay for." If you need a
professional quality font, you should probably buy it from a
professional.
The list of font vendors in Appendix A (annotated with information about
non-Roman alphabets) was contributed by Masumi Abe. Masumi was Adobe's
Manager of Typographic Marketing for Asia. He has since left Adobe.
Many font CDs are now available which offer many fonts for a low
cost/font.
Subject: 1.9. Where can I get fonts for non-Roman alphabets?
As mentioned above, the list of font vendors is annotated with
information about non-Roman alphabets. Commercially, Masumi suggests
that Linguists' Software is the current [ed: as of 7/92] leading
supplier of non-Roman fonts.
Ian Tresman contributes:
The Multilingual PC Directory is a source guide to multilingual and
foreign language software, including fonts, for PCs. Over a hundred
different languages are included, from Arabic to Hieroglyphics to Zulu.
A 1200 word description is available from the publishers, Knowledge
Computing, email: [email protected].
Subject: 1.10. What about fonts with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols?
I summarized Scott Brumage's recent post for the FAQ:
Shareware or free (PostScript Type 1 and/or TrueType):
======================================================
* TechPhon
Seems to lack some characters and has no zero-offset characters
(for accents).
* PalPhon
A phonetic font which you can get by anonymous ftp from
mac.archive.umich.edu. It is called PalPhon. There are actually
two fonts: the basic PalPhon and one with additional accents and
symbols called PalPi. The package includes some documents on using
the fonts as well.
* SIL-IPA
SIL-IPA is a set of scalable IPA fonts containing the full
International Phonetic Alphabet with 1990 Kiel revisions. Three
typefaces are included:
* SIL Doulos (similar to Times)
* SIL Sophia (similar to Helvetica)
* SIL Manuscript (monowidth)
Each font contains all the standard IPA discrete characters and
non-spacing diacritics as well as some suprasegmental and
puncuation marks. Each font comes in both PostScript Type 1 and
TrueType formats. The fonts are also available for Microsoft
Windows.
These fonts were designed by the Printing Arts Department of the
Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas, Texas.
Shareware or free (TeX):
========================
METAFONT sources of the phonetic symbols developed by
Tokyo-Shoseki-Printing and Sanseido are available. The font contains
all of IPA (Internatioanl Phonetic Alphabet) symbols.
You can get phonetic symbols METAFONT (named TSIPA) from
ftp.foretune.co.jp:/pub/tools/TeX/Fonts
The IP address for ftp.foretune.co.jp is 133.123.1.2.
Commercial:
===========
Linguist's Software Adobe (ITC Stone Phonetic [#255], Times Phonetic
[#278])
This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the
input file FAQ.texinfo.
Subject: 1.11. How can I convert my ... font to ... format?
Conversion from one bitmapped format to another is not generally too
difficult. Conversion from one scalable format to another is very
difficult. Several commercial software packages claim to perform these
tasks, but none has been favorably reviewed by the comp.fonts community.
Converting Between TrueType and Adobe Type 1 Formats
====================================================
This section was constructed from postings by Primoz Peterlin and Bert
Medley in Sep 1993.
There are several commercial tools that will convert between these
formats. There are no shareware or free tools that will do the job.
See also "Why do converted fonts look so bad?".
FontMonger by Ares Software
---------------------------
Performs conversion between Adobe Type 1, Adobe Type 3 and TrueType
formats in both PC-DOS and Mac flavours, as well as simple glyph
editing. Currently at version 1.0.7, patches available via CompuServe.
Available for Mac and MS Windows. Commercial product, price \$60-80.
Alltype by Atech Software
-------------------------
Performs font conversion. A stable product, being on a market for a
while. Available for PC-DOS/MS Windows only. Commercial product.
Atech is supposedly leaving the business.
Fontographer by Altsys Co.
--------------------------
Comprehensive package, allowing creation of fonts as well as conversion
between formats. Available for Mac and MS Windows. Commercial
product, price cca. \$270 (PC version).
Metamorphosis by Altsys Co.
---------------------------
Available for Mac. Commercial product. More info needed.
Converting Between Other Scalable Formats
=========================================
Many of the programs in the preceding section claim to be able to
convert between other formats as well. And there are probably other
commercial programs as well. However, as several people have noted,
conversion from one scalable format to another is a bad idea. If the
original font was well hinted, the converted font will not be. Of
course, if the original was poorly hinted, maybe it won't matter much.
In an effort to settle a long-running and oft-asked question, I'll be
blunt: as of today [6/93], THERE ARE NO NON-COMMERCIAL PROGRAMS WHICH
WILL CONVERT FROM ONE SCALABLE FORMAT TO ANOTHER. Not from TrueType to
PostScript Type 1, Type 3, Type 5, or any other scalable PostScript
format. Not from PostScript Type 1 to TrueType. Not to or from
Intellifont. Not to or from Sun F3 format.
For specific conversions, check the platform specific parts of the FAQ.
Most of the conversions discussed require platform specific tools.
Here is a summary of the conversions discussed (and the section in
which they appear):
Mac Type 1 PostScript
To PC Type 1 PostScript (MS-DOS). To TrueType (commercial).
PC Type 1 PostScript
To Mac Type 1 PostScript (Mac, commercial). To TrueType
(commercial). To TeX PK (MS-DOS).
TrueType
To Type 1 PostScript (Mac and MS-DOS, commercial). To HP LaserJet
bitmaps (MS-DOS, hack!).
TeX PK
To HP LaserJet bitmap softfonts (MS-DOS).
HP LaserJet bitmap softfonts
To TeX PK (MS-DOS).
In addition, Adobe ships a copy of Adobe Font Foundry with all of its
fonts which can convert Type 1 fonts into HP LaserJet softfonts.
Why Do Converted Fonts Look So Bad?
===================================
This section was constructed from postings by Mark Hastings and David
Glenn in Aug 1993.
With all commercially available conversion tools, converting fonts
between scalable formats almost always results in a font inferior to
the original. (The rare case where a converted font is not inferior to
the original occurs only when the original is a cheap knock-off, and
the automatic hinting of the conversion program is better than
automatic hinting used in the original!)
David Glenn contributes the following analysis:
There are a few probable [reasons why converted fonts, especially screen
fonts, look inferior to the original]. First off, any font that's
converted uses a converting algorithm which will make an exact copy at
best. Because no currently available converter even comes close to
copying faithfully the manual tweaks and hinting in a font file, you
often end up with poor screen fonts and poor output. The only reason
that printed output from the converted font looks markedly better than
the screen font is that the printed output is at a higher resolution.
The converter achieves better results on the higher resolutions because
hinting is less important at higher resolutions. Screen fonts are
incredibly complex to make well. You have very few pixels to represent
a very aesthetic and distinct design. That's why at small sizes almost
all typefaces look alike--how do you represent a graceful concave side
on the letter "L" for Optima with only 12 pixels in height and one in
width? You can't. And that's why most fonts look similar at 10pt,
unless they're hand hinted by typograhers.
One thing that may come into play when fonts are converted between
platforms, for example between PC/Windows format and Mac format, is that
fonts are hinted down to a certain number of pixels per em. On a Mac
screen (72 dpi) there is a one-to-one correspondence between the ppem
and the point size of a font. Under windows, the usual VGA screen is
96dpi and fonts that look good at 8 or 9 pt under windows might look
like crap on a Mac 'cuz the fonts weren't hinted below 10 or 11ppem.
Also, the conversion programs may have made the appearance worse at
some sizes than others.
Whenever you convert fonts from one platform to the other keep in mind
that:
* Your license with the type foundry may or may not allow this.
* The font may or may not have the correct character sets in it.
* The TT font file may or may not have all the tables necessary.
* Your converter may make it so ugly that you don't want to use it...
Smoothing Bitmaps
=================
This section was constructed from postings by Jason Lee Weiler and
Piercarlo Antonio Grandi
Enlarging bitmapped images is easy, but enlarging them without creating
very jagged edges is much more demanding. There are several
possibilities.
* If you are interested in programming your own solution, the
comp.graphics FAQ will provide pointers to a number of resources
that can get you started.
* If the bitmaps are in a standard format, the 'xv' tool (an X11
picture viewing tool) includes magnify and smooth functions that
may perform adequately.
* Commercial tools like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, and many
others include tracing functions that can translate some bitmaps
into acceptable outlines (which can be enlarged without
jaggedness).
* The GNU Font Utilities include a tracing tool that may be helpful.
Subject: 1.12. Are fonts copyrightable?
This topic is hotly debated at regular intervals on comp.fonts. Terry
Carroll. provides the following analysis of current [ed: as of 6/92]
legislation and regulation regarding fonts and copyrights in the United
States. Terry is "Editor in Chief" of Volume 10 of the Santa Clara
Computer and High Technology Law Journal. Members of the comp.fonts
community are encouraged to submit other materials that add clarity to
the issue.
It has been pointed out that this section deals primarily font copyright
issues relevant to the United States and that this situation is not
universal. For example, in many parts of Europe typeface designs are
protectable.
"First, the short answer in the USA: Typefaces are not copyrightable;
bitmapped fonts are not copyrightable, but scalable fonts are
copyrightable. Authorities for these conclusions follow.
Before we get started, let's get some terminology down:
A typeface is a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters,
whose forms are related by repeating design elements consistently
applied in a notational system and are intended to be embodied in
articles whose intrinsic utilitarian function is for use in composing
text or other cognizable combinations of characters.
A font is the computer file or program that is used to represent or
create the typeface.
Now, on to the legal authorities:
Volume 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations specifies this about the
copyrightability of typefaces:
"The following are examples of works not subject to copyright and
applications for registration of such works cannot be entertained: . . .
typeface as typeface" 37 CFR 202.1(e).
The regulation is in accordance with the House of Representatives report
that accompanied the new copyright law, when it was passed in 1976:
"The Committee has considered, but chosen to defer, the possibility of
protecting the design of typefaces. A 'typeface' can be defined as a
set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters, whose forms are
related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a
notational system and are intended to be embodied in articles whose
intrinsic utilitarian function is for use in composing text or other
cognizable combinations of characters. The Committee does not regard
the design of typeface, as thus defined, to be a copyrightable
'pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work' within the meaning of this bill
and the application of the dividing line in section 101." H. R. Rep.
No. 94-1476, 94th Congress, 2d Session at 55 (1976), reprinted in 1978
U.S. Cong. and Admin. News 5659, 5668.
It's also in accordance with the one court case I know of that has
considered the matter: Eltra Corp. V. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294, 208 USPQ 1
(1978, C.A. 4, Va.).
The U.S. Copyright Office holds that a bitmapped font is nothing more
than a computerized representation of a typeface, and as such is not
copyrightable:
"The [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision [published at 53 FR 38110]
based on the [October 10,] 1986 Notice of Inquiry [published at 51 FR
36410] reiterated a number of previous registration decisions made by
the [Copyright] Office. First, under existing law, typeface as such is
not registerable. The Policy Decision then went on to state the
Office's position that 'data that merely represents an electronic
depiction of a particular typeface or individual letterform' [that is, a
bitmapped font] is also not registerable." 57 FR 6201.
However, scalable fonts are, in the opinion of the Copyright Office,
computer programs, and as such are copyrightable:
"... the Copyright Office is persuaded that creating scalable typefonts
using already-digitized typeface represents a significant change in the
industry since our previous [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision. We
are also persuaded that computer programs designed for generating
typeface in conjunction with low resolution and other printing devices
may involve original computer instructions entitled protection under the
Copyright Act. For example, the creation of scalable font output
programs to produce harmonious fonts consisting of hundreds of
characters typically involves many decisions in drafting the
instructions that drive the printer. The expression of these decisions
is neither limited by the unprotectable shape of the letters nor
functionally mandated. This expression, assuming it meets the usual
standard of authorship, is thus registerable as a computer program." 57
FR 6202."
Subject: 1.13. Typeface Protection
[This article first appeared in TUGboat 7:3 (October 1986), pp. 146-151.
Reproduced with permission.]
Preamble
========
The main question of typeface protection is: "Is there anything there
worth protecting?" To that the answer must certainly be: "Yes." Typeface
designs are a form of artistic and intellectual property." To
understand this better, it is helpful to look at who designs type, and
what the task requires.
Who makes type designs?
-----------------------
Like other artistic forms, type is created by skilled artisans. They
may be called type designers, lettering artists, punch-cutters,
calligraphers, or related terms, depending on the milieu in which the
designer works and the technology used for making the designs or for
producing the type.
("Type designer" and "lettering artist" are self-explanatory terms.
"Punch-cutter" refers to the traditional craft of cutting the master
image of a typographic letter at the actual size on a blank of steel
that is then used to make the matrix from which metal type is cast.
Punch-cutting is an obsolete though not quite extinct craft. Seeking a
link to the tradition, modern makers of digital type sometimes use the
anachronistic term "digital punch-cutter". "Calligrapher" means
literally "one who makes beautiful marks". The particular marks are
usually hand-written letters, though calligraphers may design type, and
type designers may do calligraphy.)
It usually takes about seven years of study and practice to become a
competent type designer. This seems to be true whether one has a Ph.D.
in computer science, a high-school diploma, or no academic degree. The
skill is acquired through study of the visual forms and practice in
making them. As with geometry, there is no royal road.
The designing of a typeface can require several months to several years.
A family of typefaces of four different styles, say roman, italic, bold
roman, and bold italic, is a major investment of time and effort. Most
type designers work as individuals. A few work in partnership (Times
Roman(R), Helvetica(R), and Lucida(R) were all, in different ways, the
result of design collaboration). In Japan, the large character sets
required for a typeface containing Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana induce
designers to work in teams of several people.
Although comparisons with other media can only be approximate, a
typeface family is an accomplishment on the order of a novel, a feature
film screenplay, a computer language design and implementation, a major
musical composition, a monumental sculpture, or other artistic or
technical endeavors that consume a year or more of intensive creative
effort. These other creative activities can be protected by copyright
or other forms of intellectual property protection. It is reasonable
to protect typefaces in the same way.
The problem of plagiarism
-------------------------
A lack of protection for typeface designs leads to plagiarism, piracy,
and related deplorable activities. They are deplorable because they
harm a broad range of people beyond the original designers of the type.
First, most type plagiarisms are badly done. The plagiarists do not
understand the nature of the designs they are imitating, are unwilling
to spend the necessary time and effort to do good work, and
consequently botch the job. They then try to fob off their junk on
unsuspecting users (authors, editors, and readers). Without copyright,
the original designer cannot require the reproducer of a type to do a
good job of reproduction. Hence, type quality is degraded by
unauthorized copying.
Secondly, without protection, designs may be freely imitated; the
plagiarist robs the original designer of financial compensation for the
work. This discourages creative designers from entering and working in
the field. As the needs of typography change (on-line documents and
laser printing are examples of technical and conceptual changes) new
kinds of typefaces are required. Creative design in response to such
needs cannot flourish without some kind of encouragement for the
creators. In a capitalist society, the common method is property rights
and profit. In a socialist (or, in the past, royalist) society, the
state itself might employ type artists. France, as a monarchy and as a
republic, has had occasional state sponsorship of typeface design over
the past 400 years. The Soviet Union has sponsored the design of new
typefaces, not only in the Cyrillic alphabet, but also in the other
exotic scripts used by various national groups in the Soviet Union.
Those who would justify plagiarism often claim that the type artists do
not usually receive a fair share of royalties anyway, since they have
usually sold their designs to some large, exploitive corporation. It
is true that type designers, like many artists, are often exploited by
their "publishers", but plagiarism exacerbates the problem. Plagiarism
deprives the designer of decent revenues because it diverts profits to
those who merely copied the designs. Plagiarism gives the manufacturer
yet another excuse to reduce the basic royalty or other fee paid for
typeface designs; the theme song is that the market determines the
value of the design and cheap rip-offs debase the value of a face. For
those interested in the economic effects of piracy, it is clear that
plagiarism of type designs ultimately hurts individual artists far more
than it hurts impersonal corporations.
Kinds of protection for type
----------------------------
There are five main forms of protection for typefaces:
* Trademark
* Copyright
* Patent
* Trade Secret
* Ethics
Trademark
.........
A trademark protects the name of a typeface. In the U.S., most
trademarks are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The R in a circle (R) after a trademark or tradename indicates U.S.
registration. The similarly placed TM indicates that a trademark is
claimed, even if not yet officially registered. However, a trademark may
be achieved through use and practice, even without registration. Owners
of trademarks maintain ownership by use of the trademark and by
litigation to prevent infringement or unauthorized use of the trademark
by others.
As a few examples of registered typeface trademarks, there are Times
Roman (U.S. registration 417,439, October 30, 1945 to Eltra
Corporation, now part of Allied); Helvetica (U.S. registration 825,989,
March 21, 1967, also to Eltra-Allied), and Lucida (U.S. reg. 1,314,574
to Bigelow & Holmes). Most countries offer trademark registration and
protection, and it is common for a typeface name to be registered in
many countries. In some cases the registrant may be different than the
originator. For example, The Times New Roman (Times Roman) was
originally produced by the English Monotype Corporation. In England and
Europe, most typographers consider the design to belong to Monotype,
but the trademark was registered by Linotype (Eltra-Allied) in the
U.S., as noted above.
Trademark protection does not protect the design, only the name.
Therefore, a plagiarism of a design is usually christened with a
pseudonym which in some way resembles or suggests the original
trademark, without actually infringing on it. Resemblance without
infringement can be a fine distinction.
Some pseudonyms for Times Roman are: "English Times", "London", Press
Roman, "Tms Rmn". Some for Helvetica are "Helios", "Geneva",
"Megaron", "Triumvirate". So far, there seem to be none for Lucida.
There are generic typeface classifications used by typographers and type
historians to discuss styles, trends, and categories of design.
Occasionally these apparently innocuous classification systems are
employed by plagiarists to devise generic pseudonyms, such as "Swiss
721" for Helvetica, and "Dutch 801" for Times Roman. It is not certain
whether this usage of a generic classification is more for
clarification or for obfuscation. In general, the proper tradename is a
better indicator of identity, quality, and provenance in typefaces than
a generic name. Some people believe that the same is true for other
commodities such as wine, where taste is important.
A trademark usually consists of both a proprietary and a generic part.
For example, in the name "Lucida Bold Italic", "Lucida" is the
proprietary trademark part and "Bold Italic" is the generic part. The
generic word "type" is usually understood to be a part of the name,
e.g. "Lucida Bold Italic type". Sometimes a firm will append its name
or a trademarked abbreviation of it to the typeface name, to achieve a
greater degree of proprietary content, e.g. "B&H Lucida Bold Italic".
A related matter is the use of the name of a type's designer. A firm
that ethically licenses a typeface will often cite the name of the
designer-- e.g. Stanley Morison (with Victor Lardent) for Times Roman,
Max Miedinger (with Edouard Hoffmann) for Helvetica, Charles Bigelow
and Kris Holmes for Lucida. Although a person's name is not usually a
registered trademark, there are common law restrictions on its use.
The marketing of plagiarized type designs generally omits the names of
the designers.
Although Trademark is an incomplete kind of protection, it is used
effectively (within its limitations) to prevent the theft of type names.
Certain traditional typeface names, usually the surnames of illustrious
designers like Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, Bodoni, and others have
become generic names in the public domain. Trademark protection of
such names requires the addition of some proprietary word(s), as with
these hypothetical creations, "Acme New Garamond", or "Typoluxe
Meta-Baskerville".
Copyright
.........
Copyright of typefaces can be divided into two parts: copyright of the
design itself; and copyright of the font in which the design is
implemented. In the U.S., typeface designs are currently not covered by
copyright. This is a result of reluctance by the copyright office to
deal with a complex field; by lobbying against copyright by certain
manufacturers whose profits were based on typeface plagiarism; by a
reluctance of Congress to deal with the complex issues in the recent
revision of the copyright law.
The reluctance of Americans to press for typeface copyright may have
been influenced by a feeling that typeface plagiarism was good for U.S.
high-tech businesses who were inventing new technologies for printing,
and plagiarizing types of foreign origin (Europe and England). If the
situation becomes reversed, and foreign competition (from Japan,
Taiwan, and Korea) threatens to overcome American technological
superiority in the laser printer industry, then American firms may do
an about-face and seek the protection of typeface copyright to help
protect the domestic printer industry. Such a trend may already be seen
in the licensing of typeface trademarks by Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, IBM,
Imagen, and Xerox in the U.S. laser printer industry.
In Germany, where typeface design has always been a significant part of
the cultural heritage, and where typefounding has remained an important
business, there are more than one kind of copyright-like protections for
typefaces. Certain long-standing industrial design protection laws have
been used to protect typeface designs in litigation over royalties and
plagiarisms. Further, there is a recent law, the so-called
"Schriftzeichengesetz" enacted in 1981, that specifically protects
typeface designs. New designs are registered, as is done with
copyright in most countries. This law only protects new, original
designs. It is available to non-German designers and firms. Therefore,
some type firms and designers routinely copyright new designs in West
Germany. This gives a degree of protection for products marketed in
Germany. Since multinational corporations may find it cheaper to
license a design for world-wide use rather than deal with a special case
in one country, the German law does encourage licensing on a broader
scale than would initially seem to be the case.
France, like Germany, has ratified an international treaty for
protection of typefaces. This 1973 Vienna treaty will become
international law when four nations ratify it. So far, only France and
West Germany have done so, and thus a design must be protected
separately in each country. Even when the treaty becomes law, it will
take effect only in those countries that have ratified it. The treaty
was principally the work of the late Charles Peignot, a French
typefounder, and John Dreyfus, an English typographer and typographic
scholar. Presently, typefaces may be registered for protection in
France under a 19th century industrial design protection law.
In the U.S., there continues to be some movement for typeface design
protection. A proposed bill that would protect the designs of useful
articles, like type, has been in committee for a few years. It seems to
be going nowhere.
Digital (as opposed to analog) fonts may be protected by copyright of
digital data and of computer programs. It has been established that
computer software is copyrightable. Therefore, software that embodies a
typeface, e.g. a digital font, is presumably also protected. There is
some objection to this kind of copyright, on the grounds that the
ultimate output of the program or the result of the data (i.e. a
typeface design) is not copyrightable. However, the current belief
expressed by the National Commission on New Technological Use of
Copyrighted Works is that software is copyrightable even if its function
is to produce ultimately a non-copyrightable work. Hence, typefaces
produced by Metafont or PostScript(R), two computer languages which
represent fonts as programs, are presumably copyrightable. Typefaces
represented as bit-map data, run-length codes, spline outlines, and
other digital data formats, may also be copyrightable. Some firms do
copyright digital fonts as digital data. % The copyright office is
currently reviewing %this practice to determine if it is acceptable.
Note that the designs themselves are still not protected in the U.S. A
plagiarist could print out large sized letters (say, one per page) on an
Apple LaserWriter, using a copyrighted PostScript digital font, and then
redigitize those letters by using a scanner or a font digitizing program
and thus produce a new digital font without having copied the program or
digital data, and thus without infringing the copyright on the font. The
quality of the imitation font would usually be awful, but it wouldn't
violate copyright. Of course, the plagiarist would usually need to
rename the font to evade trademark infringement. [As I write these
words, I have the guilty feeling that I have just provided a recipe for
type rip-off, but others have obviously thought of just such a
scheme--John Dvorak has even proposed something like it in one of his
columns.]
Design Patent
.............
The designs of typefaces may be patented in the U.S. under existing
design patent law. Many designs are patented, but type designers
generally don't like the patent process because it is slow, expensive,
and uncertain. Nevertheless, some types do get patented, and it is a
form of potential protection. Note that this is Design Patent--the
typeface doesn't have to be a gizmo that does something, it merely has
to be unlike any previous typeface. The drawback here is that most
attorneys and judges are not aware that there are more than two or
three typefaces: say, handwriting, printing, and maybe blackletter.
Therefore, litigating against infringement is an educational as well as
a legal process. It is easy to see that typeface theft is more subtle
than knocking over a liquor store; it may not be illegal and the
returns may be greater.
Protections like design patent are available in many other countries,
but there is not an international standard (to my knowledge) so the
situation must be examined on a country by country basis.
Invention Patent
................
Methods of rendering typefaces can be patented as mechanical or
electronic inventions. For example, the old hot-metal Linotype
machinery was protected by various patents, as was the IBM Selectric
typewriter and type ball. IBM neglected to trademark the typeface
names like Courier and Prestige, so once the patents had lapsed, the
names gradually fell into the public domain without IBM doing anything
about it (at the time, and for a dozen years or so, IBM was distracted
by a major U.S. anti-trust suit). Most students of the type protection
field believe that those names are probably unprotectable by now,
though IBM could still presumably make a try for it if sufficiently
motivated.
There is currently a noteworthy development regarding a patent for
outline representation of digital type as arcs and vectors, with special
hardware for decoding into rasters. This patent (U.S. 4,029,947, June
14, 1977; reissue 30,679, July 14, 1981) is usually called the Evans &
Caswell patent, after its inventors. It was originally assigned to
Rockwell, and in 1982, Rockwell sued Allied Linotype for infringement.
Allied settled out of court, having paid an amount rumored to be in the
millions. Rockwell sold the patent, along with other typographic
technology, to Information International, Inc. (III), which then sued
Compugraphic for infringement. According to the Seybold Report, a
respected typographic industry journal, Compugraphic recently settled
out of court for 5 million dollars. Although many experts believe the
patent to be invalid because of several prior inventions similar in
concept, it nevertheless seems to be a money-maker in corporate
litigation. The Seybold Report has speculated on which firms III would
litigate against next. Among the candidates suggested by the Seybolds
was Apple for its LaserWriter, which uses outline fonts. Since the
entire laser printer industry and the typesetting industry is moving
toward outline font representation, Apple is certainly not alone. The
Seybolds further speculate on whether the difference between
character-by-character CRT typesetting and raster-scan laser typesetting
and printing would be legally significant in such a case. Ultimately,
some firm will hold out for a court judgement, and the matter will be
decided. %Although the Evans & Caswell patent doesn't have much to do
with %typeface copyright per se, it does make many font vendors nervous.
Trade Secret
............
Given that typeface designs have relatively little copyright protection
in the U.S., they are often handled as trade secrets. The secret must
apply to the digital data or programs only, because the images
themselves are ultimately revealed to the public as printed forms. It
is much more difficult to reconstruct the formula of Coca-Cola from its
taste than it is to reconstruct the design of Helvetica from its look
on the page. The exact bitmap or spline outline of a digital font is
usually not reconstructable from the printed image, although CRT screen
fonts at usual resolutions (60-120 dots per inch) may be reconstructed
by patient counting and mapping of bits off a screen display. Typeface
licenses often contain stipulations that the digital data will be
encrypted and confidential. Just as a firm will protect the secret of
a soft drink recipe, so a type firm will protect the exact nature of
its digital data.
Ethics
......
Some typographers are motivated by higher principles than greed,
profit, expediency, and personal interest. Idealists afflicted with
concepts of ethical behavior and a vision of typography as a noble art
may find it distasteful to use plagiarized types. Some graphic
designers insist on using typefaces with bona-fide trademarks, both to
ensure that the type will be of high quality, and to encourage
creativity and ethics in the profession. A consequence of plagiarism
that is sometimes overlooked is a general erosion of ethics in an
industry. If it is okay to steal typeface designs, then it may be okay
to purloin other kinds of data, to falsify one's resume, to
misrepresent a product, and so forth. Most professional design
organizations attempt to promote ethical standards of professional
behavior, and personal standards may extend to avoidance of plagiarism.
The Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) is an international
organization of type designers, type manufacturers, and letterform
educators. Its purpose is to promote ethical behavior in the industry,
advancement of typographic education, communication among designers, and
other lofty aims. Members of ATypI agree to abide by a moral code that
restricts plagiarism and other forms of depraved behavior (pertaining to
typography). These are noble goals, but some members (especially
corporate members) of ATypI, confronted with the pressures and
opportunities of commercial reality, nevertheless plagiarize typefaces
of fellow members, the moral code notwithstanding. Since ATypI is a
voluntary organization, there is very little that can be done about
most such plagiarism. Some years back, a world-famous type designer
resigned %the noted type designer Hermann Zapf from the ATypI Board of
Directors in protest over the organization's flaccid attitude toward
plagiarists among its ranks. He has since agreed to sit on the board
again, but criticism of the organization's inability to prevent type
rip-offs by its own members, not to mention by non-members, continues
to be heard. Moderates in ATypI believe that a few morals are better
than none. It is not clear whether their philosophical stance derives
from Plato, Hobbes, or Rousseau.
Given the general attitude of users toward copyrighted video and
software, it is doubtful that ethical considerations will hinder most
end-users' attitude to plagiarized type fonts. A desire to have the
fashionable "label" or trademark may be a greater motivation toward the
use of bona-fide fonts than an ethical consideration.
Further reading
---------------
"The State of the Art in Typeface Design Protection", Edward Gottschall,
Visible Language, Vol. XIX, No. 1, 1985 (a special issue on "The
Computer and the Hand in Type Design"--proceedings of a conference held
at Stanford University in August, 1983).
Der Schutz Typographischer Schriftzeichen, by Guenter Kelbel. Carl
Heymans Verlag KG, Cologne, 1984. (A learned account, in juridical
German prose, of the significance of the Vienna Treaty of 1973 and the
West German Schriftzeichengesetz of 1981.)
Disclaimer
----------
These notes were originally prepared at the request of Brian Reid, for
informal distribution. They are based on the author's review of
available literature on the subject of typeface protection, and on
personal experience in registering types for trademark, copyright, and
patent. However, they are %While they result from careful research, no
claim is made for accuracy; not legal advice. If one is contemplating
protecting or plagiarizing a typeface, and seeks legal opinion, it is
advisable to consult an attorney. The term "plagiarize" (and words
derived from it) is used here in its dictionary sense of "to take and
use as one's own the ideas of another" and does not mean that the
practice of typeface plagiarism is illegal, as that is determined by
the laws of a particular country.
The author is a professor of digital typography as well as a
professional designer of original digital typefaces for electronic
printers and computer workstations. He therefore has an obvious bias
toward the inculcation of ethical standards and the legal protection of
artistic property. Other commentators might have a different
perspective.
Subject: 1.14. File Formats
Many different kinds of files are available on the net. These files
contain many different kinds of data for many different architectures.
Frequently, the extension (trailing end) of a filename gives a good
clue as to the format of its contents and the architecture that it was
created on.
In order to save space, most files on the net are compressed in one way
or another. Many compression/decompression programs exist on multiple
architectures.
Multiple files and directories are often combined into a single
`archive' file. Many archive formats perform compression automatically.
File Format Extensions
======================
* .tar
Unix `tape archive' format. Tar files can contain multiple files
and directories. Unlike most archiving programs, tar files are
held together in a wrapper but are not automatically compressed by
tar.
* .Z
Unix `compress' format. Compression doesn't form a wrapper around
multiple files, it simply compresses a single file. As a result,
you will frequently see files with the extension .tar.Z. This
implies that the files are compressed tar archives.
* .z .gz
GNU zip format. GNU zip doesn't form a wrapper around multiple
files, it simply compresses a single file. As a result, you will
frequently see files with the extension .tar.z or .tar.gz. This
implies that the files are compressed tar archives. Do not confuse
GNU Zip and PKZip or GNU Zip and Unix compress, those are three
different programs!
* .hqx
Macintosh `BinHex' format. In order to reliably transfer Mac files
from one architecture to another, they are BinHex encoded. This
is actually an ascii file containing mostly hexadecimal digits.
It is neither a compression program nor an archive format.
* .sit
Macintosh `Stuffit' archive.
* .cpt
Macintosh `Compactor' archive.
Like the .tar.Z format that is common among Unix archives,
Macintosh archives frequently have the extensions .sit.hqx or
.cpt.hqx indicating a BinHex'ed archive.
* .arc
PC `arc' archive. This is an older standard (in PC terms, at
least) and has gone out of fashion.
* .zip
PC `zip' archive. This is the most common PC archive format today.
* .arj
PC `arj' archive.
* .zoo
PC `zoo' archive
* .lzh
PC `lha/lharc' archive.
* .uue
`UUencoding' format. In order to reliably transfer binary data
across architectures (or through email), they are frequently
uuencoded. This is actually an ascii file. It is neither a
compression program nor an archive format.
Font Formats
============
Just as the are many, many archive formats, there are many different
font formats. The characteristics of some of these formats are
discussed below. Once again, the file extension may help you to
determine the font type. (On the Mac, the resource TYPE field is
(probably) a better indicator).
* PostScript Type 1 Fonts:
Postscript Type 1 fonts (Also called ATM (Adobe Type Manager)
fonts, Type 1, and outline fonts) contains information, in outline
form, that allows a postscript printer, or ATM to generate fonts
of any size. Most also contain hinting information which allows
fonts to be rendered more readable at lower resolutions and small
type sizes.
* PostScript Type 3 Fonts:
Postscript type 3 fonts are an old outline font format that is not
compatible with ATM. Most developers have stopped using this
format except in a few special cases, where special type 3
characteristics (pattern fills inside outlines, for example) have
been used.
* TrueType Fonts:
Truetype fonts are a new font format developed by Microsoft with
Apple. The rendering engine for this font is built into system 7
and an init, the Truetype init, is available for system 6 (freeware
from Apple). It is also built into MS Windows v3.1. Like
PostScript Type 1 and Type 3 fonts, it is also an outline font
format that allows both the screen, and printers, to scale fonts to
display them in any size.
* Bitmap Fonts:
Bitmap fonts contain bitmaps of fonts in them. This a picture of
the font at a specific size that has been optimized to look good
at that size. It cannot be scaled bigger without making it look
horrendously ugly. On the Macintosh, bitmap fonts also contain
the kerning information for a font and must be installed with both
type 1 and type 3 fonts. Their presence also speeds the display
of commonly used font sizes.
Font Format Extensions
======================
* .afm
Adobe Type 1 metric information in `ascii' format (human parsable)
* .bco
Bitstream compressed outline
* .bdf
Adobe's Bitmap Distribution Format. This format can be converted
to the platform specific binary files required by the local X
Windows server. This is a bitmap font format distributed in ASCII.
* .bez
Bezier outline information
* .cfn
Calamus Font Notation. Vector font format, without hinting, but
with greater accuracy when compared to Type 1 fonts. Used by a.o.
Calamus (Atari, Windows NT), a DTP program with Soft RIP.
* .chr
Borland stroked font file
* .ff, .f3b, .fb
Sun formats. More info when I know more...
* .fli
Font libraries produced by emTeX fontlib program. Used by emTeX
drivers and newer versions of dvips.
* .fnt
Bitmapped GEM font in either Motorola or Intel format.
* .fon
An MS-Windows bitmapped font.
* .fot
An MS-Windows kludge for TrueType fonts. The fot file points to
the actual TrueType font (in a ttf file).
* .gf
Generic font (the output of TeX's MetaFont program (possibly
others?))
* .mf
TeX MetaFont font file (text file of MetaFont commands)
* .pfa
Adobe Type 1 Postscript font in ASCII format (PC/Unix) I believe
that this format is suitable for directly downloading to your
PostScript printer (someone correct me if I'm wrong ;-)
* .pfb
Adobe Type 1 PostScript font in "binary`' format (PC/Unix) Note:
this format is not suitable for downloading directly to your
PostScript printer. There are utilities for conversion between
PFB and PFA (see the utilities section of the FAQ).
* .pfm
Printer font metric information in Windows format
* .pk
TeX packed bitmap font file (also seen as .###pk where ### is a
number)
* .pl
TeX `property list' file (a human readable version of .tfm)
* .ps
Frequently, any PostScript file. With respect to fonts, probably
a Type3 font. This designation is much less `standard' than the
others. Other non-standard extensions are .pso, .fon, and .psf
(they are a mixture of type 1 and type 3 fonts).
* .pxl
TeX pixel bitmap font file (obsolete, replaced by .pk)
* .sfl
LaserJet bitmapped softfont, landscape orientation
* .sfp
LaserJet bitmapped softfont, portrait orientation
* .sfs
LaserJet scalable softfont
* .spd
Vector font in Speedo format.
* .tdf
Vector font type definitions for Speedo fonts.
* .tfm
TeX font metric file. Also an HP Tagged Font Metric file.
* .ttf
An MS-Windows TrueType font.
* .vf
TeX virtual font which allows building of composite fonts (a
character can be composed of any sequence of movements, characters
(possibly from multiple fonts) rules and TeX specials)
* .vpl
TeX `property list' (human readable) format of a .vf
Subject: 1.15. Ligatures
A ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed
as a unit. Generally, ligatures replace characters that occur next to
each other when they share common components. Ligatures are a subset
of a more general class of figures called "contextual forms."
Contextual forms describe the case where the particular shape of a
letter depends on its context (surrounding letters, whether or not it's
at the end of a line, etc.).
One of the most common ligatures is "fi". Since the dot above a
lowercase 'I' interferes with the loop on the lowercase 'F', when 'f'
and 'i' are printed next to each other, they are combined into a single
figure with the dot absorbed into the 'f'.
An example of a more general contextual form is the greek lowercase
sigma. When typesetting greek, the selection of which 'sigma' to use
is determined by whether or not the letter occurs at the end of the
word (i.e., the final position in the word).
* Amanda Walker provides the following discussion of ligatures:
Ligatures were originally used by medieval scribes to conserve
space and increase writing speed. A 14th century manuscript, for
example, will include hundreds of ligatures (this is also where
"accents" came from). Early typefaces used ligatures in order to
emulate the appearance of hand-lettered manuscripts. As
typesetting became more automated, most of these ligatures fell
out of common use. It is only recently that computer based
typesetting has encouraged people to start using them again
(although 'fine art' printers have used them all along).
Generally, ligatures work best in typefaces which are derived from
calligraphic letterforms. Also useful are contextual forms, such
as swash capitals, terminal characters, and so on.
A good example of a computer typeface with a rich set of ligatures
is Adobe Caslon (including Adobe Caslon Expert). It includes:
Upper case, lower case, small caps, lining numerals, oldstyle
numerals, vulgar fractions, superior and inferior numerals, swash
italic caps, ornaments, long s, and the following ligatures:
ff fi fl ffi ffl Rp ct st Sh Si Sl SS St (where S=long s)
[Ed: Another common example is the Computer Modern Roman typeface
that is provided with TeX. this family of fonts include the ff,
fi, fl, ffi, and ffl ligatures which TeX automatically uses when
it finds these letters juxtaposed in the text.]
While there are a large number number of possible ligatures,
generally only the most common ones are actually provided. In
part, this is because the presence of too many alternate forms
starts reducing legibility. A case in point is Luxeuil Miniscule,
a highly-ligatured medieval document hand which is completely
illegible to the untrained eye (and none too legible to the
trained eye, either :)).
* Don Hosek offers the following insight into ligatures:
Ligatures were used in lead type, originally in imitation of
calligraphic actions (particularly in Greek which retained an
excessive number of ligatures in printed material as late as the
19th century), but as typefaces developed, ligatures were retained
to improve the appearance of certain letter combinations. In some
cases, it was used to allow certain letter combinations to be more
closely spaced (e.g., "To" or "Vo") and were referred to as
"logotypes". In other cases, the designs of two letters were merged
to keep the overall spacing of words uniform. Ligatures are
provided in most contemporary fonts for exactly this reason.
* Liam Quin makes the following observations:
The term ligature should only be used to describe joined letters in
printing, not letters that overlap in manuscripts.
Many (not all) accents came from the practice of using a tilde or
other mark to represent an omitted letter, so that for example the
Latin word `Dominus' would be written dns, with a tilde or bar over
the n. This is an abbreviation, not a ligature.
Most ligatures vanished during the 15th and 16th Centuries. It was
simply too much work to use them, and it increased the price of
book production too much.
[Ed: there is no "complete" set of ligatures.]
This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the
input file FAQ.texinfo.
Subject: 1.16. Built-in Fonts
* PostScript printers (and Adobe Type Manager) with 13 fonts have:
Courier, Courier-Bold, Courier-BoldOblique, Courier-Oblique,
Helvetica, Helvetica-Bold, Helvetica-BoldOblique,
Helvetica-Oblique, Symbol, Times-Bold, Times-BoldItalic,
Times-Italic, Times-Roman
* Postscript printers with 17 fonts have:
Courier, Courier-Bold, Courier-BoldOblique, Courier-Oblique,
Helvetica, Helvetica-Bold, Helvetica-BoldOblique, Helvetica-Narrow,
Helvetica-Narrow-Bold, Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique,
Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique, Helvetica-Oblique, Symbol, Times-Bold,
Times-BoldItalic, Times-Italic, Times-Roman
* Postscript printers with 35 fonts have:
All of the above, plus the following:
ZapfChancery-MediumItalic, ZapfDingbats, AvantGarde-Book,
AvantGarde-BookOblique, AvantGarde-Demi, AvantGarde-DemiOblique,
Bookman-Demi, Bookman-DemiItalic, Bookman-Light,
Bookman-LightItalic, NewCenturySchlbk-Bold,
NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic, NewCenturySchlbk-Italic,
NewCenturySchlbk-Roman, Palatino-Bold, Palatino-BoldItalic,
Palatino-Italic, Palatino-Roman
* HP LaserJet printers (II, IIP)
Courier 10, Courier 12, LinePrinter 16.66, ...
* HP LaserJet printers (III, IIIP)
All of the above, plus the following:
Scalable Times Roman and Scalable Univers using Compugraphic's
Intellifont hinted font format.
* HP LaserJet IV printers
All of the above, plus the following scalable (Intellifont) faces:
Courier, Courier Bold, Courier Italic, Courier Bold Italic, CG
Times, CG Times Bold, CG Times Italic, CG Times Bold Italic CG
Omega, CG Omega Bold, CG Omega Italic, CG Omega Bold Italic
Coronet, Clarendon Condensed Univers Medium, Univers Bold, Univers
Medium Italic, Univers Bold Italic Univers Medium Condensed,
Univers Bold Condensed, Univers Medium Condensed Italic, Univers
Bold Condensed Italic Antique Olive, Antique Olive Bold, Antique
Olive Italic Garamond Antiqua, Garamond Halbfett, Garamond Kursiv,
Garamond Kursiv Halbfett Marigold, Albertus Medium, Albertus Extra
Bold Arial, Arial Bold, Arial Italic, Arial Bold Italic Times New,
Times New Bold, Times New Italic, Times New Bold Italic Symbol,
Wingdings, Letter Gothic, Letter Gothic Bold, Letter Gothic Italic
* SPARCPrinters
The basic 35 fonts plus four scaled faces of each of Bembo, Gill
Sans, Rockwell, Lucida, Lucida Bright, Sans and Typewriter, giving
a total of 57 fonts, all in the F3 format.
Subject: 1.17. Glossary
[ I ripped this right out of the manual I wrote for Sfware. If you have
comments, improvements, suggestions, please tell me... ]
anti-aliasing
[ed: this is an 'off-the-cuff' definition, feel free to clarify it
for me ;-) ]
On low-resolution bitmap devices (where ragged, ugly characters
are the norm) which support more than two colors, it is possible
to provide the appearance of higher resolution with anti-aliasing.
Anti-aliasing uses shaded pixels around the edges of the bitmap
to give the appearance of partial-pixels which improves the
apparent resolution.
baseline
The baseline is an imaginary line upon which each character rests.
Characters that appear next to each other are (usually) lined up so
that their baselines are on the same level. Some characters extend
below the baseline ("g" and "j", for example) but most rest on it.
bitmap
A bitmap is an array of dots. If you imagine a sheet of graph paper
with some squares colored in, a bitmap is a compact way of
representing to the computer which squares are colored and which
are not.
In a bitmapped font, every character is represented as a pattern of
dots in a bitmap. The dots are so small (300 or more dots-per-inch,
usually) that they are indistinguishable on the printed page.
character
(1) The smallest component of written language that has semantic
value. Character refers to the abstract idea, rather than a
specific shape (see also glyph), though in code tables some form
of visual representation is essential for the reader's
understanding. (2) The basic unit of encoding for the Unicode
character encoding, 16 bits of information. (3) Synonym for "code
element". (4) The English name for the ideographic written
elements of Chinese origin.
download
Downloading is the process of transferring information from one
device to another. This transferral is called downloading when the
transfer flows from a device of (relatively) more power to one of
(relatively) less power. Sending new fonts to your printer so that
it "learns" how to print characters in that font is called
downloading.
font
A particular collection of characters of a typeface with unique
parameters in the 'Variation vector', a particular instance of
values for orientation, size, posture, weight, etc., values. The
word font or fount is derived from the word foundry, where,
originally, type was cast. It has come to mean the vehicle which
holds the typeface character collection. A font can be metal,
photographic film, or electronic media (cartridge, tape, disk).
glyph
(1) The actual shape (bit pattern, outline) of a character image.
For example, an italic 'a' and a roman 'a' are two different glyphs
representing the same underlying character. In this strict sense,
any two images which differ in shape constitute different glyphs.
In this usage, "glyph" is a synonym for "character image", or
simply "image". (2) A kind of idealized surface form derived from
some combination of underlying characters in some specific
context, rather than an actual character image. In this broad
usage, two images would constitute the same glyph whenever they
have essentially the same topology (as in oblique 'a' and roman
'a'), but different glyphs when one is written with a hooked top
and the other without (the way one prints an 'a' by hand). In
this usage, "glyph" is a synonym for "glyph type," where glyph is
defined as in sense 1.
hints
When a character is described in outline format the outline has
unlimited resolution. If you make it ten times as big, it is just
as accurate as if it were ten times as small.
However, to be of use, we must transfer the character outline to a
sheet of paper through a device called a raster image processor
(RIP). The RIP builds the image of the character out of lots of
little squares called picture elements (pixels).
The problem is, a pixel has physical size and can be printed only
as either black or white. Look at a sheet of graph paper. Rows and
columns of little squares (think: pixels). Draw a large `O' in the
middle of the graph paper. Darken in all the squares touched by the
O. Do the darkened squares form a letter that looks like the O you
drew? This is the problem with low resolution (300 dpi). Which
pixels do you turn on and which do you leave off to most accurately
reproduce the character?
All methods of hinting strive to fit (map) the outline of a
character onto the pixel grid and produce the most
pleasing/recognizable character no matter how coarse the grid is.
kerning
(noun): That portion of a letter which extends beyond its width,
that is, the letter shapes that overhang - the projection of a
character beyond its sidebearings.
(verb): To adjust the intercharacter spacing in character groups
(words) to improve their appearance. Some letter combinations
("AV" and "To", for example) appear farther apart than others
because of the shapes of the individual letters.
Many sophisticated word processors move these letter combinations
closer together automatically.
outline font/format
See 'scalable font'
point
The (more or less) original point system (Didot) did have exactly
72 points to the inch. The catch is that it was the French
imperial inch, somewhat longer than the English inch, and it went
away in the French revolution. What most people now think of as
points were established by the United States Typefounders
Association in 1886. This measure was a matter of convenience for
the members of the Association, who didn't want to retool any more
than they had to, so it had no relationship to the inch. By that
date, people realized that the inch was an archaic measure anyway;
the point was set to be 1/12 of a pica, and an 83-pica distance
was made equal to 35 centimeters. (Talk about arbitrary!)
Thus the measure of 72.27/in. is just an approximation. Of course,
when PostScript was being written, it was necessary to fit into an
inch-measured world. For the sake of simplicity PostScript defined
a point as exactly 1/72". With the prevalance of DTP, the
simplified point has replaced the older American point in many
uses. Personally, I don't see that it matters one way or the
other; all that counts is that there's a commonly-understood unit
of measurement that allows you to get the size you think you want.
That is, after all, the point ;)
scalable font
A scalable font, unlike a bitmapped font, is defined mathematically
and can be rendered at any requested size (within reason).
softfont
A softfont is a bitmapped or scalable description of a typeface or
font. They can be downloaded to your printer and used just like
any other printer font. Unlike built-in and cartridge fonts,
softfonts use memory inside your printer. Downloading a lot of
softfonts may reduce the printers ability to construct complex
pages.
symbol set
The symbol set of a font describes the relative positions of
individual characters within the font. Since there can only be 256
characters in most fonts, and there are well over 256 different
characters used in professional document preparation, there needs
to be some way to map characters into positions within the font.
The symbol set serves this purpose. It identifies the "map" used
to position characters within the font.
typeface
The features by which a character's design is recognized, hence
the word face. Within the Latin language group of graphic shapes
are the following forms: Uncial, Blackletter, Serif, Sans Serif,
Scripts, and Decorative. Each form characterizes one or more
designs. Example: Serif form contains four designs called Old
Style, Transitional, Modern, and Slab Serif designs. The typeface
called Bodoni is a Modern design, while Times Roman is a
Transitional design.
Subject: 1.18. Bibliography
Editors note: the following books have been suggested by readers of
comp.fonts. They are listed in no particular order. I have lost the
citations for some of the submissions. If you wrote a review that
appears below and you aren't credited, please let norm know.
I have decided that this is the best section for pointers to other font
resources (specs and other documents, for example). These appear after
the traditional bibliographic entries. As usual I will happily accept
entries for this section. As of 9/92, the only files listed are the
TrueType font information files available from Microsoft.
Bill Ricker contributed the following general notes:
The Watson-Guptill, Godine, and Dover publishers all have many
typography titles. Godine and Dover tend to be excellent; W-G tends
toward 'how-to' books which are good for basics and juried Annuals of
job work.
Hermann Zapf and his Design Philosophy, Society of Typographic Arts,
Chicago, 1987.
On Stone -- The Art and Use of Typography on the Personal Computer,
Sumner Stone, Bedford Arts, 1991.
Of the Just Shaping of Letters, Albrecht Durer, isbn 0-486-21306-4.
First published in 1525 as part of his theoretical treatise on applied
geometry, "The Art of Measurment".
Champ Flevry, Geofroy Troy.
First published in 1529 Troy attempts, in this book, to design an ideal
Roman alphabet upon geometrical and aesthetic principles.
The Alphabet & Elements of Lettering, Frederic W. Goudy, isbn
0-486-20792-7. Revised 1942 edition.
This very interesting book looks at the history of letter shapes as
well font design.
The Mac is Not a Typewriter, Robin Williams, Peachpit Press.
A good, clear explanation of what typography is, and how to get it from
your computer. Mac-specific, but full of excellent general advice. I
think there's also a PC version. Available at most computer bookstores
Rhyme and Reason: A Typographic Novel, Erik Spiekermann, H. Berthold AG,
ISBN 3-9800722-5-8.
Printing Types (2 vols), Daniel Berkely Updike, Dover Press.
Affordable edition of the most readable history of type, lots of
illustrations.
Notes: Both the Dover and Harvard U. P. editions were 2 volumes. The
Dover editions were paperback and the Harvard hardback. It appears
that the Dover edition is out of print. Collectible HUP editions are
not cheap although later HUP editions may be had. Most libraries have
later HUP and Dover editions. If someone knows of a source, please
pass it along.
The Art of Hand Lettering, Helm Wotzkow, Dover Press, reprint from 1952.
Looking Good In Print, Roger C. Parker, Ventana Press, ISBN:
0-940087-32-4.
Well, as a beginner's book, [it] isn't bad. I can't say that I agree
with the author's tastes all the time, but he at least gives some good
examples. Also there are some nice _Publish_-style makeovers. Don
Hosek <[email protected]>
Book Design: A Practical Introduction, Douglas Martin, Van Nostrand
Reinhold, New York: 1989. 206pp.
Along with Jan White's book (see below), this provides a fairly
complete guide to book design. Martin's book is somewhat more
conservative in outlook and also reflects his UK background. Don Hosek
<[email protected]>
Digital Typography: An Introduction to Type and Composition for Computer
System Design, Richard Rubinstein, Addison-Wesley, Reading,
Massachusetts: 1988. 340pp.
An interesting, technological approach to typography which is worth
reading although not necessarily always worth believing. A not
insubstantial portion of the text is dedicated to representing type on
a CRT display and Rubinstein devotes some time to expressing
characteristics of typography numerically. Don Hosek
<[email protected]>
Graphic Design for the Electronic Age, Jan V. White, Watson-Guptill
Publications, New York: 1988. 212pp.
A good handbook for document design. In a well-organized approach,
White covers the principles for laying out most of the typographics
features of a technical document. White is a bit overeager to embrace
sans-serif types and in places his layout ideas seem a bit garish, but
it's still a quite worthwhile book. Don Hosek
<[email protected]>
Xerox Publishing Standards: A Manual of Style and Design, Watson-Guptill
Publications, New York: 1988. 400pp.
Overall, a disappointing book. It is divided into four sections of
widely varying intent: "Publishing Process," "Document Organization,"
"Writing and Style" and "Visual Design." None of them is really
adequate for the task and all are highly centered on the Xerox method
for publishing. As a guide to Xerox' process, it succeeds, but as a
manual for general use, it falls far short. In print. Don Hosek
<[email protected]>
Methods of Book Design (3rd edition), Hugh Williamson, Yale University
Press, New Haven: 1983. 408pp.
It is a bit out-of-date as regards technology, but on issues relating
purely to design it is comprehensive and definitive. Well, I suppose
it could be argued that printing technology influences design - e.g.
some types look fine in metal but lousy in digital imagesetting - and
therefore a book that is out-of-date in technology can't really be
"definitive" in matters of design either. In any event, _Methods_ is
more than adequate for a beginner's needs. My paper-bound copy (ISBN
0-300-03035-5) was \$13.95; cheap at twice the price! Cameron Smith
<[email protected]>
The Thames & Hudson Manual of typography, Rauri McLean, Thames & Hudson
An excellent book if you start getting more interested in type. Look
for Rauri McLean's other books after this one... Liam R.E. Quin
<[email protected]>
Typography and Why it matters, Fernand Baudin.
There is no better introduction than [it]. It's not a primer on
subjects such as "what does Avant Garde look like," or "This is a good
font for books." It is a good primer on the things you need to know
before the rest should be considered. He's a lovely writer, to boot.
[My copy is at work, so I may have munged the title-look up Baudin in
"Books in Print" and improvise :-)]
Ari Davidow <[email protected]>
Better Type, Betty Binns
It's definitely not a lightweight beginner's introduction, but I've
found [it] to be indispensable. It's a large-format hardcover, but you
can find it remaindered for cheap if you look around. The book goes
into great detail about how factors like line spacing, line length,
point size, and design of typeface (evenness of stroke weight,
x-height, etc.) affect readability. When you've gotten the basics out
of the way and want to learn more about the fine nuances of type color,
this book is an absolute must. David Mandl <[email protected]>
Printing Types: An Introduction..., S. Lawson, (revised) 1990
I'd also recommend Alexander S. Lawson's books especially /Printing
Types: An Intro.../ (revised), 1990, which includes electronic types
now. Bill Ricker <[email protected]>
Tally of Types, Stanley Morrison, Cambridge University Press.
A keepsake for CUP on the Monotype fonts he'd acquired for them when he
was Type Advisor to both Brit.Monotype & CUP (Cambridge University
Press, Cambs.UK), which discusses his hindsight on some of the great
revival fonts and some of the better new fonts. Bill Ricker
<[email protected]>
Chicago Manual of Style, University of Chicago Press, 1982;
ISBN 0-226-10390-0.
The chapter on Design and Typography is most directly relevant, but
there are a lot of hints scattered all through the Chicago Manual on
making your words more readable and your pages more attractive. Stan
Brown <[email protected]>
X Window System Administrator's Guide (O'Reilly X Window System Guides,
volume 8), O'Reilly
It gives advice about setting up fonts, etc. Liam Quin <[email protected]>
How Bodoni intended his types to look Bodoni, Giambattista. Fregi e
Majuscole Incise e Fuse de ... Bodoni, Harvard University Library
(repr).
Inexpensive collectible, reproduced as a keepsake by the Houghton
Library at Harvard. [wdr]
The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst, Hartley & Marks
0-88179-033-8 pbk \$15, Z246.B74 1992 0-88179-110-5 cloth, \$25.
A typography for desktop publishers who want to absorb some style.
Informed by the historical european tradition and the desktop
advertising, tempered by oriental yin-yang and examples. A page-turner
with repeat-read depth.
The only book I've seen that discusses page proportions that admits
there are more than three ways that describes how to find one that
feels good for your page. [wdr]
Hermann Zapf on the cover-blurb: "All desktop typographers should study
this book. ... I wish to see this book become the Typographers' Bible."
Printing It, Clifford Burke, Ballantine, 0-345-02694-2.
Manual for the hobby letterpress printer. [wdr]
Twentieth Century Type Designers, Sebastian Carter, Taplinger, 1987.
Discusses the talented adaptators of old faces to machine caster and
film/laser, as well as the designers of new works. Indexed? [wdr]
Design with Type, Carl Dair, University of Toronto Press, 0-8020-1426-7.
In print again (or still?); the ISBN above may be stale.
A great introduction to the issues of practicality and taste that
confront the users of type. A prized possession. I only regret that the
book does not include among the excerpts from his Westvaco pamphlets
the Seven Don'ts of Typography. [wdr]
Typography 6: The Annual of the Type Directors Club, Susan Davis, ed.,
Watson-Guptill, 0-8230-5540-x.
Specimens of Type Faces in the U.S. G.P.O., John J. Deviny, director.,
US G.P.O.
Practice of Typography: Plain Printing Types, Theodore Low De Vinne,
Century Co./DeVinne Press.
One of the earlier critical studies, in four volumes of which this is
my personal favorite, and still a classic reference. If one wants to
understand 18th and 19th century typography in context, this writer
lived the transition from eclectic to standard sizes, and comments
with taste. [wdr]
An Essay on Typography, Eric Gill, Godine, 0-87923-762-7.
The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering, Frederic W. Goudy, Dorset Press
(Marboro Books), 0-88029-330-6
Lovely. A wonderful way to learn Goudy's taste.
Stanley Morison Displayed, Herbert Jones, Frederick Muller Ltd / W,
0-584-10352-2.
Lovely. A wonderful way to learn Morrison's taste.
Printing Types: An Introduction..., Alexander S. Lawson et. al., Beacon
1971,?Godine? 1990; (2nd Ed includes electronic types now)
"Good introduction to comparisons of typefaces, with a detailed history
and a key family or face of each general category. Denounces rigid
indexes of type faces." [wdr]
Anatomy of a Typeface, Alexander Lawson, Godine, 0-87923-333-8,
Z250.L34 1990
Deep description of the authors' favorite exemplar and its influences
and relatives in each type category. It follows, without explicating,
the category system developed in the prior book. [wdr]
Types of Typefacs and how to recognize them, J. Ben Lieberman,
Sterling, 1968
"This isn't very good really, but it does give lots of examples of the
main categories." [Liam] [Old bibliographies praised this one, but I
haven't seen it so I can't comment.- wdr]
Tally of Types (& other titles), Stanley Morrison, Cambridge U. Press.
A keepsake for CUP on the Monotype fonts he'd acquired for them when he
was Type Advisor to both Brit. Monotype & CUP (Cambridge University
Press, Cambs.UK), which discusses his hindsight on some of the great
revival fonts and some of the better new fonts. [wdr]
Rookledge's International Type Finder 2nd, Perfect, Christopher and
Gordon Rookledge, Ed Moyer Bell Ltd / Rizzoli, 1-55921-052-4,
Z250.P42 [1st Ed was NY: Beil 1983]
"Lg. trade pb. Indexed by stylistic & characteristic features. Shows
A-Z, a-z, 0-9 in primary figures, whether lining or ranging.
Particularly distinctive sorts are marked for ease of comparison.
Separate tables collect the distinctive characters for assistance in
identifying a sample." [wdr]
English Printers' Ornaments, Henry R. Plomer, Burt Franklin
Paragraphs on Printing, Bruce Rogers, [Rudge] Dover, 0-486-23817-2
Digital Typography: An Introduction to Type and Composition for
Computer System Design, Richard Rubinstein, Addison-Wesley, Reading,
Massachusetts: 1988. 340pp.
For people who are disappointed with how the type looks on the laser,
this book explains the subleties of that medium and of the screen that
others miss. This is a study of the Human Factors of computer
typographic systems. [wdr]
The Case for Legibility, John Ryder, The Bodley Head, 0-370-30158-7,
Z250.A4
The Solotype Catalog of 4,147 Display typefaces, Dan X. Solo, Dover,
0-486-27169-2, Z250.5.D57S654 19
"Working catalog of a specialty Graphics Arts shop. They use
proprietary optical special effects techniques to get Desktop
Publishing effects, and more, without the laser-printer grain. Great
listing of 19th Century Decorated Types - probably the largest
collection in the world. Prices to order headlines from them are NOT
cheap however. Their services are for professional or serious hobby
use only. Solo's previous Dover books show some number of complete
alphabets of a general peculiar style; this one shows small fragments
of his entire usable collection, important as an index. (According to
private correspondence, they have more faces that have not yet been
restored to usable condition.) Not well indexed, but indexed." [wdr]
Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works, Erik Spiekermann & E.M.
Ginger., Adobe Press, 1993
Introductory, motivational. If you wonder why there are so many type
faces in the world, this is the book for you! [Liam] [The title refers
to the old joke: "A man who would letterspace lowercase would also
steal sheep." [wdr]]
The Art & Craft of Handmade Paper, Vance Studley, Dover, 0-486-26421-1,
TS1109.S83 1990
Letters of Credit, Walter Tracey, Godine Press
"I can't recommend this too highly. It's not as introductory as the
Sheep Book, but conveys a feeling of love and respect for the letter
forms, and covers a lot of ground very, very well." [Liam]
Printing Types: Their History, Forms & Use, Daniel Berkely Updike,
Harvard University Press, reprint by Dover.
The standard reference. Tour-de-force history of type and type-styles.
A trifle conservative in its biases, but typography is conservative for
good reason: readability. Check the addenda for his final words on
newer faces. [wdr]
1. I believe the Dover edition to be 3 vols Pbk; both the collectable
and later Harvard U.P. editions were two vols hbk.
2. I am informed by my bookseller & Books In Print that the Dover
edition is out of print. *sigh* If a source be known, let me know.
Collectible HUP eds are not cheap, although later HUP eds may be had.
Most libararies have later HUP or Dover eds. [wdr]
Modern Encyclopedia of Typefaces, 1960-90, Lawrence W. Wallis, Van
Nostrand Reinhold, 0-442-30809-4, Z250.W238 1990
"Gives examples of most typefaces, almost all digital, designed &
distributed in the last 30 years. Cross indexed by foundry and
designer, and sources and looks-likes. Some historical bits. Shows
full a-z,A-Z,0-9, a few points (punctuation); and 0-9 again if both
lining and oldstyle supplied. Only complaint is that it omits small
caps even from what few fonts have 'em and the accented characters, of
which most have some but too few. List \$25." [wdr]
About Alphabets: Some Marginal Notes on Type Design, Hermann Zapf, MIT
Press, 0-262-74003-6
Hermann Zapf & His Design Philosophy, Hermann Zapf, Society of
Typographic Arts, Chicago
"Anything about, by, or vaguely connected with Hermann Zapf is probably
worth reading several times :-)" [Liam]
Manuale Typographicum, Hermann Zapf, MIT Press, 0-262-74004-4
There are two books of this title (portrait and landscape); this is
the only mass-market edition of either. Both are Zapf's selections of
interesting typographical quotations in his inimitable display
typography. [wdr]
Microsoft Windows 3.1 Programmer's Reference, Microsoft Press.
Documents the Panose system of typeface classification. Probably
contains a general discussion of TrueType under MS Windows 3.1.
Introduction to Typography, 3rd ed, Faber, London, 1962.
A very good introduction for any beginner. Also discusses things like
illustrations and cover design, although not in great detail.
Simon was a purist, as the editor of the 3rd edition remarks. He did
not mention phototypesetting in his original edition, but some
observations on its uses and abuses have since been added. Anders
Thulin <[email protected]>
Eve Damaziere contributes:
Twentieth Century Type, Lewis Blackwell, Calmann & King, London (GB),
1992. Chez Flammarion (1993 - 256 p.) pour l'edition francaise (french
edition).
It's a very intelligent account of the history of type in our century,
and its links to art, technics and politics (history). Lots of
pictures, too. At the end of it, a "description and classification of
types", from the 15th century up to now : the author follows the
classification of Maximilien Vox (1952), a french graphist.
[ed: additional bibliographic information appears in the file
"Additional-bibliography" on
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/FAQ.html. I have not yet had
time to integrate this bibliographic information into the FAQ]
Subject: 1.19. Font Encoding Standards
What is a character set?
========================
A character set is a collection of symbols in a specific order. Some
common character sets are ASCII and ISO Latin 1.
What is an encoding vector?
===========================
The term "encoding vector" is most frequently heard in the context of
PostScript fonts. An encoding vector embodies a particular character
set, it is simply the list of all the characters in the character set
in the order in which they occur.
Most font technologies limit a particular encoding to 256 characters;
an Adobe Type 1 font, for example, may contain an arbitrary number of
characters, but no single encoding vector can contain more than 256.
Some common encodings are:
* Adobe Standard Encoding - the default encoding of many PS Type1
fonts
* Apple Standard Encoding - the default encoding on a Mac
* US ASCII - seven bit ASCII
* ISO Latin-1 - an eight bit multi-national character
set encoding
* Cork Encoding - the TeX community's eight bit standard
* FC - an eight bit encoding for African
languages
* TeX text - the TeX community's seven bit defacto
standard (CMR)
Where can I get them?
=====================
You can get tables showing the layout of many standard character sets
from the Kermit distribution (via anonymous ftp from
watsun.cc.columbia.edu in /kermit/charsets.
Subject: 1.20. PostScript
What About PostScript UNIQUEIDs?
================================
This section was constructed from a posting by Johannes Schmidt-Fischer
in Jun 1993.
All PostScript Type 1 fonts should contain a UniqueId. This is a
number which should be, as the name suggests, unique (at least among
the fonts that you download to the printer at any given time).
There are many PostScript fonts on the 'Net which have identical
UniqeIds. If two of these fonts are downloaded to the same printer at
the same time, attempts to use either font may cause the wrong
characters to be printed.
In a nutshell, the reason that the wrong characters may be printed is
that the printer may be storing the rendered glyphs in its font cache,
addressed by UniqueID. So, if two fonts, /Foo and /Bar, both have
UniqueID=5 and /Foo's 10pt "A" is currently in the cache, a request for
/Bar's 10pt "A" will cause the wrong character to be printed. Rather
than rendering /Bar's "A" from its (correct and unambiguous) outline,
the printer will note that the cache contains a 10pt "A" for font 5 and
will copy it from the cache (resulting in /Foo's "A" printing for /Bar).
Adobe's "Red Book" contains a detailed discussion of this topic.
Can a Type 1 Font Be Shaded?
============================
David Lemon contributes:
There are three ways to get grey into a font. The first is to make a
series of Type 1 fonts, each of which will be used for a single shade
of grey (or other color). The user then sets copies of the characters
on top of each other, selecting each and setting it to the shade
desired. It's a bit inconvenient (and won't work in a word processor)
but it gets full resolution, good hinting and gives the user lots of
control. This is the approach Adobe has used in its "chromatic" fonts
(as in Adobe Wood Type 3 and Copal) and is viable for both Type 1 and
TrueType formats.
As an alternative, the designer can approximate shades of grey in the
characters by using many little dots (a sort of halftone effect) or
lines (as in cross-hatching). This leads to pretty complex characters,
which may choke some rasterizers, and won't hint well. As with the
first method, this is viable (more or less) for both Type 1 and
TrueType.
The third method is more direct but limited. In this approach, the
designer/producer creates the shades of grey in a font-editing program.
The limitation is that such a font must be written in Type 3, which is
a generalized PostScript format (Type 1 and TrueType recognize only
solid shapes). Such a font won't be supported by ATM, so your screen
display will suffer and you'll be restricted to PostScript printers. On
the plus side, your greys will be rendered at the full resolution of
the printer you use.
Subject: 1.21. TrueType
George Moore announces the following information regarding TrueType
fonts:
"I am pleased to announce that there is now one central location for all
official Microsoft TrueType information available on the Internet. The
9 files listed below are available for anonymous ftp access on
ftp.microsoft.com in the /developr/drg/TrueType-Info directory. The
most important of those files is the TrueType Font Files
Specifications, a 400 page book which describes in excruciating detail
how to build a TrueType font. Other information is also available in
the same directory and other files will be added from time to time.
For those people who do not have ftp access to the Internet can find the
same information available for downloading on Compuserve in the
Microsoft developer relations forum (GO MSDR) in the TrueType library.
Please be aware that the TrueType specifications is a copyrighted work
of Microsoft and Apple and can not be resold for profit.
TrueType developer information files on ftp.microsoft.com:
1. ttspec1.zip, ttspec2.zip, and ttspec3.zip
The TrueType Specification:
These three compressed files contain the "TrueType Font Files
Specifications", a 400 page book complete with illustrations which
details how to construct a TrueType font from scratch (or build
a tool to do so), the TrueType programming language, and the
complete format of each sub-table contained in the .TTF file.
These documents are stored in Word for Windows 2.0 format and
require Windows 3.1 for printing. See the "readme.doc" (in
ttspec1.zip) for printing instructions. Requires 2.5MB of disk
space after uncompression.
This manual is a superset of the similar specifications from Apple
and has added information specific to Windows that is not
present in the Apple version.
2. ttfdump.zip
An MS-DOS executable which will dump the contents of a TrueType
font out in a human-readable fashion. It allows you to dump the
entire font, or just specific sub-tables. This tool, combined
with the specifications above, allows very effective debugging
or exploration of any TrueType font. For example, to dump the
contents of the 'cmap' (character code to glyph index mapping)
table, enter:
ttfdump fontname.ttf -tcmap -nx
Entering "ttfdump" with no options will give you a help message.
3. ttfname.zip
Example C source code on how to parse the contents of a TrueType
font. Although this particular example will open up the file
and locate the font name contained within the 'name' table, it
could be readily adapted to parse any other structure in the
file. This compressed zip file also contains many useful
include files which have pre-defined structures set up for the
internal tables of a TrueType font file. This code may be
useful for developers who wish to parse the TrueType data stream
returned by the GetFontData() API in Windows 3.1.
4. tt-win.zip
A 31 page Word for Windows 2.0 document which is targeted for the
Windows developer who is interested in learning about some of the
capabilities TrueType adds to Windows 3.1. Contains many
illustrations.
5. embeddin.zip
A text file which describes all of the information necessary for a
Windows developer to add TrueType font embedding capabilities to
their application. Font embedding allows the application to
bundle the TrueType fonts that were used in that document and
transport it to another platform where the document can be
viewed or printed correctly.
6. tt-talk.zip
The TrueType Technical Talks 1 and 2. These text files describe
some of the things that are happening with TrueType behind the
scenes in Windows 3.1. The first document walks the reader
through all of the steps that occur from when the user first
presses the key on the keyboard until that character appears on
the screen (scaling, hinting, drop out control, caching and
blitting). The second talk describes one of the unique features
of TrueType called non-linear scaling which allows the font
vendor to overcome some of the physical limitations of low
resolution output devices.
7. lucida.zip
This text file contains useful typographic information on the 22
Lucida fonts which are contained in the Microsoft TrueType Font
Pack for Windows. It gives pointers on line-layout, mixing and
matching fonts in the family and a little history on each
typeface. This information was written by the font's designers,
Chuck Bigelow & Kris Holmes."
Subject: 1.22. Unicode
[ed: This is a summary of the Unicode info I've gleaned from the net
recently, the whole Unicode issue needs to be addressed better by the
FAQ...someday... someday...I'll get to reorganize the whole thing]
What Is Unicode?
================
Charles A. Bigelow notes:
The authors of the Unicode standard emphasize the fact that Unicode is a
character encoding, not a glyph encoding. This might seem like a
metaphysical distinction, in which characters have some "semantic"
content (that is, they signify something to literates) and and glyphs
are particular instantiations or renderings of characters--Plato talked
about this kind of stuff--but in practice it means that most ligatures
are not represented in Unicode, nor swash variants, nor figure variants
(except for superior and inferior, which are semantically distinct from
baseline figures), and so on.
For further information, consult The Unicode Standard: Worldwide
Character Encoding Version 1.0, Vol. 1 (alphabets & symbols) and Vol 2.
(Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters), by The Unicode Consortium,
Addison Wesley Publishing Co, 1991, ISBN 0-201-56788-1, 0-201-60845-6.
What is the Unicode Consortium?
===============================
The Unicode Consortium is an international body responsible for
maintaining the Unicode standard. Their email address is
<[email protected]>
To obtain more information on Unicode or to order their printed material
and/or diskettes contact:
Steven A. Greenfield
Unicode Office Manager
1965 Charleston Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
Tel. 415-966-4189
Fax. 415-966-1637
Unicode Editing
===============
James Matthew Farrow contributes:
I use `sam' for all by text editing. It is X editor based on an editor
for the blit called jim. Papers describing sam as well as a
distribution of sam itself are available for ftp from research.att.com.
The sam there is a Unix port of the Plan 9 version. Plan 9 is a full
unicode operating system, even around before NT! The libraries sam is
built upon therefore support 16 bit wide characters. The graphics
library, supplied with it at present does not. However they may be
planning to distribute a new version which does soon. The library just
plugs in replacing the library that comes with sam. No modification is
necessary. Character are stored using the utf-2 encoding.
All of the files I had before I started working with sam were 7 bit
ascii so no conversion was needed. Now I have ditched xterm in favour
of 9term: a terminal emulator in the style of 81/2 (the Plan 9
interface). This lets me type Unicode characters on the command line,
as part of filenames, in mail, wherever and most Unix utilities cope
without modification. This is about to be released. I'm looking for
beta testers. ;-)
Is a special keyboard required?
-------------------------------
No. ASCII Characters are typed as normal. Common characters above
0x7f are typed using two letter abbreviations. The table is similar to
the troff special character codes, e.g, Alt-12 gives you a 1/2, Alt-'e
gives you e acute, Alt-bu a bullet and so on. This table is hardwired
into the library at present but is trivial to change. Other codes are
accessed by typing their hex value, for instance the smiley is
Alt-X263a (0x263a being a smiley character in the Unicode character
set).
Is roman-to-Unicode conversion available?
-----------------------------------------
All normal 7 bit ascii characters are encoded as themselves so no
translation is needed. There are conversion routines in the library
(runetochar and chartorune) which will do the conversion and it should
be pretty simple to convert files already in another format. You would
have to write something to do the transliteration yourself. A small
patch to the system would let you enter different language `modes' for
text entry.
Are there PostScript or TrueType fonts available?
=================================================
Apparently there is a version of the Lucida fonts by Bigelow and Holmes
which support Unicode. This is the information I have on them.
[ed: quoting another source]
[Windows NT] will ship with a Unicode TrueType font containing
approximately 1,500 characters. The font is called "Lucida Sans
Unicode" and was specifically designed by Bigelow and Holmes for
Microsoft to contain the following Unicode sets:
ASCII
Latin 1
European Latin
Extended Latin
Standard Phonetic
Modifier Letters
Generic Diacritical
Greek
Cyrillic
Extended Cyrillic
Hebrew
Currency Symbols
Letterlike Symbols
Arrows
Mathematical Operators
Super & Subscript
Form & Chart Components
Blocks
Geometric Shapes
Miscellaneous Technical
Miscellaneous Dingbats
The bitmap fonts which comes with the utf version of the libXg graphics
library (the library upon which sam is built) support a sparse subset
of the full character set. That is, only a few of them have glyphs at
present. A font editor such as xfedor would let you add more. The list
of those currently available is pretty much as the above list.
I use 9term and sam as a matter of course now and have for several
months. I enjoy the convenience of putting special characters and
accented characters in my mail as well as being able to do some
phonetic work all in the one terminal/editor suite.
Subject: 1.23. Can I Print Checks with the MICR Font?
This comes up all the time: standard ordinary laser toner is magnetic
and will be read by the banks. The gotcha is that standard laser toner
rubs off in the *very* high-speed sorting equipment that are used, and
this makes read rates drop low and the banks will hate you.
I researched check printers for a customer, and was surprised to find
this. The Troy(tm) printers he bought are basically stock Ricoh
engines that have slightly tighter paper handling (for registration),
plus they add a proprietary Teflon-type powder coating on the output
path to coat the checks.
I saw some examples of checks printed with and without this special
coating after running through something like 40 passes through check
processing equipment, and the one without the coating was a mess. These
require special handling that the banks do *not* like. Apparently,
they go after companies that issue these kinds of checks with special
processing fees.
Subject: 1.24. Rules of Thumb
It is difficult to set out guidelines for font usage, because almost
any rule can be brilliantly broken under the right circumstances.
* General guidelines:
* Never lose track of the kind of work you're doing. An effect
that would ruin a newsletter might be just the thing for a
record cover. Know when you can safely sacrifice legibility
for artistic effect.
* Keep in mind the final reproduction process you'll be using.
Some effects (like reversed type, white on black) can be hard
to read off an ordinary 300-dpi laser, but will work if
finals are done on a high-resolution printer, such as a
Linotronic. Will the pages be photocopied? Offset? Onto rough
paper, shiny paper? All these factors can and should
influence your choice of fonts and how you use them.
* Running some comparative tests is a good idea. Better to blow
off a few sheets of laser paper now than to see a problem
after thousands of copies are made.
* No one can teach you font aesthetics; it must be learned by
example. Look at beautiful magazines, posters, books with
wide eyes, so that you can see how it's done. Examine ugly
printed matter critically and consider why it's hard to read.
* Good rules of thumb:
* If you need a condensed font, find one that was designed that
way, rather than scaling an existing font down to a
percentage. Any scaling distorts a font's design; excessive
scaling interferes with legibility - this goes for widening
as well as narrowing. Extended faces do exist, although they
aren't as common as condensed ones.
* Many people feel that bold or italic type, or type in ALL
CAPS, is more legible: "This is the most important part of
the newsletter, let's put it in bold." In fact, legibility
studies show that such type is actually harder to read in
bulk. Keep the text in a normal style and weight, and find
another way to emphasize it - box it, illustrate it, run it
in color, position it focally.
* Too much reverse type - white on black - is hard on the eyes.
It can be a nice effect if used sparingly. Don't reverse a
serif font, though - its details will tend to fill in. Stick
to reversing bold sans-serifs, and remember to space them out
a bit more than usual.
* It is always safest to use a plain serif font for large
amounts of text. Because Times is widely used, it doesn't
mean it should be avoided. Fonts like Palatino, Times,
Century Old Style are deservedly popular because people can
read a lot of text set in such faces without strain.
Don't expect anyone to read extensive text set in a condensed
font.
* As point size gets bigger, track tighter, and (if the
software allows) reduce the spacebands as well. A spaceband
in a headline size (anything over 14 point) should be about
as wide as a letter "i".
* If you only have a few large headlines, hand-kerning the
type, pair by pair, can make the end result much more
pleasing. Besides, working with fonts this closely makes
them familiar.
* Column width and justification are major elements in design.
The narrower the column, the smaller the type can be; wide
rows of small type are very hard to read. Often it's a better
idea to set narrow columns flush left rather than justified,
otherwise large gaps can fall where hyphenation isn't
possible.
* Use curly quotes.
* Don't put two spaces at the end of a line (. ) instead of (.
) when using a proportionally spaced font.
This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the
input file FAQ.texinfo.
Subject: 1.25. Acknowledgements
The moderators would like to express their gratitude to the whole
community for providing insightful answers to innumerable questions. In
particular, the following people (listed alphabetically) have
contributed directly to this FAQ (apologies, in advance, if anyone has
been forgotten):
Masumi Abe <[email protected]>
Glenn Adams <[email protected]>
Daniel Amor <[email protected]>
Borris Balzer <[email protected]>
Charles A. Bigelow <[email protected]>
David J. Birnbaum <[email protected]>
Tim Bradshaw <[email protected]>
Morgan S. Brilliant <???>
Arlen Britton <[email protected]>
Stan Brown <[email protected]>
Scott Brumage <[email protected]>
Lee Cambell <[email protected]>
Terry Carroll <[email protected]>
Gerd Castan <[email protected]>
Ari Davidow <[email protected]>
Eve Damaziere <[email protected]> (c/o Stephane Bortzmeyer)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]>
Pat Farrell <[email protected]>
James Matthew Farrow <[email protected]>
Stephen Friedl <[email protected]>
Peter J. Gentry <[email protected]>
Yossi Gil <[email protected]>
Timothy Golobic <[email protected]>
Kesh Govinder <[email protected]>
Piercarlo Antonio Grandi <[email protected]>
Robert Green <[email protected]>
Rick Heli <[email protected]>
Jeremy Henderson <[email protected]>
Henry ??? <[email protected]>
Gary <[email protected]>
Berthold K.P. Horn <[email protected]>
Peter Honig <[email protected]>
Don Hosek <[email protected]>
Bharathi Jagadeesh <[email protected]>
Chang Jin-woong <[email protected]>
Darrell Leland <[email protected]>
David Lemon <[email protected]>
Jon <[email protected]>
??? <[email protected]>
??? <[email protected]>
Otto Makela <[email protected]>
David Mandl <[email protected]>
Kate McDonnell <[email protected]>
George Moore <[email protected]>
Robert Morris <[email protected]>
Stephen Moye <[email protected]>
Erlend Nagel <[email protected]>
Terry O'Donnell <[email protected]>
Rick Pali <[email protected]>
Sean Palmer <[email protected]>
Jon Pastor <[email protected]>
PenDragon <[email protected]>
Stephen Peters <[email protected]>
Bill Phillips <[email protected]>
Thomas W. Phinney <[email protected]>
Jim Reese <[email protected]>
Bill Ricker <[email protected]>
Liam Quin <[email protected]>
Henry Schneiker <?>
Tom Scott <[email protected]>
Bill Shirley <[email protected]>
Cameron Smith <[email protected]>
Daniel S. Smith <[email protected]>
Frank F. Smith <[email protected]>
Werenfried Spit <[email protected]>
Anthony Starks <[email protected]>
Ike Stoddard <[email protected]>
Danny Thomas <[email protected]>
Anders Thulin <[email protected]>
Ian Tresman <[email protected]>
Bill Troop <[email protected]>
Erik-Jan Vens <[email protected]>
Amanda Walker <[email protected]>
Jason Lee Weiler <[email protected]>
Subject: 1.26. A Brief Introduction to Typography
Space, time, and bandwidth are too limiting to provide a complete
introduction to typography in this space. I'd be very willing to make
one available for anonymous ftp, if you want to write one, but I'm not
going to write it-I have neither the time nor the expertise. However,
the following description of Times, Helvetica, and Courier will suffice
for a start. For more information, several books on typography are
listed in the bibliography.
Comments by Laurence Penney:
============================
Laurence Penney offers the following description of Times, Helvetica,
and Courier:
Times is a typeface designed in the 1930s for the Times newspaper in
London and is now used widely in books, magazines and DTP. Its design
is based on the typographical principles evolved since Roman times
(upper case) and the 16th century (lower case). It is called a
TRANSITIONAL typeface, after the typefaces of the 17th century which it
resembles. Like all typefaces designed for typesetting large
quantities of text, it is proportionally spaced: the i takes about a
third the width of an M. Personally I don't like Times too much and
prefer the more elegant Garamond and Baskerville, but these will
probably cost you money... Note: The Transitionals came after the Old
Styles (like Garamond) and before the Moderns (like Bodoni).
Helvetica is an example of a SANS-SERIF typeface. These first appeared
in the late 19th century in Germany and flourished in the 1920s and
30s, when they were regarded as the future of typography. It's more a
geometric design than the humanist design of Gill Sans, but less
geometric than Avant Garde and Futura. To my mind it lacks elegance,
and Adrian Frutiger's Univers shows how this kind of typeface should be
done. (Just compare the B, R, Q, a, g of Univers and Helvetica to see
what I mean - and don't you just love Univers's superbly interpreted
ampersand ?!) Helvetica is one of the few fonts that is improved by its
BOLD version.
Another interesting approach to sans-serif is Optima, by Hermann Zapf,
which keeps the stroke-weight variations which sans-serifs usually
reject. Use sans-serif fonts for the same applications as Times, above,
but where you're less concerned with elegance, and more with a
functional appearance - they're generally reckoned to be slightly less
legible than good serifed fonts. They're also very suitable for display
work.
Courier is a typeface derived from typewriter styles. It should ONLY be
used when you want to simulate this effect (e.g. when writing letters
Courier usually appears "friendlier" than Times). Like all typewriter
fonts, it is MONOSPACED (characters all have the same width) and is
thus suitable for typesetting computer programs. However there are
nicer looking monospace fonts than Courier (which has oversize serifs),
that still remain distinct from the text fonts like Times and
Helvetica. A good one is OCR-B, designed by Frutiger. Note that
monospaced fonts are less economical on space than proportional fonts.
[ed: Following the original posting of this message, Laurence Penny and
Jason Kim discussed the issue privately. The following summary of
their discussion may serve to clarify some of the more subtle points.
My thanks to Laurence and Jason for allowing me to include this in the
FAQ.]
-----------------------------
LP-1> The Transitionals came after the Old Styles (like Garamond) and
before the Moderns (like Bodoni).
JK> Not necessarily true! Ideologically, yes, but not chronologically.
I believe, for example, that Bodoni predates New Century Schoolbook or
some such typeface.
LP-2> What I meant by "X came after Y" was "the first examples of X
appeared after the first examples of Y" - it's called precis. Some
people still make steam trains, but you can still say "Steam engines
came before diesels." This is chronological, not ideological in my book.
-----------------------------
LP-1> Another interesting approach to sans-serif is Optima, by Hermann
Zapf, which keeps the stroke-weight variations which sans-serifs
usually reject. Use sans-serif fonts for the same applications as
Times, above, but where you're less concerned with elegance, and more
with a functional appearance - they're generally reckoned to be
slightly less legible than good seriffed fonts. They're also very
suitable for display work.
JK> Slightly? I have several textbooks typeset by utter fools and they
are a pain in the ass (and eyes) to read! Please don't encourage anyone
to use Optima (or any sans serif fonts for that matter) "for the same
applications as Times," which, need I remind you, was designed for
*newspaper* work!!
LP-2> OK, maybe I was a little over-generous to Univers, Helvetica,
etc., but I think variation is extremely important in typography. Have
you ever read the British magazine "CAR" ? That uses Helvetica light (I
think) in a very legible and attractive way, IMO. I agree, though,
Optima is crappy for text, but it's a very valuable experiment and
looks beautiful when printed in high quality for titling, etc. And yes,
*books* in Helvetica are generally awful.
-----------------------------
JK> Serifs have been scientifically shown to be a *lot* easier on the
reader, as they guide the eyes along the lines.
LP-2> In all tests I've seen the serifs have always won the day, but
only with certain seriffed fonts, and fonts like Univers aren't far
behind. The "tracking" advantage for serif fonts is reduced when you're
talking about narrow newspaper/magazine columns.
-----------------------------
JK> You wrote a pretty short and partial history of type. Why ignore
the roots of type (blackletter) as well as the climax (moderns-give an
explanation) and subsequent 'post-modern' revivals?
LP-2> I was just talking about the place the 3 most common DTP types
hold in the history of typography, and a few associated pitfalls. It
wasn't meant as a "history of typography" at all. Please feel free to
provide such a history yourself.
JK> I think any short list of specific faces is incomplete without
mention of Palatino, the most popular Old Style revival in existence.
LP-2> Do you? To my mind Palatino is grossly over used. You must agree
it looks bad for dense text. It isn't a proper "oldstyle revival" at
all, more of a "calligraphic interpretation" of it. Zapf designed it as
a display face, and wasn't too concerned about lining up the serifs
(check out the "t"). And it just *has* to be printed on 1200dpi devices
(at least) to look good in small sizes. OK then, maybe a short list is
incomplete without a caution NOT to use Palatino...
JK> Also, if this is meant to be a "quick history/user guide for those
fairly new to using fonts on desktop publishing systems," then I would
recommend more directions about the proper uses of certain faces (e.g.,
Goudy for shaped text, Peignot for display *only*) and styles (e.g.,
italics for editorial comments, all-caps for basically nothing).
LP-2> Okay, okay. I was only sharing a few ideas, not trying to write a
book. Surely you agree that the 3 typefaces I chose are by far the most
commonly used and abused these days? I don't think a discussion of
Goudy or Peignot fits in very well here, unless we're hoping to make a
very wide-ranging FAQL. Regarding styles: first, italics are used
principally for *emphasis* (rather than bold in running text); second,
all good books have a few small caps here and there, don't they? - all
mine do...
JK> Sorry if I come across as critical. I think the idea of making a
FAQL is a good one, as is your effort. We just have to make sure it
doesn't give any newbies the wrong impressions and further perpetuate
the typographical morass we're facing today.
LP-2> Sorry if I come across as defensive, but I stand by what I said
and object to the suggestion that I am "perpetuating the typographical
morass". (I don't know if you really intended this - apologies if you
didn't.)
Comments by Don Hosek:
======================
Don Hosek offers the following additional notes:
The "Times" in most printers is actually a newer version of the font
than Monotype's "Times New Roman" which it is originally based on.
Walter Tracy's _Letters of Credit_ gives an excellent history of the
face which was based on Plantin and in the original cutting has metrics
matching the original face almost exactly. Another interesting note
about the face is that it is almost a completely different design in
the bold: this is due to the fact that old-styles are difficult to
design as a bold. Incidentally, the classification of Times as a
transitional is not firm. It likely is placed there by some type
taxonomists (most notably Alexander Lawson) because of the bold and a
few minor features. Others, myself included, think of it as a old
style. The typeface listed in the Adobe catalog as Times Europa was a
new face commissioned in 1974 to replace the old Times (whose 50th
birthday was this past October 3rd).
Hermann Zapf is not particularly pleased with any of the
phototypesetting versions of Optima. As a lead face, Optima is very
beautiful. His typeface "World", used in the World Book Encyclopedia is
one recutting for photocomp which improves the font somewhat. He is on
record as saying that if he had been asked, he would have designed a
new font for the technology.
Subject: 1.27. A Brief History of Type
Thomas W. Phinney contributes the following discussion of the history
of type(1):
Foreword
========
It is difficult to cover all the developments and movements of
typography in a short space. My separation of evolving technologies
from the development of typefaces is an artificial one--designs and the
technology used to create them are not truly separable--but perhaps it
is conceptually useful.
Where names of typefaces are used, I attempt to use the original name:
there are often clones with very similar names.
I shall update, clarify and correct this essay periodically, and will be
happy to credit contributors. I can be e-mailed on CompuServe at
75671,2441 (Internet: [email protected]).
Type Technology--The Four Revolutions
=====================================
Gutenberg (ca. 1450-1480) & The Impact of Printing
--------------------------------------------------
Before the printing press, books were produced by scribes (at first,
primarily based in monasteries, although by the 12th century there were
many lay copiers serving the university market). The process of writing
out an entire book by hand was as labor-intensive as it sounds (try it
some time): so much so that a dozen volumes constituted a library, and a
hundred books was an awe- inspiring collection.
This remained true until the invention of movable type, the perfection
of which is attributed to Johannes Gutenberg (although the Chinese had
it several centuries earlier, and a Dutch fellow named Coster may have
had some crude form a decade earlier). Gutenberg, although a man of
vision, did not personally profit from his invention. He worked for over
a decade with borrowed capital, and his business was repossessed by his
investors before the first mass-produced book was successfully
printed--the Gutenberg Bible of 1454, printed in Mainz by Fust and
Schoeffer.
Gutenberg's basic process remained unchanged for centuries. A punch made
of steel, with a mirror image of the letter is struck into a piece of
softer metal. Molten metal is poured into this, and you get type. The
type is put into a matrix to form the page of text, inked, then pressed
into paper.
Within several decades typesetting technology spread across Europe.
The speed with which it did so is impressive: within the first fifty
years, there were over a thousand printers who set up shops in over two
hundred European cities. Typical print runs for early books were in the
neighborhood of two hundred to a thousand books.
Some of these first printers were artisans, while others were just
people who saw an opportunity for a quick lira/franc/pound. The modern
view of a classical era in which craftsmanship predominated appears
unjustified to scholars: there has always been fine craft, crass
commercialism, and work that combines both.
To those who have grown up with television, radio, magazines, books,
movies, faxes and networked computer communications it is difficult to
describe just how much of a revolution printing was. It was the first
mass medium, and allowed for the free spread of ideas in a completely
unprecedented fashion. The Protestant Reformation might not have
occurred, or might have been crushed, without the ability to quickly
create thousands of copies of Luther's Theses for distribution.
Many groups sought to control this new technology. Scribes fought
against the introduction of printing, because it could cost them their
livelihoods, and religious (and sometimes secular) authorities sought to
control what was printed. Sometimes this was successful: for centuries
in some European countries, books could only be printed by government
authorized printers, and nothing could be printed without the approval
of the Church. Printers would be held responsible rather than authors
for the spread of unwanted ideas, and some were even executed. But this
was a largely futile struggle, and most such restraints eventually
crumbled in the western world.
Industrial Revolution: Steam, Line-casting & Automated Punch-cutting (start 1870-95; end 1950-65)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazingly, the printing press and the science of typecutting had only
minor refinements from the late 1500s to the late 1800s. Towards the
end of this period, the industrial revolution brought major innovations
in printing technology. Rotary steam presses (steam 1814, rotary 1868)
replaced hand- operated ones, doing the same job in 16 per cent of the
time; photo-engraving took over from handmade printing plates.
Typesetting itself was transformed by the introduction of line-casting
machines, first Ottmar Mergenthaler's Linotype (1889), and then the
Monotype machine. Essentially, line-casting allowed type be chosen,
used, then recirculate back into the machine automatically. This not
only introduced a huge labor savings in typesetting, (again, on the
order of the 85% reduction in printing time), but also rendered
obsolete the huge masses of metal type created by the previously
existing type foundries.
While typesetting and printing speeds increased phenomenally, so did the
speed of punchcutting. In 1885, Linn Boyd Benton (then of Benton, Waldo
& Company, Milwaukee) invented a pantographic device that automated the
previously painstaking process of creating punches. His machine could
scale a drawing to the required size, as well as compressing or
expanding the characters, and varying the weight slightly to compensate
for the larger or smaller size-- this last being a crude form of the
"optical scaling" done by skilled typographers making versions of the
same font for different sizes. In optical scaling, the thickest strokes
retain the same relative thickness at any size, but the thinnest
strokes are not simply scaled up or down with the rest of the type, but
made thicker at small sizes and thinner at large display sizes, so as
to provide the best compromise between art and readability.
The economic impact of all these advances on the type industry cannot be
overstated. For example, in the United States, the majority of type
foundries escaped a bankruptcy bloodbath in 1892 by merging into a
single company, called American Type Founders (ATF). Ultimately
twenty-three companies merged into ATF, making it far and away the
dominant American type foundry.
Also around this time, the "point" measurement system finally reached
ascendancy. In the earlier days of printing, different sizes of type had
simply been called by different names. Thus, "Brevier" was simply the
British name for 8-point type of any style. Unfortunately, these names
were not standardized internationally; 8-point type was called "Petit
Texte" by the French and "Testino" by the Italians. Such a naming
system also allowed wonderful confusion, such as "English" referring
both to blackletter type, and a 14-point size; "English English" was
thus a 14-point blackletter!
Pierre Simon Fournier had first proposed a comprehensive point system in
1737, with later refinements, but what was ultimately adopted was the
later version developed by Francois Ambroise Didot. This put
approximately 72 points to the inch (and now exactly 72 points to the
inch on most computer- based typesetting systems).
Photocomposition (Intertype et. al., start 1950-60, end 1975-85)
----------------------------------------------------------------
The first photocomposition devices (the French "Photon" and Intertype's
Fotosetter) made their debuts as early as 1944, but didn't really catch
on until the early 1950s. Typeface masters for photocomposition are on
film; the characters are projected onto photo-sensitive paper. Lenses
are used to adjust the size of the image, scaling the type to the
desired size. In some senses this technology was an "improvement,"
allowing new freedoms, such as overlapping characters. However, it
also pretty much eliminated optical scaling (see 2.2, above), because
in the rush to convert fonts to the new format, usually only one design
was used, which was directly scaled to the desired size.
Digital (start 1973-83)
-----------------------
The earliest computer-based typesetters were a hybrid between the above-
mentioned photocomposition machines and later pure digital output. They
each had their own command language for communicating with output
devices. Although these machines had advantages, they also had
problems. None of these early command languages handled graphics well,
and they all had their own formats for fonts. However, some of these
devices are still in service as of 1995, for use in production
environments which require more speed and less flexibility (phone
books, newspapers, flight schedules, etc.).
In the late 1980s PostScript gradually emerged as the de facto standard
for digital typesetting. This was due to a variety of reasons,
including its inclusion in the Apple Laserwriter printer and its
powerful graphics handling. When combined with the Macintosh (the
first widely used computer with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get display)
and PageMaker (the first desktop publishing program), the seeds were
all sown for the current dominance of computer-based typesetting.
Most high-end typesetting still involves printing to film, and then
making printing plates from the film. However, the increasing use of
high- resolution printers (600-1200 dots per inch) makes the use of
actual printing presses unnecessary for some jobs. And the next step
for press printing is the elimination of film altogether, as is done by
a few special systems today, in which the computer can directly create
printing plates.
Today, although PostScript predominates, there are a variety of
competing page description languages (PostScript, HP PCL, etc.), font
formats (Postscript Type One and Multiple Master, Truetype and Truetype
GX) computer hardware platforms (Mac, Windows, etc.) and desktop
publishing and graphics programs. Digital typesetting is commonplace,
and photocomposition is at least dying, if not all but dead. Digital
typefaces on computer, whether Postscript or some other format, are
generally outline typefaces, which may be scaled to any desired size
(although optical scaling is still an issue).
There has been considerable economic fallout from all this in
typography. Although some digital type design tools are beyond the
price range of the "average" user, many are in the same price range as
the mid- to high-end graphics and desktop publishing programs. This,
combined with the introduction of CD-ROM typeface collections, has
moved digital type away from being an expensive, specialized tool,
towards becoming a commodity. As a result of both this and the brief
photocomposition interregnum, the previously established companies have
undergone major shakeups, and even some major vendors, such as American
Type Founders, have failed to successfully make the digital transition,
and gone bankrupt instead (although at this time ATF appears to be
undergoing a resurrection). More recently, even major digital type
foundries have-dare one say foundered?-on the shoals of ubiquitous
cheap typefaces (even a licensing deal with Corel Corp seems to have
been insufficient to save URW).
Although there is a new accessibility of type design tools for hobbyists
and professional graphic artists, the decreasing value of individual
typefaces has resulted in a decrease in the number of working type
designers per se (both independents and company-employed).
Type Forms Through the Centuries
================================
One must keep in mind that although typefaces may have come into use at
a particular point in time, they often continued in general use far
beyond that time. Even after the rise of old style typefaces in the
late 1500s, the blackletter type was commonly used for setting text for
several centuries (well into the 1900s in Germany). With later
interpretations of earlier forms being relatively common, the *style*
of a given typeface may belong to a quite different period from that of
the typeface itself! Further, many typefaces have very complex
histories: a type could have been originally designed in metal at one
time, reworked by someone else later, made into a phototypesetting face
by another person, and then later created in digital form by yet
another designer--who might have been working off of any of the above
as the basis of their work.
The classification system used here (old style, transitional, modern,
sans serif, slab serif, etc.) has the virtues of being both simple and
widely used. However, the precision and artistic accuracy of this
system is perhaps dubious: see Robert Bringhurst's Elements of
Typographic Style or his article in the first issue of Serif magazine
for a more thorough system.
In discussing the differences between type, one must refer to a number
of technical terms. For illustrations of these terms, see also the
downloadable graphics file TYPHS_72.GIF or TYPHS300.GIF. The numbers
refer to the dots per inch of the graphic when scaled to a full page:
72 dpi is a low resolution suitable for screen viewing, while 300 dpi
is better-suited to laser printing. With any luck, both should be
available for FTP or download from the same site as this file. If so,
you would be well advised to refer to these pictures for illustrations
of both these terms and the differences between different categories of
typefaces. If you are a newcomer to typography, some sort of visual
reference is essential to understand the differences between fonts
explained here. Your options include: the aforementioned graphics
files; type samples from a book, manual or font vendor's catalog; or
simply viewing or printing out the fonts you have available on your
computer system, if you have a reasonable variety.
Definitions
-----------
Contrast: The degree of difference between the thick and thin strokes in
a font (if any).
Stress (axis): The angle at which contrast occurs, usually ranging from
vertical to a somewhat back-slanted diagonal. This can best be noted by
looking at, for example, the letter "O" and noting if the bottom left is
thicker than the top left, and the top right is thicker than the bottom
right. If this difference exists, the letter has diagonal stress. If
the two halves of the "O" are a mirror image of each other, with the
sides thicker than the top/bottom, then the letter has vertical stress.
If the top and bottom of the "O" are the same thickness as the sides,
there is neither contrast nor stress.
Serifs: Those "finishing strokes" or "fillips" going off the ending
lines of a letter. For example, when the number "1" or the letter "i"
are drawn with a bar across the bottom, the two halves of the bar are
serifs. If the serif is joined to the letter by a slight flaring out,
it is said to be "bracketed."
Early Letterforms
-----------------
Although writing itself can be traced back to several millennia B.C., to
Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions, modern
letter forms have their most immediate heritage in Roman inscriptions
from around 50- 120 AD, such as the one on the base of Trajan's Column
in the Roman Forum (114 AD, digital version by Twombly for Adobe, 1989).
Although early Latin writing was heavily influenced by these chiseled-
in-stone letterforms, over the centuries it evolved into a variety of
other shapes, including uncials and the related Carolingian script. It
is through this period of the sixth to tenth centuries that we see the
development of the lower case (minuscule) letter as a different shape
from the upper case (capital).
Type forms similar to what we now think of as "normal" letter shapes
evolved from the Carolingian (or Caroline) minuscule. The Carolingian
letters are so-called because of their adoption by the Emperor
Charlemagne (late 10th century) as a standard for education. Digital
revivals of these exist, such as Carol Twombly's Charlemagne (1989).
By the fifteenth century, italics also existed, in the form of a cursive
script which had developed in Rome and Florence. However, italics at
this time were a completely separate entity from the upright
letterforms, as they remained in the early days of printing.
Blackletter
-----------
The first printed types exemplify what most people think of as medieval
or "old English" lettering, with ornate capitals, roughly diamond-shaped
serifs, and thick lines. As a group, these typefaces are called
"blackletter." They evolved from the Carolingian by a gradual movement
towards narrowing and thickening of lines.
The general sort of blackletter used by Gutenberg in his first Bible is
called textura (a shareware digital version of Gutenberg's bible face is
available, called "Good City Modern"). The other sorts of blackletter
are fraktur, bastarda and rotunda. Probably the most common blackletter
revival typefaces in use today are Cloister Black (M.F. Benton, 1904,
from J.W. Phinney) and Fette Fraktur.
It is worth noting that although these typefaces seem very hard to read
to us today, this is due as much to familiarity as to any objective
lesser clarity. Fraktur was in use in Germany well into the 1900s,
though it was gradually being superseded by Roman typefaces. The Nazis
at first fostered a return to Fraktur, then outlawed it as a "Jewish
typeface" in 1940.
Studies from mid-century found that people can read blackletter with a
speed loss of no more than 15%. However, there is subjectively more
effort involved. Blackletter is today most appropriate for display or
headline purposes, when one wants to invoke the feeling of a particular
era.
Old Style Typefaces: Centaur, Bembo, Jenson, Garamond, Caslon
-------------------------------------------------------------
E.P. Goldschmidt, as explained by Stanley Morison, claimed that "the
supersession of black-letter was not due to any 'technical advance,' it
was the visible expression of a changed attitude of mind." The
Renaissance was typified by an obsession with things "classical," in
the Greco-Roman sense, which had major implications for typography. The
neo-classical letterforms were somewhat more condensed than the
Carolingian shapes, but much rounder and more expanded than the
blackletter.
Old style type is generally considered "warm" or friendly, thanks to
its origins in Renaissance humanism. The main characteristics of old
style typefaces are low contrast with diagonal stress, and cove or
"bracketed" serifs (serifs with a rounded join to the stem of the
letter). The earliest (Venetian or Renaissance) old style typefaces
(originally 15th-16th Century) have very minimal contrast, and a sloped
cross-bar on the lower-case "e." One such is Bruce Rogers' Centaur
(1916), based on Jenson. Similarly, Monotype's Bembo (1929) is based on
the work of Francesco Griffo, circa 1499.
Italics at this point were still independent designs, and were generally
used completely separately; a whole book could be set in italics.
Probably the most famous italic of the period is Arrighi's (1524),
which may be seen today as the italic form of Centaur. Likewise, the
italic form of Bembo is based on the italic of Tagliente (also 1524).
Later or baroque old style type (17th Century) generally has more
contrast, with a somewhat variable axis, and more slope of italic. The
most common examples are the types of Garamond and Caslon, many variant
revivals of which exist in digital form.
Transitional Type: Baskerville, Fournier
----------------------------------------
"Transitional" type is so-called because of its intermediate position
between old style and modern. The distinguishing features of
transitional typefaces include vertical stress and slightly higher
contrast than old style typefaces, combined with horizontal serifs. The
most influential examples are Philippe Grandjean's "Romain du Roi" for
the French Crown around 1702, Pierre Simon Fournier's work circa 1750,
and John Baskerville's work from 1757 onwards. Although today we
remember Baskerville primarily for his typeface designs, in his own
time people were much more impressed by his printing, which used an
innovative glossy paper and wide margins.
Later transitional types begin to move towards "modern" designs.
Contrast is accentuated, and serifs are more flattened. Current
examples of such are based on originals from approximately 1788-1810,
and are dominated by British isles designers, such as Richard Austin
(Bell, 1788), William Martin (Bulmer) and Miller & Richard (Scotch
Roman).
For currently available examples of transitional type, there are many
types which bear Baskerville's name, descending from one or another of
his designs. Less common today is P.S. Fournier's work, although
several versions of it are available in digital or metal form. Although
Scotch Roman has been a very common face in metal type usage since
Monotype's 1920 revival, it is not a common digital face. Bell, on the
other hand, is included in a Microsoft Font Pack, and Bulmer has
received more attention since its revival by Monotype in late 1994.
Modern Type: Didot, Bodoni, Walbaum
-----------------------------------
"Modern" typefaces are distinguishable by their sudden-onset vertical
stress and strong contrast. Modern serifs and horizontals are very thin,
almost hairlines. Although they are very striking, these typefaces are
sometimes criticized as cold or harsh, and may not be quite as readable
for very extensive text work, such as books.
A number of designers, perhaps semi-independently, created the first
modern typefaces in the late 1700s and early 1800s. One of the first,
and ultimately the most influential, was Giambattista Bodoni, of Parma,
Italy. Ironically, historians of type often relate the development of
the "modern" letterforms to a then-current obsession with things
Roman--in this case the strong contrast and sharp serifs of classical
Roman inscriptions. Although similar interests
Today, the most common "modern" typefaces are the dozens of
reinterpretations of Bodoni's work (which itself evolved over time).
One of the most successful reinterpretations is the 1994 ITC Bodoni by
Stone et. al., featuring three different optical sizes. Although little
is seen of Didot, a reinterpretation by J.E. Walbaum (ca. 1800) sees
occasional use.
Sans Serif & Slab Serif
-----------------------
These type forms made their first appearances around 1815-1817. Both are
marked by simpler letterforms with (usually) relatively uniform stroke
weight, lacking significant contrast, often geometric in underlying
design.
The earliest forms of sans and slab typefaces tended to be heavy, often
monolithic, display faces, but there quickly evolved a wide range of
styles. Although the earliest designs are not much used today, their
descendants are common enough.
Sans Serif (a.k.a. Gothic or Grotesque)
.......................................
Sans serif letters have no serifs, as the name suggests. The low
contrast and absence of serifs makes most sans typefaces harder to
follow for general reading. They are fine for a sentence, passable for
a paragraph, but are difficult to use well in, say, the text of a book.
The terminology of sans serif types can be confusing: essentially,
gothic or grotesque are both generic names for sans serif (although
Letter Gothic, confusingly, is more of a slab serif type).
In sans serif faces, the italics are often, although not always, simply
a sloped (mechanically obliqued) version of the roman letters, making
them totally subordinate to the roman.
By far the most common sans is Helvetica (1951, Miedinger), despite
being abhorred by many typographers. Helvetica does have the advantage
of coming in a huge range of weights and widths, which makes it
versatile, and its ubiquitous character makes it easy to match. Other
general-purpose sans serifs include Univers (Frutiger, 1952+), Arial
(Monotype), Franklin Gothic (M.F. Benton, 1903) and Frutiger (Frutiger,
1975).
Sprouting from the Art Deco movement in the 1920s and 30s (see Art
Deco), radical geometrical shapes began to be used as the basis for
sans serif designs.
There are a few other common sans faces which do not fall cleanly into
the above categories. Eric Gill's 1928 Gill Sans has an almost
architectural quality, and its greater contrast and humanistic design
makes it better-suited than most sans serif typefaces to setting bodies
of text. The same can perhaps be said of a number of late 20th Century
humanistic sans faces (see below)
Slab Serif (Egyptian)
.....................
These faces have block-like rectangular serifs, sticking out
horizontally or vertically, often the same thickness as the body
strokes. There is some debate about the origin of slab serif
typefaces: did they originate by somebody adding serifs to a sans face,
or were they conceived independently?
But even if they had a separate genesis as a family, it is certainly the
case that many of the most common and popular slab serif forms have been
created by adding slab serifs to sans faces by the same designer (e.g.
Adrian Frutiger's 1977 Glypha from his Univers, Herb Lubalin's 1974
Lubalin Graph from his Avant Garde). Other slab serif faces include
Berthold City (Trump, 1930), Memphis (Weiss, 1930), Serifa (Frutiger,
1968) and Silica (Stone, 1990).
The Clarendons or Ionics are an offspring of the slab serif typefaces in
which the serifs are bracketed. These are often used in newspaper work,
because their sturdy serifs hold up well under adverse printing
conditions. The most famous member of this sub-family is Century
Schoolbook (M.F. Benton, 1924-35).
Decorative & Display Type
-------------------------
Fat Faces
.........
The "Fat Face" types were an offshoot of the moderns, intended for
display purposes (that is, to be attention-getting for use in large
sizes, particularly advertising). The first such types appeared from
1810-1820. They further exaggerated the contrast of modern typefaces,
with slab-like vertical lines and extra emphasis of any vertical
serifs, which often acquired a wedge shape. Bodoni Ultra, Normande and
Elephant are all examples of fat face types which are closely based on
early to mid-19th Century originals, and are available in digital form.
Wood Type
.........
Wood type answered some of the needs of display advertising during the
industrial revolution. It derives its name from the fact that instead of
being made of metal, the type is carved from wood, cut perpendicular to
the grain. It is distinguished by strong contrasts, an overall dark
color, and a lack of fine lines. It may be unusually compressed or
extended. Many wood types have an "Old West" feel, because they are most
strongly associated with America in the 1870-1900 period. Some of the
wood types most widely available today are those in an Adobe pantheon
released in 1990, which includes Cottonwood, Ironwood and Juniper
(Buker, Lind & Redick).
Script, Brush, Italic & Freehand
................................
Script typefaces are based on handwriting; but often this is handwriting
with either a flexible steel nib pen, or a broad-edged pen, and is thus
unlike modern handwriting.
Some common scripts based on steel nib styles include Shelley (Carter,
1972), Coronet (Middleton, 1937-38), and Snell Roundhand (Carter, 1965,
based on Snell ca. 1694).
Script faces based more on the broad-edged tradition include the
contemporary Park Avenue (Smith, 1933).
There are also monoline scripts, which lack significant contrast in the
letter strokes. One such is Freestyle Script.
Brush typefaces look as if they were drawn with that instrument, which
most of them were, at least in the original design from which the
metal/film/digital face was created. Some of them resemble sign-painting
lettering, such as Balloon (Kaufmann, 1939), Brush Script (Smith,
1942), and Dom Casual (Dom, 1952).
Brushwork can also be the basis for script, as with Present Script
(Sallaway, 1974) and Mistral (Excoffon, 1953)
Although modern typography typically relegates the italic to a second-
class citizenship subordinate to the roman, there are still some italic
typefaces designed as such in their own right. The best known is
doubtless Zapf Chancery (Zapf, 1979). Others include Medici Script
(Zapf, 1974) and Poetica (Slimbach, 1992).
Art Nouveau
...........
The late Victorian era, from 1880 to World War I, was characterized by
this ornamental style of art, with its organic, asymmetrical, intricate
and flowing lines. This "Art Nouveau" (French, meaning "new art")
produced similarly distinctive typography, which saw a revival during
the 1960s.
There are a fair number of digital revivals of art nouveau faces,
although few are widely used. Some of the more common digital art
nouveau typefaces are Arnold Boecklin (Weisert, 1904), Artistik,
Desdemona, Galadriel and Victorian.
Art Deco
........
If Art Nouveau was about finding beauty in organic intricacy, Art Deco
was perhaps about finding beauty in geometric simplicity. First
appearing in the 1920s and 30s, Art Deco made a comeback in the 1970s
and 80s as well.
Almost by definition, Art Deco meant sans serif type. The most common
such face is Avant Garde (1974, Lubalin), which is striking but hard to
read at length. A more graceful geometric sans is Futura (Renner,
1927-39). There are also more quirky faces in this category, such as
Kabel (Koch, 1927-30). A recent popular Art Deco display face is ITC
Anna (1991?).
Synthesis
---------
Many of the most interesting typefaces of the twentieth century does not
fit any of the above categories, or at least not easily. The reason is
that they reflect not merely a single style, but cumulative experience,
and the merger of different styles. This is perhaps true even of that
most mundane of typefaces, Times New Roman (Lardent/Morison, 1931),
which has old style, transitional and modern elements.
Synthesis and Serif Type
........................
Although there are many practitioners of this synthesis, the most famous
is Hermann Zapf. His Palatino (1948) and Zapf Renaissance (1987) are
modern typefaces with the spirit of Renaissance letterforms. Melior
(1952), Zapf Book (1976), and Zapf International (1977) all reflect an
obsession with the super-ellipse, a rectangulated circle, as the basis
for letter shapes.
There have also been many modern revivals of old style which, while
close to old style in spirit, are not direct revivals of a specific
original, and show modern influences in the proportions or
lettershapes. These include the Granjon-inspired Galliard (Carter, 1978)
and Minion (Slimbach, 1989).
Synthesis and Sans Serif Type
.............................
After 1950, many designers began to explore a wide range of starting
points as the basis for sans serif designs. Aldo Novarese's Eurostile
(1964-5) takes sans serif forms and distorts them towards square and
rectangular shapes. Zapf's 1958 Optima is a masterful blend of sans
serif shapes with Roman and calligraphic influences. Shannon (Holmes &
Prescott Fishman, 1981) is a sans serif based on celtic manuscript
proportions. Several designers have reinterpreted ancient Greek
lettering for a modern sans serif alphabet: most popularly Carol
Twombly's Lithos (1989), and most recently Matthew Carter's Skia GX
(1994). Koch's Neuland (1930?) has a rough-hewn strength. Hans Eduard
Meier's Syntax (1969) is one of the earliest sans typefaces which
clearly echo renaissance roman letterforms. More recent sans faces
often draw on a humanistic background, from Spiekerman's Meta to
Vereschagin's Clear Prairie Dawn.
"Grunge" Typography
...................
The most recent typographic wave is one which has sometimes been called
grunge typography, after the musical movement originating in Seattle.
Although it is far too early to judge the ultimate impact of grunge, I
see the form as the merger of the industrial functionalist movement
called Bauhaus (contemporary with Art Deco, named after the
architectural school) with the wild, nihilistic absurdism of Dadaism.
Grunge, like many typographic/artistic movements before it, is a
rebellion; but this rebellion denies not only the relevance of anything
previous, but sometimes even the relevance of legibility itself, in the
belief that the medium *is* the message.
As grunge type designer Carlos Segura of T-26 says, "Typography is
beyond letters. Some fonts are so decorative, they almost become
'visuals' and when put in text form, they tell a story beyond the
words-a canvas is created by the personality of the collection of words
on the page."
Grunge typefaces and typography are seen in magazines such as RayGun.
Some examples of grunge typography are the work of Barry Deck (Template
Gothic, Cyberotica, Truth), Nguyen's Droplet, Goren's Morire and Lin's
Tema Cantante.
Sources
=======
Published Sources:
------------------
Although much of this information is based on prior knowledge, I also
actively consulted the following publications:
Bauermeister, Benjamin. A Manual of Comparative Typography. Van
Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, NY: 1988. ISBN 0-442-21187-2.
Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Hartley &
Marks, Vancouver, BC: 1992. ISBN 0-88179-033-8. The modern classic in
the field.
Byers, Steve. The Electronic Type Catalog. Bantam Books, New York:
1991. ISBN 0-553-35446-9.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.
Cambridge University Press, New York: 1979. ISBN 0-521-29955-1.
Harper, Laurel. "Thirstype: Quenching a Type Craving" in How: the
Bottomline Design Magazine, vol. 10, #1, Jan-Feb 1995. Although not
usually a thrilling magazine, had several pieces on typography in this
issue (see Segura, below).
Letraset Canada Limited. Letraset Product Manual. Letraset, Markham,
Ontario, Canada: 1985.
Meggs, Philip B. "American Type Founders Specimen Book & Catalog 1923"
in Print Magazine, vol. 48 #1, Jan-Feb 1994. Contains some interesting
info on the effects of industrialization on the type industry.
Sutton, James & Bartram, Alan. An Atlas of Typeforms. Percy, Lund,
Humphries & Co., Hertfordshire, UK: 1968. ISBN 1-85326-911-5.
Morison, Stanley & Day, Kenneth. The Typographic Book: 1450-1935.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1963.
Segura, Carlos & Nelson, Lycette. "Typography in Context: Never Take a
Font at Face Value" in How: the Bottomline Design Magazine, vol. 10,
#1, Jan-Feb 1995.
Tracy, Walter. Letters of Credit: a View of Type Design. David R.
Godine Co.: 1986.
Updike, Daniel Berkeley. Printing Types: Their History, Forms & Use.
Harvard Press: 1962.
Zapf, Hermann. "The Expression of Our Time in Typography" in Heritage
of the Graphic Arts. R.R. Bowker Company, New York: 1972. ISBN
0-8352-0213-5.
Personal Contributions:
-----------------------
In addition to written sources, which are identified above, I would like
to thank the following for their helpful comments and corrections (any
errors are, of course, my responsibility): Robert Hemenway, Mary Jo
Kostya, and Dan Margulis
---------- Footnotes ----------
(1) Version 1.02 14 Apr 1995
This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the
input file FAQ.texinfo.
Subject: 1.28. The Role of National Orthography in Font Design
This article was constructed from postings by Anders Thulin, Charles A.
Bigelow, and "fieseler" from Jan 1994.
An open question: what role does national orthography play in the
asthetics of a given font?
Given that uppercase letters occur more frequently in German than in
English, are German font designs better for typesetting German (because
the designer is more concious of the relationship between capitals and
lowercase)? Similarly, are French designs better for typesetting French
because the designer is more atuned to the appearance of accents?
Speaking of accents, there are apparently fonts in which the dots over
the "i" and "j" are not at the same height as the dieresis over
accented vowels. (Does anyone have an example of this?) Surely this is
an error that a designer accustomed to working with accented letters is
unlikely to make?
Subject: 1.29. Interesting Fonts
There's no end of interesting fonts, so this is really just a catch-all
category.
Highway Gothic
==============
Kibo (James Parry) provides the following discussion of Highway Gothic:
Highway Gothic is The Font Company's name for their interpretation of
the font used on most official road signs in the United States. (The
Font Company added a lowercase to most styles.)
I don't think it has an official name. There is a government
publication which shows the fonts (revised in the seventies to make the
heights metric); I got a copy of it once, from a library specializing in
transportation, and digitized Series E(M) (normal-width bold caps with
lowercase, the only USDOT font with lowercase) for a special project. I
don't think the specs have changed since the seventies.
Besides E(M) with lowercase, there is a slightly lighter alphabet
without lowercase, and three condensed styles. I recall there was also
a set of really distorted letters for use in painting vehicle lanes,
plus a few symbols for bike paths etc. The alphabets included letters
and digits only--any periods or hyphens you see on signs are apparently
unofficial.
Where can I get extravagant initial caps?
=========================================
Don Hosek writes:
I doubt that most decorated initials can be made to work in the type 1
format because of their complexity. Color only makes things worse.
One of the best choices for medieval and renaissance decorated alphabets
hasn't been mentioned yet: BBL Typographic (they have an ad on p. 39 of
Serif 1). A demo disk is available for \$10, B&W alphabets are \$50 each
and full color alphabets are \$60.
BBL Typographic
137 Narrow Neck Road
Katoomba, NSW 2780
AUSTRALIA
011-61-47-826111
011-61-47-826144 FAX
also distributed by:
Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies
LN G99
State University of New York
Birmingham, NY 13902-6000
I know the work only from the Serif ad, but it's gorgeous there (even
nicer in color, although they decided not to spend the extra money for
color in their ad... only a select few in Katoomba & Claremont have seen
the ad in full color). Of course Serif-related disclaimers apply.
Jon Pastor contributes:
Check out the Aridi initials, color EPS initials, available on the
Monotype CD (and, presumably, on the Adobe CD as well, although they
don't advertise this; Monotype did, in a recent mailing).
To which Don Hosek amends:
The Aridi initials are part of the Type Designers of the World
collection and are available on the MT CD but not the Adobe CD. Adobe
has their own line of decorated initials available on their CD. Also
see the catalogs from FontHaus, FontShop and Precision Type.
If you want something really unique, why not hire a calligrapher. It
may be cheaper than you think.
Robert Green adds:
Although they might not be on the Adobe CD, the Fall 1994 Font &
Function advertises an Adobe "Initial Caps" collection of decorative
initial caps designed by Marwan Aridi.
Subject: 1.30. Pronounciation of Font Names
Below each of the following font names, a suggested English
pronounciation is given. This information was collected from a
(relatively) long discussion on comp.fonts. If you disagree, or have
other suggestions, please let me know.
Arnold Boecklin
===============
"Ar" as in car, "nold" as in "old" with an "n" on the front. "Boeck"
is tricker. The "oe" is actually an umlaut "o" in German, and the
closest sound to most English speakers is an "er". So try "Berklin" if
you want to come close to the original. Otherwise, just say "Boklin",
with a long o, like in "boat".
Benguiat
========
Ben-Gat. This according to an ITC brochure.
Courier
=======
I would pronounce Courier not like Jim Courier, but the French way:
Ku-rie, where "Ku" is pronounced like "coo", only short, and "rie" is
pronounced "ree-eh".
Didot
=====
Stressed at the last syllable. "Dee-DOOH" (not nasal).
Fette Fraktur
=============
"Fet" as in "get" with a "te" that rhymes with "way". "Frak" rhymes
with "mock", and "tur" with "tour".
Fenice
======
Feh-nee'-chey
Garamond
========
"Gara-": Use a french "r" instead of an english one. Both "a"s are
pronounced like the "u" in the word "up". "-mond": the last syllable is
stressed, and you don't pronounce the "n" and "d", but the whole "ond"
is a nasal "o". Hold your nose closed and say "Ooh", then you get the
right sound. The "ant" in "Avant-Garde" is very similar to this sound,
it is a nasal situated between "a" and "o".
Helvetica
=========
Hell-veh'-ti-ka
Koch Roman
==========
Pronounced like scottish `Loch', but with K instead of L.
LaTeX
=====
Lamport lists lah'-tech, lah-tech', lay'-tech and lay'-tecks as valid
on p.4. Last I talked to him he'd settled into lay'-tech which has
always been my pronunciation as well. Somewhere, I heard that LL does
explicitly rule out L.A.-tech, but he's from northern California which
explains a lot.
Mos Eisley
==========
moss eyes-lee
Novarese
========
No-vahr-ay'-zay
Palatino
========
pa-la-TEEN-oh
Peignot
=======
There's some contention here, suggested pronouncations:
pay-nyoh'
"P" like "P" in `Post", "ei" like "a" in "fan", "gn" like "n" in "noon"
plus "y" in "yes", "ot" - long, closed "o" (I don't know English
examples), stressed.
"P" like "P" in `Post", "ei" like "a" in "many", "gn" like "n" in
"noon" plus "y" in "yes", "ot" - long, closed "o" (I don't know English
examples), stressed.
Sabon
=====
Sah-bon'
TeX
===
Rhymes with Blech, (as in "Blech, that tasted awfull!")
Veljovic
========
Vel'-yo-vitch
Zapf
====
Like "tsapf". The "a" is pronounced like a short version of the well
known tongue-depresser vowel "aaahhh". Perhaps a better English analogy
would be the "o" in "hop" or "hops".
Subject: 1.31. What is it?
This section identifies common names for several glyphs.
The "@" Character
=================
The "at" sign or "commercial at" sign. In the past, it has also meant
"each" or "each at". Consider the following example supplied by Clive
Burton:
Unit Extended
Qnty Unit Item Price Price
12 reams bond paper @ 5.50 66.00
Here' "@" means each at or simply each.
PostScript calls this the "at" sign.
The "#" Character
=================
This mark has several common names: 'hash', 'hatch', 'pound sign', and
'octothorp' among them. The name "pound sign" is an Americanism that
causes some confusion in countries that use the pound for currency.
It was also noted that the # is a medieval abbreviation for Latin
"numerus" - it is a cursive 'n' with a horizontal slash through it,
much modified and abstracted.
One possible derivation of the name "octothorp" was provided by Charles
Bigelow:
... old English "thorp" meant 'hamlet' or 'village' (I'm not sure
of the difference, except maybe hamlet is smaller, as its apparent
diminutive suffix would suggest), and is derived from a much older
Indo-European word *treb- for 'dwelling', which turns out to mean
'beam' or 'timber' in Latin "trabs", winding up as "trave" in
Anglo-Latin, like "architrave" - the beam resting on a column, or
"trab-" as in "trabecula" - a small supporting beam or bar. As
Voltaire said, etymology is a science in which the vowels count
for nothing and the consonants for very little.
So, maybe "octothorp" means "8-beams", which makes a kind of sense
if we take the 8 projections to be the thorps, or trabs or traves.
Though it's only a "quadrathorp" if we think that the beams
connect.
Another explanation has it that the octothorp is a "thorp" surrounded
by eight cultivated fields.
Both of these etymologies received some skepticism amongst the readers
who commented on comp.fonts.
PostScript calls this the "numbersign".
Subject: 1.32. Equivalent Font Names
Morgan S. Brilliant, Jon Pastor, and Frank F. Smith have each
contributed to the following list of equivalent font names.
The following table shows trade/common names and the equivalent names
used by other vendors. The vendor or trademark holder's name is shown
in parenthesis following each typeface name.
Aachen Bold (Letraset)
Aardvark (Corel)
Activa (Bitstream, Inc.)
Kuenstler 480
Ad Lib
Adelaide (Corel)
Adsans (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Humanist 970
Akzidenz Grotesk (H. Berthold AG)
Gothic 725
Albertus (Monotype Corporation plc)
Flareserif 821
Aldine 401 (Monotype Corporation plc)
Bembo
Aldine 721 (Monotype Corporation plc)
Plantin
Algerian (S. Blake)
Algiers (Corel)
Allegro
Alto (Corel)
Amelia (VGC)
Amy (Corel)
Americana (ATF)
Amherst (Corel)
Antique Olive (Fonderie Olive)
Incised 901
Arnold Bocklin
Arabia (Corel)
Arquitectura (IC)
Architecture (Corel)
Avant Garde (ITC)
Avalon (Corel)
Badloc (IC)
Bedrock (Corel)
Balloon (ATF)
Bassoon (Corel)
Bamboo (ATF)
Bard (Corel)
Bauhaus (ITC)
Bahamas (Corel)
Bauhaus Heavy (ITC)
BahamasHeavy (Corel)
Bauhaus Light (ITC)
BahamasLight (Corel)
BeeBopp (IC)
Beehive (Corel)
Bembo (Monotype Corporation plc)
Aldine 401
Benguit (ITC)
Bangkok (Corel)
Bernhard Tango (VGC)
BallroomTango (Corel)
Bisque (VGC)
Brisk (Corel)
Bitstream Arrust Black BT (Bitstream)
Bitstream Arrus Black BT (WordPerfect)
Block (H. Berthold AG)
Gothic 821
Bodoni Campanile (Ludlow Industries (UK) Ltd.)
Modern 735
Bodoni Poster
Bodnoff (Corel)
Book Jacket (VGC)
Brochure (Corel)
Bookman (ITC)
Brooklyn (Corel)
Broadway (ATF)
Bravo (Corel)
Broadway Engraved (ATF)
BravoEngraved (Corel)
Brody (ATF)
Briquet (Corel)
Brush 445 (H. Berthold AG)
Palette
Brush 738
Bison
Brush Script (ATF)
Banff (Corel)
Busorama (ITC)
Bosanova (Corel)
Buster (Letraset)
Busker (Corel)
Cable (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Geometric 231
Calligraphic 421 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Codex
Calligraphic 810 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Diotima
Carolus Roman
Carleton (Corel)
Carta (Adobe)
GeographicSymbols (Corel)
Cartoon
Cancun (Corel)
Cascade (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Freehand 471
Cascade Script (Adobe)
Castanet (Corel)
Casino (IC)
Carino (Corel)
Caslon (ATF)
Casablanca (Corel)
Caslon Antique (ATF)
CasablancaAntique (Corel)
Caslon Open Face
CasperOpenFace (Corel)
Caslon Openfacce (Bitstream)
Caslon Openface (WordPerfect)
Centaur (Monotype Corporation plc)
Venetian 301
Century Old Style
CenturionOld (Corel)
Champagne (IC)
Campaign (Corel)
Charlemagne (Adobe)
Charlesworth (Corel)
Choc (Letraset)
Chalk (Corel)
Choc (Fonderie Olive)
Staccato 555
City (H. Berthold AG)
Square Slabserif 711
Codex (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Calligraphic 421
Comic Book (IC)
Cosmic (Corel)
Comic Book Two (IC)
CosmicTwo (Corel)
Cooper Black
Cupertino (Corel)
CopperPlate Gothic (VGC)
CopperPot (Corel)
Coronet (Ludlow Industries (UK) Ltd.)
Ribbon 131
Cottonwood (Adobe)
Cottage (Corel)
Croissant (Letraset)
Crescent (Corel)
Decorative 035 (Tetterode Nederland (Lettergieterij Amsterdam))
Profil
Delphin
Dauphin (Corel)
Diotima (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Calligraphic 810
Dom Casual
DawnCastle (Corel)
Dutch 801 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Times Roman
Dutch 801 (Montype Corporation plc)
Times Roman
Electra (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Transitional 521
Elektrik (VGC)
Eklektic (Corel)
Englische Screibschrift (H. Berthold AG)
English 157
English 157 (H. Berthold AG)
Englische Screibschrift
Enviro (Letraset)
Envision (Corel)
Eras (ITC)
Erie (Corel)
Eras Black (ITC)
ErieBlack (Corel)
Eras Contour (ITC)
ErieContour (Corel)
Eras Light (ITC)
ErieLight (Corel)
Estro (ATF)
Expo (Corel)
Eurostile (Adobe)
Euromode (Corel)
Eurostile (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Square 721
Exotic 350 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Peignot
Fairfield (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Transitional 551
Fette Fraktur (ITC)
Frankenstein (Corel)
Firenze (ITC)
Florence (Corel)
Flareserif 821 (Monotype Corporation plc)
Albertus
Formal Script 421 (Bitstream, Inc.)
Mermaid
Formal Script 421 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Ondine
Franfurt (TFCo)
FrankHighlight (Corel)
Frankfurt (TFCo)
FrankHighlight (Corel)
Franklin Gothic (ITC)
FrankfurtGothhic (Corel)
Franklin Gothic Heav (ITC)
FrankfurtGothicHeavy (Corel)
Freehand 471 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Cascade
Freehand 521 (Ludlow Industries (UK) Ltd.)
Mandate
Freehand 575
Jefferson
Freehand 591
Bingham Script
Freestyle Script (Letraset)
Freeport (Corel)
Fritz Quadrata (ITC)
France (Corel)
Frutiger (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Humanist 777
Futura 2 (FTNSA)
Fujiyama2 (Corel)
Futura Black (Bauer)
FujiyamaBlack (Corel)
Futura Cnd Extra Bol (FTNSA)
FujiyamaExtraBold (Corel)
Futura Cnd Extra Bold (FTNSA)
FujiyamaExtraBold (Corel)
Futura Cnd Light (FTNSA)
FujiyamaLight (Corel)
Futura Condensed (FTNSA)
Fujiyama (Corel)
Gallia
Galleria (Corel)
Garamond (ITC)
Gatineau (Corel)
Garamond, American
Garamond No. 3
Garamond, Classic (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Sabon
Garamond, Elegant (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Granjon
Garamond, Italian (Officine Simoncini s.p.a.)
Simoncini Garamond
Garamond, Original (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Stempel Garamond
Geometric 231 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Cable
Geometric 415 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Metro
Geometric 706 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Neuzeit Grotesk
Geometric SlabSerif 703 Light (Bitstream)
GeometricSlabSerif703Light (WordPerfect)
Geometric Slabserif 703 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Memphis
Geometric Slabserif 712 (Monotype Corporation plc)
Rockwell
Geometric Slabserif 712 (Bitstream, Inc.)
Slate
Gill Sans (Monotype Corporation plc)
Humanist 521
Gill Sans Ultra Bold (Monotype)
GillbertUltraBold (Corel)
Glasnost (C&G)
Czar (Corel)
Glyphic Series (VGC)
Glacier (Corel)
Gold Rush (ATF)
GoldMine (Corel)
Gothic 725 (H. Berthold AG)
Akzidenz Grotesk
Gothic 821 (H. Berthold AG)
Block
Goudy Old Style
GoldenOldStyle (Corel)
Granjon (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Garamond, Elegant
Graphik (IC)
Griffon (Corel)
Graphik Shadow (IC)
GriffonShadow (Corel)
Hairpin (VGC)
Harpoon (Corel)
Hammersmith (Bitstream, Inc.)
Humanist 521
Hanseatic (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Swiss 924
Harlow (Letraset)
Hollow (Corel)
Hebrew (Letraset)
Alefbet (Corel)
Helv. Cnd. Black (Linotype)
SwitzerlandCondBlack (Corel)
Helv. Cond. Light (Linotype)
SwitzerlandCondLight (Corel)
Helvetica
Arial (Microsoft)
Helvetica (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Swiss 721
Helvetica (Linotype)
Switzerland (Corel)
Helvetica Black (Linotype)
SwitzerlandBlack (Corel)
Helvetica Condensed (Linotype)
SwitzerlandCond (Corel)
Helvetica Inserat (Linotype)
SwitzerlandInserat (Corel)
Helvetica Light (Linotype)
SwitzerlandLight (Corel)
Helvetica Narrow (Linotype)
SwitzerlandNarrow (Corel)
Hobo
HomewardBound (Corel)
Honda (ITC)
Heidelberg (Corel)
Humanist 521 (Monotype Corporation plc)
Gill Sans
Humanist 521 (Bitstream, Inc.)
Hammersmith
Humanist 777 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Frutiger
Humanist 970 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Adsans
Incised 901 (Fonderie Olive)
Antique Olive
Incised 901 (Bitstream, Inc.)
Provence
Industrial 736 (Societea Nebiolo)
Torino
Informal 011 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Neuland
Ionic No. 5 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
News 701
Ironwood (Adobe)
Ireland (Corel)
Juniper (Adobe)
Jupiter (Corel)
Kabel Bold
KabanaBold (Corel)
Kabel Book (ITC)
KabanaBook (Corel)
Kaufmann (Kingsley/ATF)
Koala (Corel)
Korinna (ITC)
Korinthia (Corel)
Kuenstler 480 (Bitstream, Inc.)
Activa
Kuenstler 480 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Trump Medieval
Kunstler Script (Linotype)
Kastler (Corel)
L.C.D. (Letraset)
LiquidCrystal (Corel)
Lapidary 333 (Monotype Corporation plc)
Perpetua
Letter Gothic
Monospaced (Corel)
Linoscript (Linotype)
Linus (Corel)
Linotext (Linotype)
Lincoln (Corel)
Lithos (Adobe)
Lithograph (Corel)
Lithos Light (Adobe)
LithographLight (Corel)
Machine (ITC)
Motor (Corel)
Mandate (Ludlow Industries (UK) Ltd.)
Freehand 521
Melior (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Zapf Elliptical 711
Memphis (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Geometric Slabserif 703
Mermaid (Bitstream, Inc.)
Formal Script 421
Mermaid (Bitstream)
Merlin (Corel)
Metro (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Geometric 415
Micr (IC)
Keypunch (Corel)
Mistral (M.Olive)
Mystical (Corel)
Mistral (Fonderie Olive)
Staccato 222
Modern 735 (Ludlow Industries (UK) Ltd.)
Bodoni Campanile
Monospace 821
Helvetica Monospaced
Neuland (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Informal 011
Neuland
Newfoundland (Corel)
Neuzeit Grotesk (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Geometric 706
New Baskerville (ITC)
Nebraska (Corel)
New Century Schoolbo
NewBrunswick (Corel)
New Century Schoolbook
NewBrunswick (Corel)
New Yorker (IC)
NewOrder (Corel)
New Yorker Engraved (IC)
NewOrderEngraved
News 701 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Ionic No. 5
Nuptial Script
Nuance (Corel)
Ondine (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Formal Script 421
Optima (Linotype)
Ottawa (Corel)
Optima (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Zapf Humanist 601
P.T.Barnum (Bitstream)
BigTop (Corel)
Paintbrush (IC)
Palette (Corel)
Palatino (Linotype)
PalmSprings (Corel)
Palatino (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Zapf Calligraphic
Palette (H. Berthold AG)
Brush 445
Paper Clip (VGC)
Pipeline (Corel)
Parisian (Kingsley/ATF)
Paragon (Corel)
Park Avenue (ATF)
Paradise (Corel)
Peignot (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Exotic 350
Peignot (Linotype)
Penguin (Corel)
Peignot Light (Linotype)
PenguinLight (Corel)
Pepita (Monotype)
Pepper (Corel)
Perpetua (Monotype Corporation plc)
Lapidary 333
Plantin (Monotype Corporation plc)
Aldine 721
Plaza (Letraset)
Playwright (Corel)
Ponderosa (Adobe)
Posse (Corel)
Post Antiqua (H.Berthold AG)
ProseAntique (Corel)
Poster Bodoni
Bodoni-WP (WordPerfect)
Present Script (Linotype)
President (Corel)
Princetown (TFCo)
Indiana (Corel)
Princetown (TFCo)
IndianaSolid (Corel)
Profil (Tetterode Nederland (Lettergieterij Amsterdam))
Decorative 035
Provence (Bitstream, Inc.)
Incised 901
Pump Triline (Letraset)
PowerLine (Corel)
Quicksilver (D.Morris)
Quantum (Corel)
Revival 565
Berling
Revue (Letraset)
Renfrew (Corel)
Ribbon 131 (Ludlow Industries (UK) Ltd.)
Coronet
Rockwell (Monotype Corporation plc)
Geometric Slabserif 712
Sabon (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Garamond, Classic
Simoncini Garamond (Officine Simoncini s.p.a.)
Garamond, Italian
Slate (Bitstream, Inc.)
Geometric Slabserif 712
Slogun (ZSoft)
Shogun (Corel)
Sonata (Adobe)
MusicalSymbols (Corel)
Souvenir (ITC)
Southern (Corel)
Square 721 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Eurostile
Square Slabserif 711 (H. Berthold AG)
City
Squire (M.Neugebauer)
Scribe (Corel)
Staccato 222 (Fonderie Olive)
Mistral
Staccato 555 (Fonderie Olive)
Choc
Stempel Garamond (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Garamond, Original
Stencil
Stamp (Corel)
Stop (Nebiolo)
Scott (Corel)
Surf Style (ITC)
Surreal (Corel)
Swiss 721 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Helvetica
Swiss 911
Helvetica Compressed
Swiss 921
Helvetica Inserat
Swiss 924 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Hanseatic
Symbol (ITC)
GreekMathSYmbols (Corel)
Symbol (ITC)
GreekMathSymbols (Corel)
Tekton (Adobe)
Technical (Corel)
Thor (VGC)
Viking (Corel)
Thunderbird
ThunderBay (Corel)
Tiffany (ITC)
Timpani (Corel)
Tiffany Heavy (ITC)
TimpaniHeavy (Corel)
Time (Linotype)
Toronto (Corel)
Times Roman (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Dutch 801
Times Roman (Monotype Corporation plc)
Dutch 801
Torino (Societea Nebiolo)
Industrial 736
Traffic (T.Hultgren)
Trafalgar (Corel)
Transitional 521 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Electra
Transitional 551 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Fairfield
Trump Medieval (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Kuenstler 480
Umbra (Kingsley/ATF)
Umbrella (Corel)
Univers (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Zurich
Univers Black (Linotype)
USABlack (Corel)
Univers Light (Linotype)
USALight (Corel)
University Roman (Letraset)
Unicorn (Corel)
Uptight (ITC)
Uptown (Corel)
VAG Rounded
Vogue (Corel)
Venetian 301 (Monotype Corporation plc)
Centaur
Vivaldi (VGC)
Vivienne (Corel)
Zapf Calligraphic (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Palatino
Zapf Chancery (ITC)
ZurichCalligraphic (Corel)
Zapf Dingbats (ITC)
Dixieland (Corel)
Zapf Elliptical 711 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Melior
Zapf Humanist 601 (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Optima
Zurich (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Univers
Zurich (Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries)
Univers
Some fonts are published by several vendors using the same name. This
table shows the typeface name and the vendors that supply it. Generally
this means that one vendor licensed the face from another.
Augsburger Initials
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Baskerville Old Face
URW, Microsoft
Bell MT
Monotype, Microsoft
Bell MT Bold
Monotype, Microsoft
Bell MT Italic
Monotype, Microsoft
Bernhard Modern BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Bernhard Modern Bold BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Bernhard Modern Bold Italic BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Bernhard Modern Italic BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Bitstream Arrus BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Bitstream Arrus BT Bold
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Bitstream Arrus BT Bold Italic
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Bitstream Arrus BT Italic
Bitstream, WordPerfect
BitstreamArrus Black BT Italic
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Blackletter 686 BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Braggadocio
Monotype, Microsoft
BriemScript
Gunnlaugur SE Briem, Microsoft
Britannic Bold
URW, Microsoft
Brush 738 BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Castellar
Monotype, Microsoft
Centaur
Monotype, Microsoft
CommonBullets
Corel, Corel
Contemporary Brush
Filmotype, Microsoft
Contemporary Brush B
Filmotype, Microsoft
Desdemona
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Eckmann
URW, Microsoft
Edda
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Elephant
Carter & Cone Type Inc., Microsoft
Elephant Italic
Carter & Cone Type Inc., Microsoft
Engravers' Gothic BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Eurostile
URW, Microsoft
Eurostile Bold
URW, Microsoft
Futura Bold
URW, Microsoft
Futura Medium
URW, Microsoft
Futura Oblique
URW, Microsoft
GeometricSlabSerifLight Italic
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Gill Sans Ultra Bold
Monotype, Microsoft
Gradl
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Harrington
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Humanist 521 Condensed BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Humanist 521 Condensed Bold BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Humanist 521 Light BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Humanist 521 Light Italic BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Impact
Monotype, Microsoft
Keystroke
Corel, Corel
Kids
Corel, Corel
Memorandum
ITC, Corel
Mistral
URW, Microsoft
New Caledonia
Linotype-Hell AG, Microsoft
New Caledonia Bold
Linotype-Hell AG, Microsoft
New Caledonia Italic
Linotype-Hell AG, Microsoft
Old English Text MT
Monotype, Microsoft
Onyx
Monotype, Microsoft
Onyx BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
OzHandicraft BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Parade
Filmotype, Microsoft
Peignot Medium
URW, Microsoft
Playbill
URW, Microsoft
Ransom
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Ransom Bold
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Ransom Bold Italic
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Ransom Italic
The Font Bureau, Inc., Microsoft
Ribbon 131 BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Shelley Volante BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Stencil
URW, Microsoft
Stop
URW, Microsoft
Swiss 721 Black Extended BT
Bitstream, WordPerfect
Wide Latin
URW, Microsoft
Wingdings 2
Bigelow & Holmes, Inc., Microsoft
Wingdings 3
Bigelow & Holmes, Inc., Microsoft
The following table summarizes typeface names for which no equivalent
name is known. The vendor is listed for each font. Many of these
fonts are builtin to the HP LaserJet line of printers.
AdineKirnberg
shareware
Albertus Extra Bold
Hewlett-Packard
Albertus Medium
Hewlett-Packard
American-Uncial-Normal
shareware
Antique Olive
Hewlett-Packard
Antique Olive Bold
Hewlett-Packard
Antique Olive Italic
Hewlett-Packard
Broadway-WP
WordPerfect
BroadwayEngraved-WP
WordPerfect
CG Omega
Hewlett-Packard
CG Omega Bold
Hewlett-Packard
CG Omega Bold Italic
Hewlett-Packard
CG Omega Italic
Hewlett-Packard
CG Times
Hewlett-Packard
CG Times Bold
Hewlett-Packard
CG Times Bold Italic
Hewlett-Packard
CG Times Italic
Hewlett-Packard
Century-WP
WordPerfect
Clarendon Condensed
Hewlett-Packard
CommercialScript-WP
WordPerfect
CooperBlack
WordPerfect
Coronet Italic
Hewlett-Packard
Eurostile-WP
WordPerfect
Garamond Antiqua
Hewlett-Packard
Garamond Halbfett
Hewlett-Packard
Garamond Kursiv
Hewlett-Packard
Garamond Kursiv Halbfett
Hewlett-Packard
Hobo-WP
WordPerfect
Letter Gothic
Hewlett-Packard
Letter Gothic Bold
Hewlett-Packard
Letter Gothic Italic
Hewlett-Packard
Marigold
Hewlett-Packard
MurrayHill-WP
WordPerfect
OldEnglish-WP
WordPerfect
OldTown-WP
WordPerfect
Stencil-WP
WordPerfect
Symbol
Microsoft
Times New Roman
Microsoft
Univers
Hewlett-Packard
Univers Italic
Hewlett-Packard
Univers Bold
Hewlett-Packard
Univers Bold Italic
Hewlett-Packard
Univers Condensed
Hewlett-Packard
Univers Condensed Bold
Hewlett-Packard
Univers Condensed Bold Italic
Hewlett-Packard
Univers Condensed Italic
Hewlett-Packard
Wingdings
Microsoft
Subject: 1.33. Digital Type Design Tools
This article was constructed from a posting by Charles A. Bigelow in
Jun 1994 and a posting by Clive Bruton in Jan 1995.
How do the various digital type designing tools compare?
========================================================
Charles A. Bigelow contributes:
Kris Holmes and I use Ikarus and IkarusM, on the Macintosh, for most of
our work. We also use Fontographer from time to time. Both are good
tools. We have not tried TypeDesigner. We have tried FontStudio, but
don't use it.
IkarusM and Fontographer user interfaces are different (modulo the Mac
interface). IkarusM displays all "on-curve" points, treating the curves
as Hermite splines, which it converts to Beziers when making Type1 or
Type3 fonts, and to quadratic B-splines when making TrueType fonts.
On-curve points are helpful because they are intuitively more like what
a naive user would expect--to change a curve, change a point on its
contour. Fontographer uses bezier on-curve and off-curve control
points. While these take a little more getting used-to, experienced
users have no problems manipulating curves by moving around the
off-curve control points.
Fontographer uses curve fitting of scanned input and/or mouse
manipulation of points to get started on outlines. IkarusM uses
graphics tablet input from drawn (or photographed) artwork or mouse
manipulation to get started.
Both provide auto-hinting capabilities (IkarusM just included this in
version 3.0), but I haven't compared the quality of hinting between the
applications. Both provide automatic kerning capabilities, but again I
haven't compared the quality carefully. IkarusM itself doesn't do
kerning, but version 3.0 comes with Kernus, a separate auto-kerning
system.
Fontographer has more "goodies" in terms of the the different kinds of
output of fonts and screen fonts for different platforms (indeed, we
prefer it for making BDF bitmaps for UNIX platforms), and in the "finer
points" so to speak, of manipulating control points, whereas IkarusM
has more internal accuracy of resolution and more geometric symmetry
manipulation tools.
Fontographer has auto-tracing capability, for fitting outlines to
scanned images, whereas IkarusM needs a separate program, LinusM to do
that. However, LinusM adds several capabilities that Fontographer does
not provide.
I have forgotten the current list price for Fontographer (sorry, but
I'm sure a Fontographer user or someone from Altsys can provide it; is
it around \$250 - \$300?). IkarusM + Kernus + LinusM is around \$900,
but one should check with the URW office in Nashua, NH, to be certain
of that figure and of what is included.
There are many other differences between the programs, and perhaps other
users will want to point them out.
Which would I choose? Well, I have them both. Kris Holmes and I have
produced over 75 typefaces with Ikarus, though some of those were with
Ikarus on VAX or Sun. We are comfortable with Ikarus and feel that it
provides the highest level of precision and control, which for our
professional purposes is what we most value. Nevertheless, we find
Fontographer to be very good tool and continually buy the updates and
test it and use it for various things when we feel that it is superior
to Ikarus in particular respects. The best thing would be to test them
both, but unfortunately, one's preference for one or the other might
not manifest itself until one has gained more experience.
Disclaimer: We pay the standard prices and purchase our copies of
IkarusM and Fontographer and their upgrades, figuring that font tool
developers deserve to be paid for their work, just like font designers.
Bigelow & Holmes has font licensing arrangements with URW, the
developers of Ikarus, but we are not paid by them.
What about FontStudio?
======================
[Editors note: This seems like valuable information for the FAQ, which
is why I've included it in a mostly wholesale fashion as Clive posted
it. In general, I'm not a big fan of anonymous contributions, but in
this case I've chosen to look the other way ;-). In particular, I've
made no attempt to disambiguate the personal pronouns in this section!]
Clive Bruton contributes the following:
I will now do a mini compendium of all my comments as FontStudio's chief
promoter, along with all the other people who support my view.
Sorry to those who are not credited, but others wish to remain
anonymous.
The following snippets are not necessarily in chronological order, names
have been changed to protect the guilty!
Is FontStudio Still Being Marketed?
-----------------------------------
Well it's one of those questions isn't it, it is certainly advertised in
the UK and as far as I know still supported by Letraset UK, but as you
have probably seen in comp.fonts there has been some debate over the
relative merits of FontStudio vs Fontographer, my arguement suitably
backed-up by ...., and there is certainly some doubt over its imediate
future.
Personally I'd like to see it re-launched, if only because the market
needs some stimulation in order to produce ground-breaking products, and
one App/Vendor (Fontographer/Altsys) doesn't make for healthy
competition, as we've seen with Quark getting fat and lazy over their
upgrades for XPress with no perceived threat from PageMaker (that should
change real soon).
However it (FS) retails in the UK for \$195.00 as opposed to
Fontographers \$295.00, the current version is 2.0, as it has been for
over two years, but then again there have been no bug fixes for it, no
need!
I am sure that you could buy it in the US via Letraset directly, if you
wanted to. As far as marketing goes, I have just received a software
brochure from Camalot (UK software vendor) that partly showcases the
full Letraset range, and FontStudio is in there with the rest.
If you can't get it in the States, I'm sure I can arrange for it to be
shipped to you.
What About Bitmap Generation?
-----------------------------
FontStudio's advantage is that they call the ATM API to get
ATM-generated bitmaps. Fontographer generates their own--and the
results are much heavier and more messy.
Yes, you're right, I did know, FS has 3 options on this, its own
generation, which like Fontographers are rather heavy, ATM's which are
just about perfect, and True Type, which from memory--since I only
tried it a couple of times--tend to be a bit quirky.
FontStudio is Better [than Fontographer]?
-----------------------------------------
Could you elaborate on that? Why do you suppose that FontStudio
disappeared, and Fontographer is still around? Not being belligerent or
challenging you, since I'm totally unfamiliar with FontStudio--but
Altsys is not exactly a Goliath compared to Letraset, in terms of the
size of the company or the depth of its pockets, and I'm curious why
such a good product from a big font vendor disappeared.
I'll chime in here if that's OK. I'm very glad FontStudio came along;
Fontographer was resting on its laurels until it got serious
competition. Many people prefer FontStudio's drawing interface (which is
like Illustrator's) to Fontographer's (which is, unsurprisingly, like
Freehand's). There are other parts to the interface debate as well, like
zoom factors, dialog complexity, and so forth, although much of it may
be a matter of taste.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX was one of FontStudio's beta sites, and they used a lot
of our advice, so it's not accidental that our designers still tend to
use it until it's time to move the fonts over to the SPARCs. I use it
when I'm playing with designs at home.
It looks like Letraset didn't know how to promote what it had. It's
worth noting that they'yre divesting themselves of their other graphics
apps, not just FontStudio. At any rate, the biggest hurdle was that
Fontographer had a four-year head start, capturing the hearts of nearly
everyone who was serious about making fonts. Nobody wants to relearn an
app, so the competition has to be darned good to get people to switch.
It has happened (witness XPress vs PageMaker) but it's not easy.
Another problem was that Letraset didn't develop FontStudio, they
bought it. They and the developers (now Ares, the FontMonger people)
didn't get along well, and that led to a painfully slow upgrade
process. Altsys got themselves in gear, and started adding features
right & left, outdoing FontStudio on nearly every count (technically,
not necessarily in terms of user experience).
I can only agree with what XXX has said above, plus...
Just some more background info on FontStudio/Letraset. Unfortunately
Letraset never seemed to get the knack of selling software, some
examples of this are, Letraset were originally the distributors of Adobe
products in the UK - a job that is now carried out by Principal, they
also had a full complement of other Mac software - which seems to have
reverted to its authors or disappeared alltogether, it has recently
released the first commercially available Plug-In for Illustrator, a
derivative of LetraStudio, to allow the creation of pespective and
envelope effects - who knows about this?
Back to the FontStudio/Fontographer debate, I have tried to use
Fontographer, but as discussed above, the interface is just awful (as an
aside, does anyone like FreeHand 4.0's interface?), FontStudios use of
colour, pop-up menus, and general look and feel is completely at home
alongside XPress and Illustrator, where as Fontographer, well... isn't!
All the buzzers and bells are there in Fontographer, but can you really
take seriously a program that won't allow you to draught your own
bitmaps! (Yeah I have heard about ATM, that's not the point).
Also, and I won't lay the blame solely at the door of Altsys, whenever
I get asked to sort out a problem font, it's always been created with
Fontographer. Now whether that is down to Altsys Fontographer (AF)
trying to things that aren't exactly kosher (like using even/odd rule
instead of winding), or the skill of the digitisers who did the work
I've never been able to fathom, but it's usually fixed by importing into
FontStudio (FS) and re-saving.
I hope that Ares do something with FS, otherwise sooner or later I am
going to need a new program (I have found a minor screen draw problem
when used with System 7.5, I've yet to try it on a PowerMac [anyone
wants me to, I can send you results]), I have already looked around, and
seem a lot more likely to buy Ikarus M than AF, it's really that bad.
I would also like to comment on XXX's point about XPress/PageMaker, I
hope that Adobe can make a real killer of PM, and reverse that trend,
XPress>PM that'll be the way to go!
Just to take Xpress' name in vain again (I don't hate the program, just
the smug bastards that want to charge me \$190.00 to get a native
version, and only a native version - Adobe has got the right attitude
there!) "XPress" is to "Word for Windows", what "FontStudio" is to
"Fontographer".
QED. Maybe not!
If all those in favour send me a *YAY* (addressed to
[email protected]) and someone sends me e-addresses for Ares
and Letraset, then I will forward them your support, who knows Altsys
may even decide to pack the whole Fontographer game in, and Adobe can
relaunch FontStudio!
Subject: 1.34. Type Design Firms
Although it has been a long time coming, it seems only natural that the
comp.fonts FAQ should provide a brief summary of what the various type
design firms are producing.
Carter & Cone Type, Inc.
========================
This description was constructed from postings by Don Hosek, Erik-Jan
Vens, and David Lemon in Sep, 1993.
Carter & Cone Type Inc.
2155 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-576-0398 or 800-952-2129
617-354-4146 FAX
We begin with Carter & Cone not because I think they should be first,
but because I already have a few articles about them (I probably saved
the articles more because they were about Galliard, which I have a
fondness for, than anything else). Please contribute summaries about
other foundries (even the foundries themselves are encouraged to
contribute, althought I'd appreciate it if the advertising overtones
were kept to a dull roar ;-).
Galliard
--------
[Editors note: With appologies to C&C, I have the following snippet:
>> the designer. He's in business for himself now as half of Carter &
>> Cone (800 952 2129 voice), and he's worked Galliard over yet again.
>> Should be cool. Support your local type designer.
Which half of C&C does this refer to?]
Don Hosek says:
The specimen sheets arrived in the mail today (along with the newest
Font & Function). Carter & Cone has three faces: ITC Galliard [CC]
which is a family of 11 fonts. The bad news is that assignments of
characters into expert sets and basic fonts is non-standard (the basic
font is missing fi and fl). The good news is that the fonts are quite
inexpensive. The whole set can be purchased for \$150. The font is a
single weight only (if bold is strictly necessary, Bitstream Galliard
Bold is consistent in height and can be mixed. On the other hand,
designers need to learn to avoid the crutch of bold face on their
pages). It is possible to purchase just those parts of the package
which are needed. Those able to mix fonts on their own might be able to
get a decent selection for less than \$150.
Sophia
------
Don continues,
The second font is Sophia which is a kind of quirky all-caps display
face. It features a number of upper case ligatures [!] and has a kind
of Greek-Turkish feel to it (not suprising, really: the face is based
in 6th c. Constantinople letterforms). When I first saw this, I didn't
like it, but it does grow on one. The price on this is \$60.
Mantinia
--------
Finally, Don concludes,
The third font is Mantinia which is a more traditional display roman
with some interesting features: e.g., more uppercase ligatures and an
alphabet with superior caps in place of lower case (the La of LaTeX
could be typeset without kerns or raises using this alphabet). Again,
this took some growing on one, but I'm more accepting of this (and can
even imagine using it for real work). The price on this is \$60.
Subject: 1.35. What does `lorem ipsum dolor' mean?
`Lorem ipsum dolor' is the first part of a nonsense paragraph sometimes
used to demonstrate a font. It has been well established that if you
write anything as a sample, people will spend more time reading the
copy than looking at the font. The "gibberish" below is sufficiently
like ordinary text to demonstrate a font but doesn't distract the
reader. Hopefully.
Rick Pali submits the following from Before and After Magazine, Volume
4 Number 2.:
[quote]
After telling everyone that Lorem ipsum, the nonsensical text that
comes with PageMaker, only looks like Latin but actually says nothing, I
heard from Richard McClintock, publication director at the
Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, who had enlightening news:
"Lorem ipsum is latin, slightly jumbled, the remnants of a passage from
Cicero's _de Finibus_ 1.10.32, which begins 'Neque porro quisquam est
qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit...'
[There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to
have it, simply because it is pain.]. [de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum,
written in 45 BC, is a treatise on the theory of ethics very popular in
the Renaisance.]
"What I find remarkable is that this text has been the industry's
standard dummy text ever since some printed in the 1500s took a galley
of type and scambled it to make a type specemin book; it has survived
not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap
into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged except for an
occational 'ing' or 'y' thrown in. It's ironic that when the
then-understood Latin was scrambled, it became as incomprehensible as
Greek; the phrase 'it's Greek to me' and 'greeking' have common semantic
roots!"
[unquote]
One Example of Lorem Ipsum Dolor
================================
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetaur adipisicing elit, sed do
eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad
minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip
ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in
voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur
sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia
deserunt mollit anim id est laborum Et harumd und lookum like Greek to
me, dereud facilis est er expedit distinct. Nam liber te conscient to
factor tum poen legum odioque civiuda. Et tam neque pecun modut est
neque nonor et imper ned libidig met, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed
ut labore et dolore magna aliquam makes one wonder who would ever read
this stuff? Bis nostrud exercitation ullam mmodo consequet. Duis aute
in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. At vver
eos et accusam dignissum qui blandit est praesent luptatum delenit
aigue excepteur sint occae. Et harumd dereud facilis est er expedit
distinct. Nam libe soluta nobis eligent optio est congue nihil impedit
doming id Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, set
eiusmod tempor incidunt et labore et dolore magna aliquam. Ut enim ad
minim veniam, quis nostrud exerc. Irure dolor in reprehend incididunt
ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud
exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
molestaie cillum. Tia non ob ea soluad incommod quae egen ium improb
fugiend. Officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum Et harumd dereud
facilis est er expedit distinct. Nam liber te conscient to factor tum
poen legum odioque civiuda et tam. Neque pecun modut est neque nonor
et imper ned libidig met, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed ut labore et
dolore magna aliquam is nostrud exercitation ullam mmodo consequet.
Duis aute in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla
pariatur. At vver eos et accusam dignissum qui blandit est praesent.
Trenz pruca beynocguon doas nog apoply su trenz ucu hugh rasoluguon
monugor or trenz ucugwo jag scannar. Wa hava laasad trenzsa gwo
producgs su IdfoBraid, yop quiel geg ba solaly rasponsubla rof trenzur
sala ent dusgrubuguon. Offoctivo immoriatoly, hawrgasi pwicos asi
sirucor.Thas sirutciun applios tyu thuso itoms ghuso pwicos gosi
sirucor in mixent gosi sirucor ic mixent ples cak ontisi sowios uf Zerm
hawr rwivos. Unte af phen neige pheings atoot Prexs eis phat eit sakem
eit vory gast te Plok peish ba useing phen roxas. Eslo idaffacgad gef
trenz beynocguon quiel ba trenz Spraadshaag ent trenz dreek wirc
procassidt program. Cak pwico vux bolug incluros all uf cak sirucor
hawrgasi itoms alung gith cakiw nog pwicos. Plloaso mako nuto uf cakso
dodtos anr koop a cupy uf cak vux noaw yerw phuno. Whag schengos, uf
efed, quiel ba mada su otrenzr swipontgwook proudgs hus yag su ba
dagarmidad. Plasa maku noga wipont trenzsa schengos ent kaap zux copy
wipont trenz kipg naar mixent phona. Cak pwico siructiun ruos nust
apoply tyu cak UCU sisulutiun munityuw uw cak UCU-TGU jot scannow.
Trens roxas eis ti Plokeing quert loppe eis yop prexs. Piy opher
hawers, eit yaggles orn ti sumbloat alohe plok. Su havo loasor cakso
tgu pwuructs tyu InfuBwain, ghu gill nug bo suloly sispunsiblo fuw
cakiw salo anr ristwibutiun. Hei muk neme eis loppe. Treas em wankeing
ont sime ploked peish rof phen sumbloat syug si phat phey gavet peish
ta paat ein pheeir sumbloats. Aslu unaffoctor gef cak siructiun gill bo
cak spiarshoot anet cak GurGanglo gur pwucossing pwutwam. Ghat dodtos,
ig pany, gill bo maro tyu ucakw suftgasi pwuructs hod yot tyubo
rotowminor. Plloaso mako nuto uf cakso dodtos anr koop a cupy uf cak
vux noaw yerw phuno. Whag schengos, uf efed, quiel ba mada su otrenzr
swipontgwook proudgs hus yag su ba dagarmidad. Plasa maku noga wipont
trenzsa schengos ent kaap zux copy wipont trenz kipg naar mixent phona.
Cak pwico siructiun ruos nust apoply tyu cak UCU sisulutiun munityuw
uw cak UCU-TGU jot scannow. Trens roxas eis ti Plokeing quert loppe
eis yop prexs. Piy opher hawers, eit yaggles orn ti sumbloat alohe
plok. Su havo loasor cakso tgu pwuructs tyu.
[This version was found on CompuServe. It differs from other versions I
have seen in print, increasingly so as you go along. It almost looks
computer-generated, doesn't it?]
This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the
input file FAQ.texinfo.
Subject: 2. Macintosh Information
Subject: 2.1. Macintosh Font formats
Bitmap Fonts
============
Bitmap fonts: on the Macintosh, bitmap fonts also contain the kerning
information for a font and must be installed with both type 1 and type
3 fonts. Their presence also speeds the display of commonly used font
sizes.
PostScript Type 1
=================
Postscript Type 1 fonts can be installed on the Macintosh only by using
accompanying bitmapped fonts.
PostScript Type 3
=================
Postscript Type 3 fonts are installed on the Macintosh in the same way
that Type 1 fonts are.
TrueType
========
Truetype fonts: no bitmapped font is necessary with this type, though
commonly used sizes are often supplied.
QuickDraw GX
============
This section was constructed from postings by Charles A. Bigelow, Peter
Moller, David Opstad, and Michael Wang from Sep 93.
What is it?
-----------
QuickDraw GX (QDGX) is the new Mac OS engine for handling screen
presentation. It has many advantages over older engines, among them the
ability to get ligatures, swashes etc. on the fly. QDGX is also a
16-bit font format that allows for example users in Korea to run their
machines in their native tounge as well as write.
How is it related to Unicode?
-----------------------------
Although QDGX is a 16-bit encoding, it is "orthogonal" to Unicode
Unicode, to use a jargon term. A TrueType font, GX or otherwise, can be
encoded using the Unicode standard, but that isn't necessary. However, a
TrueType font, and especially a GX font, can contain glyphs for which
there is no unique Unicode encoding, e.g. the 'fi' ligature, or a swash
'a' with a trailing curlicue. TrueType GX fonts, however, contain
additional information and structure that allows the QDGX system to
properly substitute variant glyphs for certain characters in the text.
For the above examples, QDGX will, if requested, look for the sequence
'f' + 'i' and substitute the 'fi' ligature, or look for 'a' at the end
of a line and substitute the glyph 'a-trailing curlicue'.
It is really quite charming to see this happen, and it makes the font
[...] a clever, trained circus dog that does tricks than a simple font.
The GX fonts begin to show an additional personality beyond the image of
the glyphs. In fact, the font can contain a state machine that controls
the substitution process--in effect, a computer program. There is
provision for another state machine controlling kerning as well, to get
around the problems that can arise with simple pair-based kerning.
David Opstad contributes the following:
The bidirectional text reordering algorithm defined in Unicode is fully
implemented in GX (in fact, during our testing of GX we uncovered some
problems with the Unicode specification!) Also, and most unfortunately,
since Unicode is the product of an international committee process there
were certain compromises that were made in the design, so there really
are Unicode character codes for certain ligatures and contextual forms
(e.g. the "Basic Glyphs for Arabic Language" codes starting at U+FE70).
Note, however, that GX does not use these; we do Arabic contextual
processing the same way we do Roman contextual processing. Indeed, it
is this uniformity of approach that is, I believe, one of GX's main
strengths.
One of my greatest hopes (that keeps me going after having worked on
getting GX done for over five years now) is that we're going to see a
real renaissance of fonts and creativity in font designs. GX finally
gets us back to the elegance of calligraphy, with the repeatability and
precision of the computer.
What about rotation?
--------------------
QDGX supports full 3X3 transformations (including perspective) on all
objects in the graphics system, including text. Anti-aliasing is not
included in GX 1.0, but we're looking at it for future versions.
Is QDGX limited to TrueType fonts?
----------------------------------
Michael Wang contributes:
Just to clarify, the component of QuickDraw GX that deals with font
features like automatic ligature substitution is called the Line Layout
Manager (which I'll abbreviate as LLM), and LLM features are
independent of scaler technology. In other words, a Type 1 font can
have all of the LLM features that a TrueType font can have under
QuickDraw GX.
In fact, Apple and Adobe bundle a GX version of ATM with the QuickDraw
GX release along with a Type 1 GX version of Tekton Regular which
includes lots of additional glyphs and supports most of the LLM
features. If you are a Macintosh developer, there are beta GX versions
of ATM and Tekton that you can play around with on the QuickDraw GX
1.0b1 release that is part of the WWDC CD.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro contributes:
One implication of GX for font installation is that Type 1 fonts no
longer come in "bitmap" vs "screen" versions that live in separate
files: under QuickDraw GX, they live in "sfnt" resources, and install no
differently from TrueType fonts.
As of 1 Mar 95, QuickDraw GX 1.0.1 is the current release.
Subject: 2.2. Frequently Requested Mac Fonts
Greek Fonts
===========
This section was constructed from a posting by John Amanatides in Jan
1995.
There are three ways to get Greek out of a Mac. Approach one is to
simply use the Symbol font; this solution is the easiest but Symbol
doesn't have accents and you cannot easily exchange files with friends
in Greece. Approach two is go all the way and install Apple's Greek
system software on your Mac. It would make it identical to a machine
sold in Greece and is really only an option for the diehards. Approach
three is to just get a Greek keyboard driver and Greek typefaces. This
article talks mostly about approach three while it does also mention the
others.
First some background. Until the early '80s the Greek alphabet included
quite a lot of different diacritical marks. Thus if you are interested
in classical Greek you will need to get a polytonic version of the
typeface. Modern Greek now only uses accents, simplifying the use of
the alphabet and this is normally what you will get when you ask for a
Greek typeface.
There are several encodings of the Greek alphabet. ISO-8859-7 is the
most standard. It is an 8-bit encoding that uses the regular 7-bit
ASCII standard in the lower 128 positions and Greek in the upper 128.
Unfortunately, Apple did not use it (sigh). Apple's encoding is
slightly different in the upper 128 positions. All modern Greek
typefaces for the Mac seem to use this encoding and if you use it you
can exchange files with your friends in Greece (and use Greek
dictionaries!). If you are interested in classical Greek things become
a little trickier. I don't know if there is a standard but Linguist's
Software's (see below) encoding seems to be the most popular.
Sources of Greek Fonts for the Mac
----------------------------------
Apple
.....
You can go all the way with Apple and get their Greek system software
but getting it is non-trivial. In North America the only way to get it
seems to be to get the "Apple Developer Mailing" from APDA. Designed
for developers, you get a CD mailed to you monthly. The CD contains
the most recent worldwide Mac system software along with a lot of other
stuff. It costs \$250 US and you get updates for a year. The Greek
system software contains TrueType versions of GrCourier, GrHelvetica,
GrTimes and several bitmap versions of some of Apple's other typefaces
along with the Greek keyboard driver.
APDA 800-282-2732 US
800-637-0029 Canada
716-871-6555
A second place to get Greek system software is in Greece. Apple's
distributor is:
Rainbow Computer S.A.
Elia Eliou 75
Neos Kosmos, Athens
Greece 117 44
30-1-9012892 Voice
30-1-9012540 FAX
Just because you have the Greek system software doesn't mean you have
to install the whole system; you can just take the Greek typefaces and
the Greek keyboard driver and use them with your current system
software.
Note: Linguists' Software (see below) also market version 6.0.3 of the
Greek operating system.
Linotype-Hell
.............
Linotype sells a variety of Type1 Greek typefaces in both modern and
polytonic versions and in a variety of weights/styles: Times,
Helvetica, Baskerville, New Century Schoolbook and Souvenir. The
easiest way to purchase them is to get Linotype's CD of locked
typefaces (a new one is coming out in Dec. '94). The CD costs \$49 US
and comes with 4 free fonts. A Greek keyboard driver comes with the
typefaces. Linotype can be reached at:
Linotype-Hell Company
425 Oser Avenue
Hauppage, NY, 11788
USA
800-633-1900
516-434-3616 FAX
These typefaces are also distributed by FontShop (see below) Note: the
new CD works on both a Mac and a PC and when you unlock a typeface you
unlock for both systems.
FontShop
........
FontShop is an international chain of stores which supplies a wide
variety of typefaces to both professionals and the rest of us. Their
North American address is:
FontShop Canada Limited
510 Front Street West
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5V 3H3
800-363-6687
416-348-0916 FAX
Monotype
........
Monotype offers two Greek typefaces on their locked CD: Times New Roman
Greek and Arial Greek. Each typeface comes in four weights/styles.
Their CD lists for \$49 and you get 8 free fonts (just enough for both
of their Greek typefaces :-). You can reach Monotype at:
Monotype Typography Inc.
Suite 2630, 150 South Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL, 60606
USA
800-MONOTYP (800-666-6897)
312-855-9475 FAX
These typefaces are also distributed by FontShop. Note: you get a 5 CPU
license.
Linguist's Software
...................
Linguist's Software has typefaces for over 250 world languages and
gives several options for those interested in Greek. First, you can
purchase the Greek operating system for the Mac version 6.0.3. This
includes GrTimes and GrHelvetica (Type 3) as well as several bit-mapped
system fonts. Second, you can purchase their modern Greek typefaces
Olympus and Philippi (Times and Helvetica clones) in four
weights/styles and in both Type1 and TrueType along with a keyboard
driver for System 7. Finally, they have their own TrueType and Type1
typefaces in the LaserGreek package. These are of particular interest
to Greek scholars since they include extra diacritics for ancient/N.T.
Greek. This package now includes a Uncail typeface. LaserGreek: \$99;
Modern Greek + keyboard driver: \$99; LaserGreek + GreekOS: \$139;
LaserGreek + Modern Greek + keyboard driver: \$139.
Linguist's Software
PO Box 580
Edmonds, WA 98020-0580
USA
206-775-1130
206-771-5911 FAX
Ecological Linguistics
......................
Ecological Linguistics also provides typfaces for a wide variety of
world languages. They have a polytonic version of Times (GreekTimes)
in their GreekClassical package and monotonic versions of Times and
Helvetica (GkTimes, GkHelvetica) in four weights/styles in their
GreekModern package. Both the GreekClassical and GreekModern packages
are \$60 US each and come with a keyboard driver.
Ecological Linguistics
P.O. Box 15156
Washington, D.C., 20003
U.S.A.
202-546-5862
MacCampus
.........
MacCampus of Germany provides Greek and other Eastern European
typefaces. The Greek typefaces come in two flavors: those that are
based on the modern Greek keyboard layout and those based on the Symbol
font layout. MacCampus provides a keyboard driver so that you can use
the former type on non-Greek Macs.
The typefaces available are:
Modern Greek (Greek layout): Olympia (Helvetica clone) and Tiryns
(Times clone) in 4 weights/styles
Classical Greek (extra diacritics, Symbol layout): Agora Times,
Parmenides (light, sans-serif)
MacCampus
C. Kempgen
An den Weihern 18
D-96135 Stegaurach
Germany
(0951) 296739
(0951) 296425 FAX
MacCampus typefaces are distributed by FontShop.
Font World
..........
Another Greek typeface distributor is Font World. They also sell a
variety of Eastern European typefaces. They provide a package of
keyboard drivers for a variety of different world languages. The
modern Greek typefaces are: FW Palace GK (Palatino?), FW Baskerfield
GK, FW Peace GK (sans serif) & condensed version, FW Pithos GK
(Lithos?), FW Stencil GK, FW Textbook GK, FW Tourist GK (Souvenir) and
FW World GK (Times?). They come in a variety of weights/styles and go
for about \$100-\$200.
Font World, Inc.
2021 Scottsville Road,
Rochester, NY 12623
USA
716-235-6861
716-235-6950 FAX
SkepsiS
.......
SkepsiS is a Greek publishing company that is heavily into Macs. They
have created and sell several nice typefaces in several weights/styles:
Corfu (New Century Schoolbook?), Ithaca (Souvenir?), Rhodes
(University?), Mykonos (Courier?), Paros (Antique Olive?), Samos
(modern serif), GtcFutura (Futura?), Naxos (Eurostile?), Ios (?) The
cost for a package containing the above is 60,000 drachmas.
SkepsiS Ltd
El. Benizelou 184
T.K. 176 75, Kallithea
Athens, Greece
30-1-952-2086
30-1-952-2088 FAX
Magenta
.......
Magenta is a Greek company that sells typefaces for Macs and PCs.
Their catalog lists over 70 typefaces with names like MgBodoni,
MgOptima, MgAvantGarde, etc in a variety of weights/styles. Most are
modern Greek but they also have a few classical typefaces. Each
typeface family goes for about 8,500 drachmas.
Magenta Ltd
Antimaxou 17
115 28 Athens
Greece
30-1-722-9292 phone/FAX
Note, I have tried to contact Magenta recently and have gotten no
response.
Fronteiras
..........
Fonteiras is a German company that produces non-roman typefaces. They
have 26 Greek typefaces, display and text, both polytonic and
monotonic. Some of the families include clones of Dynamo, Stencil,
Broadway, Revue, Futura Black, Lithos, Industria, Insignia, Palatino,
Helvetica, Times, etc. Packages go for about \$150-\$200 US and include
a Greek keyboard driver. The monotonic typfaces have kerning tables and
some have real italics. (Most other vendors only have obliques.)
Fronteiras
Luisenstr. 22
D-60316 Franfurt
Germany
49-069-4980498 phone/FAX
[email protected]
Freeware/Shareware
..................
There is a free classical Greek typeface called Ismini that is available
on the net at:
mac.archive.umich.edu:mac/system.extensions/font/type1/ismini.cpt.hqx
Unfortunately, I don't think it uses the same encoding as Linguist's
Software.
Other Fonts
===========
Many fonts are available at various archives. The king of Macintosh
font archives is mac.archive.umich.edu. On mac.archive.umich.edu, the
fonts are located in the following folders:
/mac/system.extensions/font/type1
/mac/system.extensions/font/type3
/mac/system.extensions/font/truetype
The following fonts are in Type 1 format for the Macintosh. Some are
also available in TrueType format.
* Tamil
Paladam, T. Govindram
* Hebrew
ShalomScript, ShalomOldStyle, ShalomStick, Jonathan Brecher
* Japanese
Shorai (Hirigana, with application)
* Star Trek
StarTrekClassic, Star TrekClassicMovies, StarTrekTNGCrille,
StarTrekTNG Titles, TNG monitors, StarFleet, Klinzai (Klingon font)
* Command-key symbol
Chicago (TrueType or bitmap, key: Ctrl-Q), Chicago Symbols
(Type3, key: 1), EncycloFont (Type3, key: d)
* Astrologic/Astronomic symbols
Hermetica (Type1), InternationalSymbols (Type 3, Mars and Venus
only), MortBats (Type3), Zodiac (bitmap)
* IBM OEM Line Drawing Characters
Try Adobe PrestigeElite or Adobe LetterGothic. They have all the
characters you want, but the `line draw' characters are unencoded
-- you will need tools to reencode the outline font itself and
make a new PFM metric files.
Or try IBMExtended from Impramatur Systems in Cambridge, Mass. It
already is encoded using IBM OEM encoding (some DOS code page).
The IBM version of Courier distributed freely under the X11
Consortium also contains the appropriate characters. It is
distributed in PC format, however. Again, the font will have to
be reencoded for Windows. Appropriate AFM files for this font can
be obtained from:
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/FAQ-tools.html.
Many of these mac fonts are available in files that are either entitled
xxxx.sit or xxxx.cpt. xxxx.sit files are Stuffit archives. xxxx.cpt
files are Compact Pro archives. StuffitLite (shareware $25) and Compact
Pro (shareware $25) are available at the standard ftp sites.
Uncompressors for these programs (free) are also available at the
archive sites. Check the utilities/compression utilities folders.
Subject: 2.3. Commercial Font Sources
Commercial fonts can be obtained from a number of different companies,
including the large font houses: Adobe, Font Haus, Font Company,
Bitstream, and Monotype. At these companies, fonts cost about $40 for a
single face, and must be purchased in packages. Adobe, Bitstream, and
Monotype also sell pre-designated type collections for slightly lower
prices.
Image Club sells a wide selection of fonts for about $50 for a 4 font
family.
Other, cheaper companies sell fonts of lesser quality, including
KeyFonts, which sells a set of 100 fonts for $50 and Casady & Green's
Fluent Laser Fonts, a set of 79 fonts for $99. Casady & Greene also
sells Cyrillic language fonts in Times, Bodoni, and Helvetica sell for
about $40 for each 4 font family.
Foreign language fonts, ranging from Egyptian hieroglyphics to Cyrillic
can be obtained from Ecological Linguistics.
Please consult the vendor list for a more complete list of vendors.
Subject: 2.4. Mac Font Installation
* System 7
Install the fonts by opening the suitcase containing the bitmap
file and dropping the fonts into your system suitcase, located
inside your system folder. You will need to quit all other
applications before doing this. For a TrueType font, the icon for
the font will have a stack of "A"s in it, instead of just one.
Dropping it into your system suitcase will make all sizes of the
font available. For Postscript type 1 fonts, you also need to
place the printer font in the extensions folder in your system
folder. If you are using ATM you need to place these fonts in the
root level of your system folder (not inside another folder).
Using Suitcase, a font management utility, you can avoid
cluttering your system folder with printer fonts.
You can make new suitcases of fonts (generally not needed, but
used by those who use Suitcase) by using Font DA mover. It
operates the same as in system 6, except that the most recent
version must be used.
* System 6
Bitmap fonts can be installed using Font DA mover to move the
fonts, located inside suitcases, into your system. You will need
to restart your computer to make these fonts available. Printer
fonts must be placed in the system folder, not inside any other
folder.
Truetype fonts can be used with system 6 if you get the Truetype
init. Then the fonts can be installed in your system with Font DA
mover. Suitcase can also be used under system 6.
Subject: 2.5. Mac Font Utilities
* SUITCASE
Suitcase is a nifty little system extension that lets you avoid
having to install fonts into your system. In system 6, it means
that you can avoid restarting your system every time you want to
install a new font.
In system 7, Suitcase lets you avoid quitting all applications
before making fonts available. Some programs, like Quark Xpress
will automatically update their font list when you open a new
suitcase, allowing much more flexibility in opening and closing
font suitcases and making different sets of fonts available.
Suitcase appears in your Apple menu in both system 7 and 6 and
allows you to open suitcases, as though they were files, thus
making the fonts contained in them accessible to programs.
In addition, when suitcase is installed, printer fonts can be
stored with the bitmap suitcases they correspond to, instead of
having to drop them into your system folder.
The most recent version of Suitcase is compatible with TrueType.
Suitcase is about $54 from the mail order places.
* Carpetbag
A shareware program with functionality equivalent to Suitcase.
* MASTER JUGGLER
Does similar things
* ATM
Adobe Type Manager is an Init and Control panel allows accurate
screen display, at any size of PostScript type 1 fonts. It's
function is replicated with Truetype (but for different outline
font format). With it installed, you can print fonts of any size
to non-PostScript printers. When using ATM, printer fonts must
either be stored with the bitmap files opened with suitcase (when
using Suitcase), or they must be stored in the root level of the
system folder (with System 7.0, printer fonts must be stored in
the Extension folder if you are not using Suitcase). ATM is now
available, with the System 7.0 upgrade, as well as directly from
adobe with 4 Garamond fonts.
ATM is not built into System 7.1 as previously expected. With
System 7.1, printer fonts must be stored in the Fonts folder if
you are not using Suitcase.
If you are using version 7.x prior to 7.1, the following hack
allows you to have a Font folder (if you don't use Suitcase):
Open the second 'DCOD' resource from the ATM 68020/030 file. Do an
ASCII search for the string "extn" and change it to "font" (it's
case sensitive). Save, close, and Reboot.
This process should work for 68000 machines using the proper ATM
file instead.
* Super ATM
This is a utility that will create fonts, on the fly, that match
the metrics of any Adobe-brand fonts you don't have. It does a
remarkably good job of mimicry because it uses two "generic"
Multiple Master typefaces, serif and sans serif to simulate the
appearance of the missing typefaces. (There is a 1.4 megabyte
database file that allows Super ATM to simulate the fonts that
aren't there.) You also get Type On Call (a CD-ROM), which has
locked outline fonts, and unlocked screen font for all but the
most recent faces in the Adobe Type library.
* TTconverter
A shareware accessory available at the usual archives will convert
Truetype fonts for the IBM into Macintosh format.
* reAdobe
Converts text (PFA) format PostScript Type 1 fonts into Mac format.
* unAdobe
Converts Mac format PostScript Type 1 fonts into text (PFA) format.
* Microsoft Font Pack
If you work with a mixture of Macs and PCs running Windows 3.1,
this is a good deal; 100 TrueType fonts compromising the Windows
3.1 standard set and the two Font Packs for Windows. This includes
various display fonts, the Windows Wingdings font, and the Lucida
family.
A variety of programs, for example, Font Harmony, etc. will allow you
to change the names and ID numbers of your fonts.
Fontmonger and Metamorphosis will let you convert fonts among several
formats (type 1 and 3 and Truetype for the Mac and PC), as well as
letting you extract the font outlines from the printer fonts.
Subject: 2.6. Making Outline Fonts
This is very, very difficult. Many people imagine that there are
programs that will simply convert pictures into fonts for them. This is
not the case; most fonts are painstakingly created by drawing curves
that closely approximate the letterforms. In addition, special rules
(which improve hinting, etc.) mandate that these curves be drawn in
specific ways. Even designing, or merely digitizing, a simple font can
take hundreds of hours.
Given that, there are two major programs used for font design on the
Macintosh, Fontographer ($280) and FontStudio ($400). These programs
will allow you to import scanned images, and then trace them with
drawing tools. The programs will then generate type 1, 3, TrueType and
Bitmap fonts for either the Macintosh or the IBM PC. They will also
generate automatic hinting. They also open previously constructed
outline fonts, allowing them to be modified, or converted into another
format.
As far as I know, there are no shareware programs that allow you to
generate outline fonts.
Subject: 2.7. Problems and Possible Solutions
1. Another font mysteriously appears when you select a certain font
for display.
This is often the result of a font id conflict. All fonts on the
Macintosh are assigned a font id, an integer value. When two fonts
have the same id, some programs can become confused about the
appropriate font to use. Microsoft word 4.0 used font id's to
assign fonts, not their names. Since id's can be different on
different computers, a word document's font could change when it
was moved from one computer to another. Other signs of font id
problems are inappropriate kerning or leading (the space between
lines of text). Some font ID problems can be resolved by using
Suitcase, which will reassign font ID's for you, as well as saving
a font ID file that can be moved from computer to computer to keep
the id's consistent. Font ID problems can also be solved with
several type utilities, which will allow you to reassign font
id's. Most newer programs refer to fonts correctly by name
instead of id number, which should reduce the frequency of this
problem.
2. When using a document written in MSWord 5.0, the font mysteriously
changes when you switch from your computer at home to work, or
vice versa.
This is the result of a bug in MSWord 5.0. The MSWord 5.0 updater,
which can be found at the info-mac archives at sumex (in the demo
folder), will fix this bug.
Subject: 2.8. Creating Mac screen fonts
Creating Mac screen fonts from Type 1 outlines
==============================================
Peter DiCamillo contributes the following public domain solution:
BitFont is a program which will create a bitmapped font from any font
which can be drawn on your Macintosh. In addition to standard
bitmapped fonts, it works with Adobe outline fonts when the Adobe Type
Manager is installed, and works with TrueType? fonts. BitFont will
also tell you how QuickDraw will draw a given font (bitmapped, ATM, or
TrueType) and can create a text file describing a font and all its
characters.
BitFont was written using MPW C version 3.2. It is in the public
domain and may be freely distributed. The distribution files include
the source code for BitFont.
Berthold K.P. Horn contributes the following solution.
This is a commercial solution. A font manipulation package from Y&Y
includes:
AFMtoPFM, PFMtoAFM, AFMtoTFM, TFMtoAFM, AFMtoSCR, SCRtoAFM, TFMtoMET,
PFBtoPFA, PFAtoPFB, MACtoPFA, PFBtoMAC, REENCODE, MODEX, DOWNLOAD,
SERIAL, and some other stuff I forget.
To convert PC Type 1 fonts to Macintosh use PFBtoMAC on the outline
font itself; then use AFMtoSCR to make the Mac `screen font'
(repository of metric info). You may need to use PFMtoAFM to first make
AFM file.
To convert Macintosh font to PC Type 1, use MACtoPFA, followed by
PFAtoPFB. Then run SCRtoAFM on screen font to make AFM file. Finally,
run AFMtoPFM to make Windows font metric file.
Y&Y are the `TeX without BitMaps' people (see ad in TUGboat):
Y&Y makes DVPSONE, DVIWindo, and fonts, for use with TeX mostly, in
fully hinted Adobe Type 1 format.
Y&Y, Inc., 45 Walden Street, Concord MA 01742 USA
(800) 742-4059
(508) 371-3286 (voice)
(508) 371-2004 (fax)
Mac Screen fonts can be constructed from outline fonts using
Fontographer, as well.
Subject: 3. MS-DOS Information
The easiest way to get outline fonts under MS-DOS is with Microsoft
Windows 3.x or OS/2 2.x.
Microsoft Windows 3.0 with Adobe Type Manager (ATM) and OS/2 2.0
support PostScript Type1 fonts.
Microsoft Windows 3.1 supports TrueType fonts natively.
Bitmap fonts are available in a variety of formats: most formats are
designed with the printer in mind and not the display since (prior to
graphical environments like Windows, GEM, and OS/2) the majority of
work under MS-DOS was done with a character-based interface.
Subject: 3.1. Frequently Requested MS-DOS fonts
Many fonts are available at various archives. The biggest font archive
for MS-DOS format fonts is ftp.cica.indiana.edu. Note: you can use any
Mac format Type1 font on your PC by converting it to PC format with the
free/shareware as described below.
The following fonts are in Type 1 format for MS-DOS. Some are also
available in TrueType format.
* Hebrew
ShalomScript, ShalomOldStyle, ShalomStick
* Japanese
Shorai
* Star Trek
Crillee, TNG monitors
* IBM OEM Line Drawing Characters
Try Adobe PrestigeElite or Adobe LetterGothic. They have all the
characters you want, but the `line draw' characters are unencoded
-- you will need tools to reencode the outline font itself and
make a new PFM metric files.
Or try IBMExtended from Impramatur Systems in Cambridge, Mass. It
already is encoded using IBM OEM encoding (some DOS code page).
The IBM version of Courier distributed freely under the X11
Consortium also contains the appropriate characters. Again, the
font will have to be reencoded for Windows. Appropriate AFM files
for this font can be obtained from:
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/FAQ-tools.html.
Lee Cambell suggests the following alternative:
Line Drawing characters are also available on ftp sites as
gc0651.exe which is a self-expanding archive. It is on cica (and
mirrors thereof). From the text file that comes with it, it looked
like it was distributed by Microsoft. I printed some text in the
normal A-z range and it looked identical to the truetype Courier
font distributed with Windows. Perhaps it is an upgrade to that
font. I didn't try the linedraw glyphs, so I can't say how they
look.
Subject: 3.2. MS-DOS Font Installation
If you have any information that you feel belongs in this section, it
would be greatly appreciated.
* Windows
* Pat Farrell contributes the following description of font
installation under Windows.
Installing Fonts into Windows:
This only covers Windows 3.1 with ATM. Font is a four-letter
word in Windows versions prior to 3.1 due to the distinctions
between screen fonts and printer fonts. The upgrade price of
Windows 3.1 is justified by the integration of TrueType into
the package and the inclusion of useful fonts for all
printers.
Commercial fonts usually have installation instructions with
their manuals. The approach may differ from the method used
for PD and shareware fonts.
To install PD and shareware fonts in Windows 3.1:
1. Copy the fonts onto a suitable scratch area (i.e. a
floppy, or any temporary area of your hard disk.
2. Execute "Control Panel" by double-clicking on the icon
in the Windows Program Manager's "main" group.
3. Double-click on the Fonts icon.
4. Double-click on the "Add" button.
5. Select the scratch directory holding the new fonts.
6. A list of the fonts will be displayed. You can manually
select the fonts you like, or you can use the
"Select All" button.
7. Make sure the "Copy Fonts to Windows Directory"
check-box is checked. This will copy the fonts
from the scratch area to your Windows directory.
8. Click on the "Ok" button.
* Special notes for Windows applications:
Word for Windows (W4W) stores font/printer information in its
own initialization files. After you add new fonts, you have
to tell W4W that the printer can use the new fonts. Do this
by selecting "Printer Setup" from the W4W main "File" menu
item, click on the "Setup" button, and then click on two "Ok"
buttons to back out of the setup mode.
* Note concerning Windows 3.1 upgrade:
There are two upgrade packages available from Microsoft for
Win3.1. There is the standard version which contains
TrueType support, and about six font families (Times New
Roman, Arial, Courier, Symbols, Wingdings, etc.). It costs
something like $50 (US). The second version contains a number
of TrueType fonts that includes equivalents for the 35
standard Postscript fonts. This adds an additional $50, which
is a pretty good value. However, if you plan on buying
Microsoft's PowerPoint, it includes the same additional
fonts/typefaces. So you can save money by not buying the
fonts twice.
* More about Windows
* [Q:] Why are don't the TrueType fonts that come with
Microsoft products (Word-for-Windows, PowerPoint,
Windows 3.1 TrueType Font Pack, etc.) display and
print properly on my system?
* [A:] The font matching algorithm in Win3.1 is fairly
simplistic. If you install lots of TrueType fonts,
the algorithm can get confused. In this case, "lots"
is more than 50 or so.
* According to Luann Vodder who supports Microsoft Word on
CompuServ:
"There is a procedure which Windows must go through when an
application requests a font. Each font contains a list of
attributes such as Family, FaceName, Height, Width,
Orientation, Weight, Pitch, etc. When an application
requests a font, it fills out a logical font for Windows
containing the necessary attributes, then starts going
through a font mapping algorithm to determine which of the
installed fonts most closely matches the requested (logical)
font. Penalties are applied against fonts whose attributes
do not match the logical font, until the fonts with the
fewest penalties are determined. If there is a "tie",
Windows may need to rely on the order of the fonts in the
WIN.INI file to determine the "winner".
If the fonts you want are in your WIN.INI file, and show up in
Windows' Control Panel, then try moving them higher in your
WIN.INI file with a file edittor such as SYSEDIT."
* Kesh Govinder suggested the following warning:
CAUTION: While many Windows 3.1 users would like to have many
TrueType fonts at their disposal (and they are many available
in the PD) a word of caution. A large number (>50) TT fonts
will slow down your windows startup time. This occurs as
every installed font is listed in the win.ini file, and
Windows has to go through the entire file before starting up.
While this may not affect most users, it will especially
affect users of CorelDraw!, so be warned.
* Other Programs
It is an unfortunate fact that almost all MS-DOS programs do things
differently. Your best bet is to read the manual that comes with
the program you want to use.
Subject: 3.3. What exactly are the encodings of the DOS code pages?
DOS uses `code pages' for `IBM OEM' encoding of fonts. There are six
code pages supplied with DOS 5.0:
437 (English)
850 (Multilingual - Latin I)
852 (Slavic - Latin II)
860 (Portugal)
863 (Canadian French)
865 (Nordic)
(The character code range 0 - 127 is the same in all code pages).
The problem is that MS idea of how to define what a code page is, is to
show a low resolution print out of the glyphs! Which is fine for the
letters of the alphabet, numerals and the obvious punctuation marks,
but worthless for accents (is it `cedilla' or `ogonek'? is it `caron'
or `breve'?) and many other characters. For example, 249 is a small
dot, while 250 is a slightly larger dot. Is one of these supposed to
be `bullet' (which already occurs at 7)? Or is one of them maybe
supposed to be `middot' or `dotcentered'? Is 228 supposed to be
`Sigma' or `summation'. Is 225 supposed to be `beta' or `germandbls'?
Etc etc
And what is the character that looks like `Pt' in code position 158?
Anyway, surely there is a table somewhere that defines precisely what
these encodings are supposed to be. That is, a table that gives for
each code number the name and/or a description of the character.
Subject: 3.4. MS-DOS Font Utilities
* PS2PK
PS2PK allows you to convert PostScript Type1 fonts into bitmap
fonts. The bitmap files produced are in TeX PK format.
* PKtoSFP
PKtoSFP allows you to convert TeX PK fonts into HP LaserJet
softfonts.
* PFBDir/PFBInfo
PFBDir and PFBInfo format and display the "headers" in a binary
Type1 font.
Subject: 3.5. Converting fonts under MS-DOS
Subject: 3.5.1. Converting Mac Type 1 fonts to MS-DOS format
Converting Macintosh Type1 fonts into PC Type1 fonts can be done using
purely free/shareware tools. I've outlined the procedure below. Make
sure you read the "readme" files that accompany many fonts. Some font
authors specifically deny permission to do cross-platform conversions.
The tools you need
==================
XBIN
xbin23.zip in /pub/msdos/mac on oak.oakland.edu (or other
mirrors)
UNSIT
unsit30.zip in /pub/msdos/mac on oak.oakland.edu
UNSITI
unsiti.exe in /pub/onset/util on ftp.std.com
Peter Gentry indicates that this program can extract SIT
archives that use the newer compression techniques that unsit
doesn't recognize.
UNCPT
ext-pc.zip in /pub/pc/win3/util on ftp.cica.indiana.edu
REFONT
refont14.zip from
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/FAQ-tools.html
BMAP2AFM
bm2af02.zip from
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/FAQ-tools.html
XBIN converts Mac "BinHex"ed files back into binary format. BinHex is
the Mac equivalent of UUencoding, it translates files into ascii
characters so that mailers can send them around without difficulty. It
also aids in cross platform copying too, I'm sure. BinHexed files
generally have filenames of the form "xxx.yyy.HQX".
UNSIT explodes "Stuffit" archives. Stuffit archives generally have
filenames of the form "xxx.SIT". UNSIT will ask if you want to
seperate resource and data forks. Yes, you do. There has been some
confusion about whether or not you want headers. I'm inclined to
conclude that it can be made to work either way. Personally, I say no.
UNCPT explodes "Compactor" archives. The ext-pc implementation is
called "extract" and does not require windows (even thought it's in the
windows section on cica). Compactor archives generally have filenames
of the form "xxx.CPT".
REFONT converts Mac type1 fonts into PC type1 fonts. It also converts
Mac TrueType fonts to PC TrueType format. And vice-versa.
BMAP2AFM constructs AFM files from the metric information contained in
Mac screen fonts (.bmap files). The screen font files do not have any
standard name (although they frequently have the extension .bmap). The
screen fonts have file type "FFIL" which, in combination with some
common sense, is usually sufficient to identify them.
I've listed the tools that I've used and the sites that are reasonable
for me to retrieve them from. It's probably a good idea to check with
archie for closer sites if you're not in North America. These tools
run under MS-DOS. XBIN and UNSIT can also be run under Unix.
How to do it?
=============
Collect the Mac fonts from the archive or BBS of your choice. Most of
these files will be in BinHexed format. As a running example, I'm
going to use the imaginary font "Plugh.cpt.hqx". When I download this
font to my PC, I would use the name "PLUGH.CPX". The actual name you
use is immaterial.
Run XBIN on PLUGH.CPX. This will produce PLUGH.DAT, PLUGH.INF, and
PLUGH.RSR. The data fork of the Mac file (the .DAT file) is the only
one of interest to us, you can delete the others.
If the original file had been "Plugh.sit.hqx", we would be using the
UNSIT program. Since I chose a .cpt file for this example, I'm going
to run UNCPT.
Run UNCPT on PLUGH.DAT. You want to extract the AFM file (if present),
the documentation or readme file (if present), and the Type1 outline
file. The AFM and README files will be in the data fork of the archive
file. The Type1 outline will be in the resource fork. The AFM and
README files have Mac "TEXT" type. The Type1 outline file has "LWFN"
type. I'm not trying to describe this part in a step-by-step fashion.
Use the docs for UNCPT and UNSIT as a guide. If you got this far you
probably won't have much difficulty. If you do, drop me a line and
I'll try to help.
If the font does not contain an AFM file, extract the screen font.
Screen fonts frequently have the extension .bmap and are "FFIL" type
files. Use Bmap2AFM to construct an AFM from the screen font. If the
archive _does_ contain an AFM file, it's safe to bet that the author's
AFM will be better than the one created by Bmap2AFM.
Finally, run REFONT on the Type1 outline that you extracted above. The
result should be an appropriate PC type1 outline. REFONT will create a
PFM file for you from the AFM file, if you desire.
Remember to register your shareware...
Other comments
==============
[email protected] makes the following observations:
* UNCPT is easier to use than UNSIT
* UNCPT has to be run twice. I usually do it like this
extract *.cpt -f
extract *.cpt -f -r
* When using "unsit30" you probably want the outline file with the
MacHeader and the others without it. I think that REFONT
requires it but I am not sure.
* REFONT works usually ok. You want a PFA (ASCII) file which is
directly usable on NeXT (you may need to convert carriage-returns
to newlines but I am not sure if it is necessary).
The biggest problem is with the .afm files that are completely
missing or generated by the tools that don't do their job
properly.
* BMAP2AFM requires some extra files (ie. other than bmap2afm.exe) to
work properly.
Subject: 3.5.2. Converting PC Type 1 and TrueType fonts to Mac format
Refont
======
Refont (version 1.4) can convert (in both directions) between PC and Mac
formats of Type1 and TrueType fonts. Note: it _cannot_ convert
_between_ formats, only architectures. The procedure described above
outlines how to convert a Mac archive into PC format so that you can
get at the data. Presumably, the process can be reversed so that you
can get at the data on the Mac side as well. Unfortunately, I don't
have a Mac so I can't describe the process in detail.
Font Manipulation Package
=========================
The Y\&Y Font Manipulation package can convert PFA/B files into Mac
format and AFM files into Mac screen fonts.
Subject: 3.5.3. Converting PC Type 1 fonts into TeX PK bitmap fonts
The release of PS2PK by Piet Tutelaers is a godsend to those of us
without PostScript printers. PS2PK converts PC/Unix format Type 1 fonts
into TeX PK files. Used in conjunction with the AFM2TFM utility for
creating TeX metric files, this allows almost anyone to use Type 1
PostScript fonts. PS2PK is distributed under the GNU License and has
been made to run under MS-DOS with DJGPP's free GNU C compiler. The PC
version requires a 386 or more powerful processor. Check with Archie
for a source near you.
Note: if TeX PK files are not directly usable for you, there seems to
be a fair possibility that LaserJet softfonts would be useful. If so,
check below for instructions on converting TeX PK files to LaserJet
softfonts.
Subject: 3.5.4. Converting TeX PK bitmaps into HP LaserJet softfonts (and vice-versa)
There is some possibility that someone will yell 'conflict of interest'
here, but I don't think so. I wrote the following utilities:
PKtoSFP: convert TeX PK files to LaserJet (bitmapped) softfonts
SFPtoPK: convert LaserJet (bitmapped) softfonts to TeX PK files
But they are completely free, so I don't gain anything by "advertising"
them here. These are MS-DOS platform solutions only. If you know of
other solutions, I would be happy to list them.
This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the
input file FAQ.texinfo.
Subject: 3.5.5. TrueType to HP LaserJet bitmap softfonts (HACK!)
If you have the tools, the following suggestion does work, but it isn't
easy and it hasn't been automated. To be honest, I haven't really
tested it.
If you are using Windows 3.1, get a LaserJet printer driver (you don't
need the printer, just the driver). Using the LaserJet driver, direct
output to a file and print a simple file containing all the letters you
want in the softfont in the font that you are converting. When the
print job has completed, the output file will contain, among other
things, a LaserJet softfont of the TrueType font you selected. If you
know the LaserJet format, you can grab it out of there.
I didn't say it was easy ;-)
This method will not work with ATM [ed: as of 7/92] because ATM does
not construct a softfont; it downloads the whole page as graphics.
Here is an overview of the LaserJet bitmap softfont format. It should
help you get started. If you have any questions, ask norm. If anyone
wants to write better instructions... ;-)
Many details are omitted from this description. They are thoroughly
discussed in the HP Technical Reference for each model of laser printer.
I recommend purchasing the Tech Ref. If you have additional questions
and do not plan to purchase the Tech Ref (or do not wish to wait for its
arrival), you can ask norm.
An HP LaserJet softfont can occur almost anywhere in the output stream
destined for the printer. In particular, it does _not_ have to be
wholly contiguous within the output file. In fact, fonts can be
"intermixed" at will. The following "pieces" make up a font:
A begin font descriptor command (followed by the descriptor) and a
series of begin character descriptor commands (followed by their
associated data). When a new character descriptor is encountered, it
is added to the current font (which may change between descriptors).
In the discussion that follows, the following notational conventions
are followed:
Key elements are surrounded by quotation marks. The quotation marks
are not part of the element. Spaces within the element are for clarity
only, they are not part of the element. All characters (except ESC and
#, described below, are literal and must be entered in the precise case
shown).
ESC means the escape character, ASCII character number 27 decimal.
# means any decimal number. The meaning of the number is described in
the commentary for that element.
* What is a font descriptor?
A font descriptor begins with a font descriptor command and is
followed immediately by the data for the descriptor. Font
descriptors define data global to the font. In general, more
recent printers are less strict about these parameters than older
printers.
* What is the font descriptor command?
"ESC ) s # W"
In this command, # is the number of bytes in the descriptor. The
first element of the descriptor indicates how many of these bytes
should be interpreted as the font descriptor (the remaining bytes
are commentary only-to the printer, at least). This area is
frequently used for copyright information, for example, although
some systems insert kerning data into this area.
* What is the font descriptor data?
The data is:
UI Font descriptor size
UB Descriptor format
UB Font type
UI Reserved (should be 0)
UI Baseline distance
UI Cell width
UI Cell height
UB Orientation
B Spacing
UI Symbol set
UI Pitch
UI Height
UI xHeight
SB Width Type
UB Style
SB Stroke Weight
UB Typeface LSB
UB Typeface MSB
UB Serif Style
SB Underline distance
UB Underline height
UI Text Height
UI Text Width
UB Pitch Extended
UB Height Extended
UI Cap Height
UI Reserved (0)
UI Reserved (0)
A16 Font name
?? Copyright, or any other information
UI = unsigned integer, SI = signed integer, UB = unsigned byte, SB
= signed byte, B = boolean, and A16 =sixteen bytes of ASCII.
After the font name, ?? bytes of extra data may be inserted. These
bytes pad the descriptor out to the length specified in the begin
font descriptor command.
Note: integers are always in big-endian order (MSB first).
* What is a character descriptor?
A character descriptor describes the character specific info and
the layout of the bitmap. Newer printers can accept compressed
character bitmaps.
* What is a character descriptor command?
"ESC * c # E"
The # is the length of the descriptor, in bytes.
* What is the character descriptor data?
UB Format
B Continuation
UB Descriptor size
UB Class
UB Orientation
SI Left offset
SI Top offset
UI Character width
UI Character height
SI Delta X
?? Character (bitmap) data.
Although older printers cannot accept characters that include
continuations, newer printers can. If the "continuation" field is
1, the character bitmap data begins immediately after that byte and
the remaining fields _are not_ present.
* Ok, now I understand the data, what do I look for in the output
stream?
ESC * c # D
defines the font number (remember the number).
ESC ) s # W
defines the font descriptor (as described above).
ESC * c # E
specifies the character code (the #, in this case).
The next character descriptor maps to this position in
the font. Characters do not have to appear in
any particular order.
ESC ( s # W
defines the character descriptor (as described above).
Remember, these can occur in any order. Experimentation with the
particular driver you are using may help you restrict the number of
different cases that you have to be prepared for.
Please report your experiences using this method to norm (both to
satisfy his own curiosity and to help improve the FAQ).
Subject: 3.6. MS-DOS Screen Fonts (EGA/VGA text-mode fonts)
Editors note: the following description was mercilessly stolen from
comp.archives on 02SEP92. It was originally Yossi Gil's
posting.
FNTCOL14.ZIP contains more than 200 text mode fonts for EGA/VGA
displays. It includes fonts in different sizes for Hebrew, Greek,
Cyrillic, math symbols and various type styles including smallcaps and
script.
It is available at borg.poly.edu:/pub/reader/dos/fntcol14.zip
Subject: 4. OS/2 Information
[ed: Except as otherwise noted, the entire OS/2 section of the
comp.fonts FAQ List is derived from the "Draft OS/2 Font FAQ" posted by
David J. Birnbaum.]
This section if the FAQ is Copyright (C) 1993 by David J. Birnbaum.
All Rights Reserved. Reproduced here by permission.
[ed: Since this section of the FAQ is wholly derived from David's
document, some sections contain information repeated elsewhere in the
comp.fonts FAQ.]
David Birnbaum's Introduction
=============================
4 June 1993
A couple of weeks ago I posted an inquiry to comp.fonts,
comp.os.os2.misc, and the OS2-L ListServ concerning some apparent
peculiarities in the way OS/2 handles font files. These "peculiarities"
actually reflect regular, systematic differences in OS/2, Windows, and
DOS font handling, which are not conveniently described in end-user
documentation. This posting is intended to spare others some of the
confusion I encountered as a result of this paradigm shift.
This is the first (draft) distribution of this document and corrections
and suggestions are welcome. I am grateful to Henry Churchyard, Marc L.
Cohen, Bur Davis and Kamal Mansour for helpful discussions; they are
not, of course, responsible for any misinterpretation I may have
inflicted on their comments.
Subject: 4.1. Preliminaries
Character: an informational unit consisting of a value (usually a byte)
and roughly corresponding to what we think of as letters, numbers,
punctuation, etc.
Glyph: a presentational unit corresponding roughly to what we think of
as letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.
Character vs glyph: Glyph and character are not necessarily the same;
the character <a> may be mapped to a Times Roman Lower Case <a> glyph
in one font and to a Helvetica Lower Case <a> glyph in another font.
Change of glyphs normally means a change in style of presentation,
while change in characters normally means a change in information.
There are gray areas and the definitions provided above are general,
approximate, and imprecise.
Character set: an inventory of characters with certain assigned values.
ASCII is a 7-bit character set that specifies which "character cell"
(byte value) corresponds to which informational unit.
Code Page: essentially synonymous with character set.
Font: A collection of glyphs. A specific font may be isomorphic with a
specific character set, containing only glyphs corresponding to
characters in that set, with these glyphs mapped to the same byte
values as the characters they are intended to represent. PostScript
fonts often contain additional (unmapped) characters. Most importantly,
PostScript fonts may sometimes be remapped by an operating environment,
which is what leads to the disorienting cross-environment mismatch that
spurred my original posting.
Fonts may be bitmapped or outline in format; a bitmapped format
corresponds to a particular size and weight for a particular device or
device resolution, while a single outline font is used to generate
multiple sizes as needed. Within an outline font system, different
weights (bold, semibold, italic, etc.) may be encoded as separate font
resources (separate outline files used to generate the glyphs) or may
all be generated from a single outline (slanting characters to make
"italics," fattening them for "bold," etc.).
Subject: 4.2. Fonts under DOS
I used a large assortment of fonts under DOS for intricate multilingual
work. My setup at that time consisted of a library of bitmapped fonts
that could be sent to my HP LaserJet II printer, as well as a set of
fixed-size, fixed-width screen fonts that were supported by my Hercules
Graphics Card Plus (not the same as Hercules Graphics; the "Plus"
included an ability to store 3072 screen glyphs and display any of
these together, while standard character-mode displays were normally
limited to 256 or 512 such entities).
Using XyWrite as a word processor, I would enter a "Mode" command to
change fonts and character sets simultaneously; this would make
different sets of screen glyphs available at the keyboard and would
insert a font-change command for my printer into the text stream. The
"Mode" and font-change commands were not displayed on the screen. The
result was not WYSIWYG, since I was limited to fixed-width screen
display and since I had far more printer glyphs available than the 3072
limit imposed by my video card; I used a brightness attribute to
indicate bold, I used the same screen font for different sizes of
printer fonts, etc. This worked and worked well, in that I could see
(for example) Russian, Greek, English, Polish, and other characters
simultaneously on the screen and I could print documents combining them.
Architecturally, what was going on was that the character sets (code
pages) and fonts were entirely isomorphic and were hard- coded. If I
put a particular Russian letter into cell 246 of my screen and printer
fonts, that character was always there, and any strategy that would let
me access this cell (remapped keyboards, numeric keypad) was guaranteed
always to find the same character.
Subject: 4.3. Windows
I recently began using PostScript fonts in Windows with AmiPro as my
word processor. These fonts came with printed cards indicating the
glyph mappings; I could look at the card and it would tell me that a
specific character lived in cell 246, and if I entered Alt-0246 at the
numeric keypad that glyph would appear on the screen. If I loaded the
font into Fontographer for Windows, these glyphs would be arrayed in
cells according to the map provided by Adobe with the fonts.
Fontographer also revealed that these fonts had other, "unmapped"
glyphs assigned to cells above 255.
Given what appeared to be a hard correspondence among what I saw in
Fontographer, what was printed in Adobe's maps, and what was displayed
when I entered something at the keyboard, I naively assumed that
PostScript fonts were operating much like my bitmapped fonts under DOS.
There were some obvious differences, the primary one being that glyphs
of different sizes were all drawn from the same font resource files
under PostScript, but it appeared as if a glyph lived in a certain cell.
Subject: 4.4. Differences between Windows and OS/2
This assumption was incorrect; PostScript fonts can be subdivided into
two types, one of which observes hard and invariant encodings similar
to those that apply to my bitmapped fonts, while the other represents a
completely different font mapping strategy. This difference became
apparent only when I attempted to share PostScript fonts between
Windows and OS/2 and got some unexpected results.
A PostScript font under Windows involves two files, a PFB (PostScript
Font Binary) file, which contains the PostScript instructions needed to
draw each glyph and some mapping information, and a PFM (Printer Font
Metrics) file, which encodes width and kerning information. A
PostScript font under OS/2 also uses the same PFB file, but instead of
the PFM file it uses an AFM (Adobe Font Metrics) file. The AFM and PFM
files contain much of the same basic information (although the AFM file
is somewhat more complete); the most important differences are in
format (AFM is plain text, PFM is binary) and use (OS/2 uses AFM,
Windows uses PFM).
Subject: 4.5. Installation under Windows and Win-OS/2
The OS/2 2.0 Font Palette tool (see below for changes to be introduced
with 2.1) by default installs fonts (both PFB and AFM files) into the
"\os2\dll" directory. Win-OS/2 by default installs PFB files into
"\psfonts" and PFM files into "\psfonts\pfm". These defaults can be
changed; since OS/2 and Win-OS/2 use the same PFB files, the user can
save disk space by allowing these to be shared (through installing into
the same directory, e.g., install OS/2 fonts into the "\psfonts"
directory instead of "\os2\dll".) Note that fonts must be intalled and
removed through the Font Palette; if you copy, move, or delete a font
file without using the Font Palette, the system configuration files are
not updated and all hell breaks loose.
Deleting fonts from Win-OS/2 causes the system to update the win.ini
file to remove references to the font, but does not delete any files
physically. Deleting fonts from the OS/2 Font Palette updates the
os2.ini configuration file and physically deletes the AFM and PFB files
from the disk. This means that if you are sharing PFB files between
OS/2 and Win-OS/2, you can delete a Win-OS/2 font without hurting
native OS/2 operations, since the PFB reamins installed where OS/2
thinks it is. But if you delete an OS/2 font using the Font Palette,
the PFB file is erased from the disk even though the win.ini file is
not updated, so that Win-OS/2 thinks it is still there.
Subject: 4.6. FontSpecific PostScript Encoding
Every PFB file contains an "encoding vector"; this is a plain text line
embedded near the head of the PFB file. Encoding vectors are of two
types: AdobeStandardEncoding and everything else. Adobe usually uses
the label "FontSpecific" for fonts that are not encoded according to
AdobeStandardEncoding, and I use it as a cover term here for any such
font.
If you look at the readable plain text information at the head of a
FontSpecific type font, it includes a range of text that begins:
/Encoding 256 array
followed by a bunch of lines, each of which includes a number (which
corresponds to a cell in the font layout) and the name of the glyph
that lives in that cell. The unreadable binary data below this array
specification lists the name of each glyph and the PostScript
instructions for how the glyph is to be drawn. There may be PostScript
code for drawing glyphs that are not included in the mapping array, but
only glyphs mentioned in the array specification are available to
applications.
FontSpecific type fonts are comparable to the bitmapped fonts I used
under DOS. Each character physically is assigned to a specific cell
within the font file and operating environments are not allowed to
remap these. The glyph in cell 246 will be the same in both Windows and
OS/2.
Subject: 4.7. AdobeStandardEncoding
AdobeStandardEncoding is a specific mapping of certain glyphs to
certain cells; in this respect it resembles FontSpecific encoding.
Because it is standardized, the array is not spelled out in the PFB
file; the line
/Encoding StandardEncoding def
tells Adobe Type Manager (ATM, either the Windows and Win-OS/2 version
or the native OS/2 version) that the encoding is "standard," and the
environments are expected to know what this standard is without having
the array spelled out in each font file.
Although AdobeStandardEncoding is a real mapping, there is an
importance difference between it and various FontSpecific mappings:
operating environments are expected to remap AdobeStandardEncoding
fonts according to their own requirements. That is, although
AdobeStandardEncoding does assign glyphs to cells, no operating
environment actually uses these assignments and any environment remaps
the glyphs before rendering them. Confusion arises because Windows and
OS/2 remap such fonts in different ways.
Subject: 4.8. AdobeStandardEncoding under Windows (and Win-OS/2)
An AdobeStandardEncoding font under Windows is remapped according to a
character map (code page) that MicroSoft calls Windows ANSI (can other
code pages be installed in Windows?). This determines which character
resides in which cell and the font is remapped so that glyphs and
characters will correspond. Since Fontographer for Windows is a Windows
application, it displays glyphs not in the cells in which they live
according to AdobeStandardEncoding, but in the cells to which they get
reassigned under the remapping to Windows ANSI. There is nothing
explicit in the PFB file that associates these characters with the
specific cells in which they appear under Windows.
Subject: 4.9. AdobeStandardEncoding under OS/2
OS/2 operates within a set of supported code pages; two system- wide
code pages are specified in the config.sys file and an application is
allowed to switch the active code page to any supported code page (not
just these two). DeScribe, for example, currently operates in code page
(CP) 850, which includes most letters needed for western European Latin
alphabet writing. CP 850 does not contain typographic quotes, en- and
em-dashes, and other useful characters. It does contain the IBM
"pseudographics," which are useful for drawing boxes and lines with
monospaced fonts.
When the user inputs a value (through the regular keyboard or the
numeric keypad), the application checks the active CP, looks up in an
internal table the name of the character that lives in that cell within
that CP, and translates it into a unique number that corresponds to one
of the 383 glyphs supported by OS/2 (the union of all supported code
pages). This number is passed to PM-ATM (the OS/2 ATM implementation),
which translate the glyph number into the glyph name that PostScript
fonts expect and searches the font for that name. The system never
looks at where a glyph is assigned under the AdobeStandardEncoding
array; rather, it scans the font looking for the character by name and
gives it an assignment derived from the active code page. This is the
remapping that OS/2 performs on AdobeStandardEncoding type fonts.
As a result, a situation arises where, for example, <o+diaeresis> is
mapped to cell 246 under Windows ANSI but to cell 148 under CP 850.
Using the identical PFB file, this glyph is accessed differently in the
two operating environments.
Subject: 4.10. Consequences for OS/2 users
If your font has a FontSpecific encoding, there are no unexpected
consequences; the same glyphs will show up at the same locations in
both Windows (Win-OS/2) and native OS/2. Regardless of what the active
code page is, if the font has a FontSpecific encoding OS/2 goes by cell
value; a specific glyph is hard-coded to a specific cell and OS/2 will
give you whatever it finds there, even if what it finds disagrees with
what the active code page would normally predict. In other words,
FontSpecific encoding means "ignore the mapping of the active code page
and rely on the mapping hard-coded into the font instead."
If your font has an AdobeStandardEncoding encoding, the following
details obtain:
1) The same PFB file may have glyphs that are accessible in one
environment but not another. For example, if DeScribe thinks it is
operating in CP 850, there is no access to typographic quotes, even if
those do occur in the PFB file and even if Windows can find them in the
same exact font file. DeScribe could switch code pages, but if the
application isn't set up to do so (and DeScribe currently isn't), those
characters are absolutely inaccessible to the user.
2) If the active code page includes a character that isn't present in
the font, OS/2 has to improvise. For example, AdobeStandardEncoding
fonts do not normally include the IBM pseudographics, yet the user who
inputs the character value for one of these sends the system off to
look for it. As described above, OS/2 first checks the active font for
the glyph name that corresponds to that character and, if it finds it,
displays it. If the glyph isn't found, OS/2 looks to the system Symbol
font. This is not reported back to the user in DeScribe; if I have
Adobe Minion active (AdobeStandardEncoding, no information anywhere in
the font files for pseudographics) and input a pseudographic character,
DeScribe tells me it is still using Adobe Minion, even though it has
fetched the character it displays and prints from the Symbol font, a
different font resource file.
Subject: 4.11. Advice to the user
OS/2's code page orientation provides some advantages, in that it
separates the character set (code page) mapping from the encoded font
mapping. The main inconvenience isn't a loss of function, but a
disorientation as users become accustomed to the new paradigm.
If you need a glyph that you know is in your PFB file but that isn't in
the active code page (and if you can't change code pages within your
application), you can't get at it in OS/2 without tampering with the
font files. To tamper, you can use font manipulation tools to
redesignate the PFB file as FontSpecific ("Symbol" character set to
Fontographer). If you then map the glyphs you need into one of the
lower 256 cells (with some limitations), they will be accessible in all
environments. The Fontographer manual does not explain what the
"Symbol" character encoding label really does, it just tells you not to
use it except for real symbol fonts. In fact you should use it for any
font that will not correspond in inventory to the code page supported
by your application, which means any non-Latin fonts.
You do not have to recode all your fonts, and you wouldn't normally
want to do so, since Fontographer hinting is not nearly as good as
Adobe's own hand-tuning and regenerating a font regenerates the hints.
All you have to do is make sure you have one FontSpecific type font
installed that includes your typographic quotes, etc. for each typeface
you need. Within DeScribe, you can then write a macro that will let you
switch fonts, fetch a character, and switch back, thereby allowing you
to augment any group of fonts with a single, shared set of typographic
quotes (or whatever) that you put in a single FontSpecific font.
Alternatively, OS/2 also supports CP 1004, which does contain
typographic quotes and other characters used for high-quality
typography, but the user may not be able to convince an application to
invoke this code page if it was not designed to do so.
You can have any number of FontSpecific fonts installed, which means
that there is a mechanism for dealing with unsupported character sets
(code pages).
You can also tinker with the font files to try to trick the operating
system. For example, using Fontographer or other utilities, you can
change the name assigned to a glyph description within the PFB file. If
you want to use AdobeStandardEncoding and you want to see a specific
glyph at a specific cell when DeScribe thinks it's using CP 850, you
have to make sure that the name assigned to the description of that
glyph is what DeScribe expects to find. OS/2 doesn't care whether, say,
<o+diaeresis> really looks like <o> with two dots over it, as long as
it bears the right name.
This second approach is obviously far more complex and provides much
more opportunity for error. Its advantage is that OS/2 does not support
case conversion and sorting (other than in machine order) for
unsupported code pages, since these operations depend on character
names. Keeping supported names from supported code pages while changing
the artwork is one way to maintain order and case correspondences while
increasing the range of glyphs actually supported. I have not
experimented with this approach, since the use I would get out of the
adding functionality (over the FontSpecific encoding approach) is not
worth the amount of effort required.
Subject: 4.12. OS/2 2.1 and beyond
OS/2 2.1 will change some aspects of font handling. First, OS/2 2.0
GA+SP has a bug that can cause OS/2 to crash when an AFM file with more
than 512 kern pairs is read. This is fixed in 2.1. (This bug is
separate from a design limitation in MicroSoft Windows that causes
large kern tables to be read incorrectly. This problem is still under
investigation; watch this space for a report.)
Fonts in 2.1 will be installed by default into the "\psfonts" directory,
so that they will normally be shared with Win-OS/2 fonts. (The user will
still be able to specify a directory; all that will change is the
default). The user will also be able to instruct the Font Palette not to
delete font files when fonts are uninstalled, so as to avoid clobbering
a Win-OS/2 font by removing it from native OS/2 use through the Font
Palette (although the default will still be to delete the physical font
files).
OS/2 will stop using AFM files and will replace these with OFM files, a
binary metrics file (different from PFM) that OS/2 will compile from
the AFM file during font installation. This will speed font loading,
since the system will not have to parse a plain text metrics file.
Additionally, the OS/2 PostScript printer driver used to install its
own, large font files, but will now use the OFM and PFB files, thereby
saving 50k-200k of disk space per installed font outline.
IBM's long-term goal is to replace the 383-entity inventory of
supported glyphs with Unicode. This is very much a long-term goal and
there is not even a hint of when it might become available. It has its
own problems, stemming from the fact that Unicode is essentially a
character standard and glyph and character inventories may differ is
assorted ways, but it will be a significant step in the proverbial
right direction.
Subject: 5. Unix Information
See also the 'utilities' section for more information. Most of the
utilities described in that section run under Unix.
The bulk of this section was contributed by Johannes Schmidt-Fischer in
Jun 1993.
Unix Font Formats
=================
Most printers attached to Unix hosts are PostScript printers. As a
consequence, most Unix users are also using PostScript fonts. If you
are not using a PostScript printer, you need a front-end, like
GhostScript, to convert the PostScript into a format compatible with
your printer.
There is no Unix specific Postscript Type 1 format. The most often used
(and most easily usable) format is Adobe's PFA format. The other often
used format is PFB format. The PFB format is more compact (by about
50%), but in order to use it you need make sure that your font
downloading tools are prepared to convert PFB to PFA on fly.
Postscript Type 3 fonts are no problem, they can be handled the same
way as Type 1 fonts.
Most Unix tools expect to get character metric information from AFM
files. You may have difficulty using fonts collected off of the 'Net
if they do not include AFM files
Font Installation
=================
Application
-----------
It depends. (Well, what did you expect me to say? ;-)
Printer using an ExitServer
---------------------------
Convert PFB fonts into PFA format if necessary and then send them to
printer inside a wrapper like so:
%!PS-Adobe-2.0 ExitServer Job
serverdict begin 0 exitserver % 0: substitute your password
... % font in PFA-format
%%EOF
Or include them directly in your print job:
%!PS-Adobe-2.0
... % font in PFA-format
... % other initialisation
%%Page: 1 i % beginning of your job...
... % ...
%%EOF
Subject: 6. Sun Information
Someone mailed a file of Sun-related font tips. Unfortunately, I cannot
find the file. If you have any suggestion for this section (or if you
are the person that mailed me the other list), please forward your
suggestions to norm.
[ Note: much of this information is obsolete, based on the
SunOS4/Solaris2.1 server. The Solaris 2.3 and later servers are based
on the standard X11R5 server but with Display PostScript added, so you
can do Type 1 in the "normal" way (fontdir+mkpsres) ]
Subject: 6.1. Fonts Under Open Windows
The following information regarding fonts under Open Windows was donated
by Liam R.E. Quin from the Open Windows FAQ.
Subject: 6.1.1. Does OpenWindows support Type 1 PostScript fonts?
Type 1 fonts are supported starting with the NeWSprint 2.0 and Solaris
2.0 (OpenWindows 3.0.1) releases.
There are also 57 F3 format fonts supplied with OpenWindows which are
fully hinted. Documentation on the F3 font format and the F3 font
interpreter, TypeScaler, is available from Sun.
Subject: 6.1.2. Improving font rendering time
Although the Sun type renderer (TypeScaler) is pretty fast, it's not as
fast as loading a bitmap. You can pre-generate bitmap fonts for sizes
that you use a lot, and you can also alter and access the font cache
parameters. If you have a lot of memory you might want to increase
the font cache size.
$ psh -i
Welcome to X11/NeWS Version3 <--- psh will say this at you
currentfontmem = % type this line ...
300 % ... my server was using 300 Kbytes
1024 setfontmem
% Just to check:
currentfontmem =
1024
See pp. 328ff of the NeWS 3.0 Programmer's Guide. You need to say psh
-i so that the PostScript packages are loaded - see the psh man page.
You could also add the following line to your $HOME/.openwin-init file
to perform this task every time you start OpenWindows:
echo 1024 setfontmem | psh -i > /dev/null 1>&2
Subject: 6.1.3. Making bitmap fonts for faster startup
Sun supports the F3 scalable outline format. These descriptions are
stored in .f3b files. The makeafb program is used to create a bitmap
font at a particular size which is stored in a .afb file, which is an
Adobe ASCII format for font bitmaps. X11/NeWS really prefers a binary
format though for speed and other reasons, so convertfont is used to
"compile" the font into a font binary or .fb file.
Once this is done, X11/NeWS needs to understand the relationship between
the .f3b file and all the bitmaps which are based on it. Thus, the
bldfamily program makes these correlations and stores the data in the
font family or .ff file.
bldfamily also builds a global list of all fonts stored in the working
directory, writing the results out to the file Families.list. If one
wishes to create font aliases, these can be added to the Synonyms.list
file by hand and bldfamily will then add them to Families.list for you.
X11/NeWS uses Families.list to construct the font list it advertises
to applications.
To go from F3 to BDF, use makeafb to generate a bitmap font in .afb
format. Then use one of convertfont's many options to change to this
to .bdf format and from there it should be clear.
$ mkdir $HOME/myfonts
$ cd $HOME/myfonts
$ makeafb -20 -M $OPENWINHOME/lib/fonts/Bembo.f3b
Creating Bembo20.afb
$ convertfont -b Bembo20.afb
Bembo20.afb->./Bembo20.fb
Chars parameter greater than number of characters supplied.
$ ls
Bembo20.afb Bembo20.fb Synonyms.list
$ bldfamily
* Bembo ./Bembo.ff (Encoding: latin)
cat: ./Compat.list: No such file or directory
$ xset +fp `pwd`
$ xset fp rehash
If you want the server to see your new font directory every time, add
this directory to your FONTPATH environment variable in one of your
start-up files, e.g. .login or .profile.
Subject: 6.1.4. Converting between font formats (convertfont, etc.)
You can also use F3 fonts with an X11 server, by converting them to a
bitmap (X11 bdf format) first. Your license restricts use of these
fonts on another machine, and unless you have NeWSPrint you shouldn't
use them for printing. Having said all that... you can use makeafb
and convertfont to generate bdf files that you can compile with
bdftosnf or bdftopcf.
Use mftobdf (from the SeeTeX distribution) to convert TeX PK fonts to
X11 BDF format, which you can then use with either X11 or OpenWindows.
Subject: 6.1.5. Xview/OLIT fonts at 100 dpi
There aren't any. More precisely, the various text fonts, such as
Lucida Typewriter Sans, are available at 100 dpi, and in fact are
scalable under OpenWindows. The glyph fonts used to be bitmaps, which
don't scale very well, but starting with OpenWindows 3.2, the OpenLook
UI glyph fonts are provided in scalable format as well.
Subject: 6.2. Where can I order F3 fonts for NeWSprint and OpenWindows?
600 F3 fonts are available for unlocking from Printer's Palette, a CD
available with NeWSprint 2.0.
In addition, F3 fonts are available from the following sources:
Linotype AG Linotype Company
Mergenthaler Allee 55-75 425 Oser Avenue
6236 Eschborn Germany Hauppague, NY 11788
49/(61 96) 4031 (800) 336-0045
FAX 011/49/6196-982185 FAX 516-434-2055
attn: F3 Font Production attn: F3 Font Production
Monotype Plc. Monotype Typography
Salfords Redhill RH1 5JP 53 W. Jackson Boulevard Suite 504
England Chicago, IL 60604
44/(737) 765959 (800) 666-6893
FAX 011/44/737-769243 FAX (312) 939-0378
attn: F3 Font Production attn: F3 Font Production
U R W U R W
Harksheider Strasse 102 One Tara Boulevard Suite 210
D2000 Hamburg Germany Nashua, NH 03062
49/(40) 606050 (603) 882-7445
49/(40) 60605148 (603) 882-7210
attn: F3 Font Production attn: F3 Font Production
Bigelow & Holmes Autologic
P. O. Box 1299 1050 Rancho Conejo Boulevard
Menlo Park, CA 94026 Newbury Park, CA 91320
415/326-8973 (800)235-1843, or (805)498-9611 in CA
FAX (415) 326-8065 FAX (805) 499-1167
attn: F3 Font Production attn: F3 Font Production
Subject: 7. NeXT Information
If you have any suggestions for this section, please forward your
suggestions to norm.
Subject: 7.1. Tell me about NeXTstep fonts
NeXTstep fonts are Adobe Type 1 fonts stored in ASCII (PFA) format.
There are several rules about how fonts must be installed before they
work.
I'd like to thank Henry for rewriting this section.
Basic Format
============
NeXTstep fonts live in one of three folders:
/NextLibrary/Fonts
Contains system fonts. In general, you will not install any
new fonts here.
/LocalLibrary/Fonts
Contains fonts which are accessible to every user on a system
or a network.
~/Library/Fonts
(where ~ is your home folder) means fonts which are private to
a specific user.
A NeXTstep font is actually a folder containing various components of
the font. Components are:
* the outline font file - REQUIRED
* the font metrics (AFM) file - REQUIRED
* one or more screen font (bitmap) files - OPTIONAL
Font Folder and Font Filename Requirements
==========================================
The name of the folder containing a font and the name of the font file
itself must follow strict rules - the names can NOT be any old name you
like. For a font to work correctly, the base folder and font filename
MUST BE THE SAME as the name of the outline font. This is usually the
same as the value of the FontName field in the AFM file or the value of
the /FontName key in the actual font itself. Suppose you have a font
called Headhunter. The Headhunter font must live within a folder called
Headhunter.font
within one of the three folders mentioned above. Within the
Headhunter.font folder, you must have the two files
Headhunter ( the outline file )
Headhunter.afm ( the AFM file )
If you have a bitmap file for Headhunter, it must live in a file
Headhunter.bepf ( the bitmap file )
Variations such as Bold, Italic, etc., should be their own font files
in their own folder. So if you have a font called Headhunter-Bold, you
need to create a folder called
Headhunter-Bold.font
within one of the three folders mentioned above. Within the
Headhunter.font folder, you must have the two files
Headhunter-Bold ( the outline file )
Headhunter-Bold.afm ( the AFM file )
If you have a bitmap file for Headhunter, it must live in a file
Headhunter-Bold.bepf ( the bitmap file )
For NeXTstep 1.0 ONLY, you also need to take the following steps:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
* If they do not already exist, create the following folders:
* ~/Library/Fonts/outline
* ~/Library/Fonts/afm
* ~/Library/Fonts/bitmap
* In each of these folders, create a symbolic link to the
corresponding component file in each font.
For NeXTstep 2.0 and up:
------------------------
The font description is taken from the font folder itself, so you don't
need to do this. It may be beneficial to simply create these folders
and put nothing in them, but I'm not sure it matters.
Certain "old" applications which haven't upgraded to the NeXTstep 2.0
scheme of fonts may depend on these folders being present.
The last step is to get the system to recognize the new font(s). You
may have noticed the existence of three files in the Fonts folder:
.fontdirectory, .fontlist, and .afmcache. These are files the system
looks at to see which fonts exist.
The easiest way to update them is to simply start up an application and
open the font panel. It should recognize that the update time stamp on
the Fonts folder has changed, and update the files accordingly. It is
probably a good idea to simply delete the three above files beforehand.
You should get a message window saying "incorporating information on
new fonts. Please wait (this may take xx seconds)". Your new fonts
should be available now.
If this does not work, you can update them manually. Open up a Terminal
shell and go to your Fonts folder. At the prompt, type two commands:
buildafmdir
cacheAFMData afm (the parameter is the <afm dir>)
The new fonts will not work if the cacheAFMData command is not run, and
since it is an undocumented command, it is a common culprit.
[ed: the cacheAFMData step may not be required in 3.0 OS]
I believe this is true. Looks like the PasteBoard Services runs
cacheAFMData in 3.0.
You should now be able to see and preview your fonts in the font panel.
If you are still having problems with your font, such as the <<
Unusable font >> message, consult NeXTAnswers. There are some useful
suggestions for debugging faulty fonts there. It is also always
helpful to look at existing fonts to see how they are installed.
One note on the NeXTAnswers. Supposedly there are only a few discrete
values which are allowed to appear in the weight field of the font:
"Ultra Light", "Thin", "Light", "Extra Light", "Book", "Regular",
"Plain", "Roman", "Medium", "Demi", "Demi-Bold", "Semi-Bold", "Bold",
"Extra Bold", "Heavy", "Heavyface", "Black", "Ultra", "UltraBlack",
"Fat", "ExtraBlack", and "Obese". However, I have a few fonts where
this is not the case ("standard" is a common entry) and have had no
problems as of yet. But it would probably be wiser to be on the safe
side.
See below for a definitive list.
This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the
input file FAQ.texinfo.
Subject: 7.2. Tell me more about NeXTstep fonts
Outline files should be in PFA or hexadecimal ASCII format. The font
name should be taken either from the outline (font) file or the AFM
file. In both case the name is given after the word "FontName" at the
beginning of the file)
As a matter of fact, fonts don't strictly HAVE to be in all hexadecimal
ASCII format. The eexec portion of the font can be in binary if you
wish, and in fact some Mac->NeXTstep or PFB->NeXTstep font converters
simply strip off the Mac/PFB storage format headers and leave the
binary sections as binary.
However, if you wish to send such a font across a serial channel to a
PostScript printer, you will need some way to unpack the binary eexec
portion to seven-bit ASCII before sending the font.
Converted Fonts After Conversion
--------------------------------
After conversion they are just like any other freeware or shareware
font that you can get in NeXTstep-format from the archives. That's just
outline and AFM files but no bitmapped screen fonts. So small point
size means poor resolution on screen but they most of should print OK
if they are any good ( = usually made with Fontographer).
About Conversion Utilities
--------------------------
NeXTstep utilities
..................
* unfont
You can find a package, named something like
pcATMfont2NeXT.tar.Z, from NeXT archives (cs.orst.edu)
that converts PC fonts to NeXT format (PFB -> PFA).
The most useful tool for me has been "unfont" which
converts the .pfb (binary outline) font to ASCII outline
font.
I usually use it like this
$ unfont new_font.pfb >NewFont
If the conversion was successful all I have to after that is
maybe to rename the font correctly and move the outline file
in the correct .font folder.
* Opener.app
Opener seems to be a very useful application since it can
open several kinds file packages on NeXTstep that are
common on other platforms. E.g. ".sit", ".hqx", ".zoo",
".zip", ".z", etc.
I haven't used it a lot but looks very promising.
* T1utils-1.1
This is collection of command-line programs that manipulate
PS Type 1 fonts and one of them can also do the PFB->PFA
conversion (t1ascii?).
Basic unarchiving of Mac and PC files.
On your Unix machine:
xbin
Converts .hqx to:
.data
Rename and transfer to PC (or use opener.app on NeXT?)
.info
Discard
.rsrc
Discard
unzip
Converts .zip to:
.inf
Discard
.wfn
Discard
.pfm
Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file)
everything else
Transfer to NeXT On a PC:
xbin
Converts .hqx to:
.data
Rename and transfer to PC (or use opener.app on NeXT?)
.info
Discard
.rsrc
Discard
extract -f ...
Converts .cpt to:
file with no extension
This is usually the outline font. Refont and transfer to
NeXT.
.afm
Transfer to NeXT.
.pfm
Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file)
.bma
Discard if you have an AFM file.
unsit30 -eb ...
Converts .sit to:
file with no extension
This is usually the outline font. Refont and transfer to
NeXT.
.afm
Transfer to NeXT.
.pfm
Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file)
.bma
Discard if you have an AFM file.
refont
Converts outline formats from Mac to NeXT format (PFA).
pkunzip
Converts .zip to:
.inf
Discard
.wfn
Discard
.pfm
Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file)
everything else
Transfer to NeXT On a NeXT
Opener.app
Converts archive formats (.sit, .hqx, .zip) to NeXT format.
unfont
Converts PFB files to NeXT format.
afm
Converts AFM files to NeXT format AFM files (CR/LF hackery)
Installation
------------
There are scripts (installfont) available that can handle the
installation process but here is how you do it manually.
* .font
After all that you have to create the .font folder, move the
outline and .afm files there and start fighting with the strangely
formatted .afm file. The most common problems are font name
mismatch between outline and AFM files (family name is incorrect
or too long, etc) and missing fields (ex. no ItalicAngle entry) in
the AFM file.
* buildafmdir AND cacheAFMData
buildafmdir puts its complains to Console but cacheAFMData put
them on stdout or stderr (ie. Terminal Window).
PARSE ERRORS ----------- "Parse error 10000011 ..." comes from
mismatch between of CharMetrics declared in the .afm and actually
found. I haven't been able to figure out the other strange parse
errors.
buildafmdir in the 3.0 release has the limitation of not being
able to install more that 255 fonts in any one font folder. This
is supposed to be fixed in 3.1.
* The Dreaded <<Unusable Font>> Message
<<Unusable Font>> appears in the font panel when you have run
buildafmdir and it finds things it thinks are wrong with the AFM
file. Errors can also be generated by parsing routines inside the
PasteBoard Services.
<<Unusable Font>> almost NEVER has anything to do with the font
itself, since buildafmdir doesn't actually look inside the font.
Errors in the font due to faulty conversion will likely show up at
the time the PostScript server actually attempts to define the
font or render characters from the font.
The only error I have ever seen from a converted font was the
results of a naive Macintosh to PFA converter, which didn't
understand that the POST resources in a Macintosh format Type 1
font do not have to be in order, nor do the POST resources all
have to be contiguous - they can be interspersed with other
resources. The results were that a comment resource ended up in
the middle of the eexec section of the font and the PostScript
interpreter threw out lots of errors.
<<Unusable Font>> almost ALWAYS occurs because there is something
wrong with the AFM file you installed. Here is a partial list of
problems that can occur with AFM files:
* Carriage-return characters (^M) at ends of lines.
This happens when you get incomplete translations from PC
files, which use carriage-return-line-feed combinations at
ends of lines.
Solution: edit away the carriage returns. Make sure the
lines are terminated only by line-feed characters.
* Spaces or tabs at ends of lines.
Fixed in NeXTstep 3.1.
* Missing fields.
NeXTstep DEMANDS that certain fields be present in the AFM
file. Required fields are: FontName, FullName, FamilyName,
Weight, EncodingScheme, and ItalicAngle. If any of these
fields are missing, you will get the <<Unusable Font>>
message.
Solution: fill in the required fields.
* Incorrect Weight field.
buildafmdir accepts only a certain set of values for the
Weight field. Acceptable values are: "Ultra Light", "Thin",
"Light", "Extra Light", "Book", "Regular", "Plain", "Roman",
"Medium", "Demi", "Demi-Bold", "Semi-Bold", "Bold", "Extra
Bold", "Heavy", "Heavyface", "Black", "Ultra", "UltraBlack",
"Fat", "ExtraBlack", and "Obese".
* Character information count mismatches.
AFM files contain several sets of information which are
introduced by a "Startxxxxx nnn" line where the xxxxx is the
name of the section (such as StartCharMetrics) and nnn is the
purported number of lines of information of this type to
follow. Sad to say, many many AFM files supplied by vendors
and others are such that the actual number of lines of data
do not match the number stated on the Startxxxxx line. When
this error occurs in the AFM file, buildafmdir emits a Parse
Error message to the console and the font will be marked
unusable. The parse error messages from buildafmdir is of
the form:
Parse error nnnnnnnn xx yy
where nnnnnnnn is the error number, xx is the number of lines
of information claimed to exist, and yy is the number of
lines actually read. The nnnnnnnn are are:
10000011 mismatch in the StartCharMetrics section
10000012 mismatch in the StartTrackKern section
10000013 mismatch in the StartKernPairs section
10000014 mismatch in the StartComposites section
10000015 mismatch in a composite character specification
I have converted many fonts from the Berkeley Macintosh User
Group CD ROM and fully half of the supplied AFM files are
incorrect.
* Other AFM file errors.
Parse error numbers 10000001 through 10000010 means some kinds of
syntax errors in the AFM data file. Any of these errors mean that
the AFM file is truly hosed.
Subject: 7.3. Porting fonts to the NeXT
Porting PC/Unix Type 1 Fonts
============================
You must have the .pfb and .afm files
A PC Adobe font is stored in binary format, so the first step is to
convert it to ascii.
There are a couple of utilities out there which can do this. I think
t1utils can do it, and there is a nice utility called pcATMfont2Next
which has a couple of tools to do this (unfont and pfb2ps). Look for
the file pcATMfont2Next.tar.Z; it is available on many ftp sites.
Also, since NeXTstep run on Unix, there is the customary problem of
converting the CRs (carriage returns) that PCs use to the LFs
(Linefeeds) that Unix uses. The easiest way to do this is to use tr to
delete the octal for the CR character from both the .afm and outline
file. The command to do this is:
tr -d '\015' < inputfile > outputfile
The unfont program will do this automatically when it converts the .pfb
file, but pfb2ps does not. I'm not sure if t1utils' utility does or not.
Once you have the outline file, you can go ahead and install it by the
process outlined above.
Otto J. Makela ([email protected]) posted a terrific cshell script to
comp.fonts, which automates just about everything for you. It converts
the .pfb to ASCII format, extracts the name from the FontName field,
creates the font folder, copies in the component files with the correct
name, and runs buildafmdir and cacheAFMData when done. A newer version
of this script is now available from the standard NeXT step archives
(Sonata, etc.).
Porting Mac Type 1 Fonts
========================
A variety of programs and scripts exist to convert Macintosh format
Type 1 fonts to UNIX format. Their ability to do a complete job
varies. Common traps which naive font converters fall into are:
* not dealing with Macintosh POST which are out of order.
* not dealing with Macintosh POST which are interspersed with other
resources.
* not dealing at all with POST Type 4 resources where the font
program starts in resource fork of the file but the remainder of
the data is in the data fork.
Most naive converters we've looked at have this problem. This
means that most Type 3 fonts won't convert at all.
* not dealing with MacBinary headers.
Subject: 7.4. Font availability
[ The archive site at sonata.purdue.edu seems to have disappeared. ]
Subject: 7.5. Why can I only install 256 fonts on my NeXT?
Included to NS3.0 there's a new 'buildafm'-routine (for non-NeXTers:
'buildafm' is a shell script which announces a new font to the
computer) at /usr/bin/buildafmdir. The new one only allows to install
about 256 fonts. Running the new 'buildafmdir' to install a new font
surpresses every font above this number. Workaround: Re-install the
'old buildafmdir' from NS2.1 at /usr/bin/buildafmdir and everything
should be fine!
(thanks to: Rob Parkhill and d'Art Computers/Germany d'art)
[ed: and my thanks to Borris Balzer for sending this to me]
Subject: 8. Amiga Information
Daniel Amor contributes the following sections:
Font Concepts
=============
The Amiga is able to use two different concepts of fonts. First of all
there are the bitmap fonts. These fonts are created by drawing a letter
pixel for pixel onto the screen. The advantage is that they look good
at small sizes, but are not very good for printout. Also they don't
look very good when you change their size. Therefore you have to
recreate the font for each size. Second there are the vector fonts.
They are created by curves which are stored as mathematical formula.
This has the advantage that changing the sizes does not effect the
output. But this only applies for larger sizes and print-outs. Vector
fonts also use less memory.
Amiga Font Formats
==================
1. Agfa IntelliFont (suffix: .type or .lib) is the native font format
on the Amiga. You can use it in any application and it can be
converted to the standard bitmap format using the system
utilities `IntelliFont' (OS 3.x) or `Fountain' (OS 2.x).
2. Postscript Type 1 fonts can be used within many applications, it
can be used in every word processor and DTP program. There are
two versions of the Type 1 format: Binary and ASCII (suffix:
.pfb & .pfa). The Amiga software uses the Binary format, but you
can easily convert them with TypeSmith or some PD software
products (z.B. PFB2PFA) . In Addition to the files mentioned
above, there are the metrics files with the suffixes .afm or
.pfm. They contain information about the size (width) of the
letters and most programs expect this file to be in the same
directory as the font file.
3. Postscript Type 3 fonts (suffix: .ps or nothing) are not often
used on the Amiga, but some applications do support this font
format (e.g. PageStream). There are also some download
utilities from PD sources available.
4. Truetype fonts (suffix: .ttf) are not very common on the Amiga,
there is one word processor supporting this format (Wordworth
3.0). Due to the lower quality of the format, Amiga users tend
to use higher quality for their DTP, DTV and word processing...
There are also two formats: Mac & Windows available. The Amiga
software is able to use the Windows format.
5. DMF fonts is the privat format of PageStream (suffix: .dmf), since
PageStream is the market leader in DTP programs on the Amiga, so
this format is very common!
6. Bitmap fonts (suffix: .font and numbers in a directory by the name
of the font, sometimes .otag when converted from IntelliFont)
were used in the OS 1.x, but have been replaced by the superior
IntelliFont Format in OS 2.0. Under 2.0 or higher you still are
able to use the bitmap fonts for small sizes, but for printouts
you should use the IntelliFont format or any other vector font
format mentioned above.
7. Colour Bitmap fonts (same suffixes as Bitmap Fonts, but the
numbers have in addition a C, e.g. 35C) are also very common on
the Amiga, they are mainly used for DTV applications, like the
Video Toaster and Scala.
Frequently Requested Amiga Fonts
================================
1. First place to look for fonts is the AMINET archive. This is the
biggest archive of Amiga software and there you will find also
quite a lot of fonts. The Aminet consists of many mirrors
around the world. Here are some of them:
1. ftp.wustl.edu,
2. ftp.luth.se,
3. ftp.eunet.ch,
4. ftp.uni-paderborn.de,
5. ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk.
Just log in as ftp and go to the directory
/pub/aminet/text/font.
2. Another good ftp server to look is the CICA-server:
1. ftp.cica.indiana.edu
To this server are also some mirrors around the world available.
3. Also a good place to look for is the following WWW server:
1. http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/ifa
4. Another good place is the Fresh Fonts I CD-ROM, there you will
almost certainly find some nice fonts. The CD is available from
1. Fred Fish / Amiga Library Services ([email protected])
2. Stefan Ossowski / Schatztruhe GmbH
The CD is for free when buying another CD from that company.
You can also access the HTML pages on the CD under the following
address:
1. http://macke.gris.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de:4711/~damor/
Commercial Font Sources
=======================
Commercial fonts can be obtained from a number of different companies,
including the large font houses: Adobe, Font Haus, Font Company,
Bitstream, and Monotype. At these companies, fonts cost about $40 for a
single face, and must be purchased in packages. Adobe, Bitstream, and
Monotype also sell pre-designated type collections for slightly lower
prices.
There are also a lot of PD reseller who have a vast quantity of fonts,
check out your local Amiga magazin for more information.
Please consult the vendor list for a more complete list of vendors.
Non-Latin fonts on the Amiga
============================
Due to the really bad information policy by C= there was actually no
information about non-latin fonts. But still it is possible to use them,
without difficulty. You just have to get yourself some additional
files. First of all you need the non-latin font files. There is a
large selection of them on the Fresh Fonts CD-ROM mentioned above. In
order to use the non-latin font files, you have to get yourself the
appropriate keymap file, this will remap the keys on the keyboard to
the appropriate letters of the foreign alphabet, e.g. in order to use
a Russian font, you should set the russian keymap file in the
preferences (via PREFS/INPUT).
Not only that you can write with a non-latin alphabet, you can also
localize your workbench. How about a Greek workbench or a Hebrew
workbench? Have a look into the AMINET archive (mentioned above) for
these files!
In addition to this you can easily use Hebrew & Arabic in any word
processor incl. writing from right-to-left! This can be easily done
by setting the kerning value to negative values (like this the cursor
moves left and not right) and moving the characters into the negativ
part! You can get fonts from me with this feature!
Amiga Font Installation
=======================
The installation of Postscript, DMF and Truetype fonts is described by
the application that use them. Please refer to the manuals of the
software packages.
The installation of IntelliFonts is very easy. Just start `IntelliFont'
(OS 3.x) or `Fountain' (OS 2.x) and follow the guidelines from within
the program.
In order to install bitmap fonts, either copy them to the logical device
FONTS: or assign the directory with your bitmap fonts:
ASSIGN Fonts: <your_directory> ADD
Right after this you can start your application and use them. When using
non-latin fonts, don't forget to set the appropriate keymap file!
Amiga Font Utilities
====================
1. IntelliFont
IntelliFont is the system program by OS 3.x which lets you install
Agfa IntelliFonts and converts them to bitmap fonts. The program
is located in the drawer `SYS:System/'. For more information
read your Workbench 3.x manual.
2. Fountain
Is the preceding program to IntelliFont and comes with the now
obsolete OS 2.x. Please read the section about Fountain in your
Workbench 2.x manual.
3. PFB2PFA
This neat little utility lets you convert Postscript Binary files
to Postscript ASCII files. This is needed in order to use DOS &
Amiga Adobe Type 1 fonts on the Mac!
4. CacheFont
This great program caches the fontlist for you, in order to save a
huge amount of time. The program looks for all fonts available
on the system and creates a special cache-file on disk.
5. TypeSmith
This is the best font converter on the Amiga, besides this
function it is also a full blown font editor (see below) :-).
The program is able to convert between:
1. Truetype
2. DMF
3. Adobe (Type 1 & 3)
4. IntelliFont
5. Bitmap (Amiga, Adobe, DMF)
Making Outline Fonts
====================
This is very, very difficult. Many people imagine that there are
programs that will simply convert pictures into fonts for them. This is
not the case; most fonts are painstakingly created by drawing curves
that closely approximate the letterforms. In addition, special rules
(which improve hinting, etc.) mandate that these curves be drawn in
specific ways. Even designing, or merely digitizing, a simple font can
take hundreds of hours.
The easiest way of learning how to create fonts, is to have a look at
existing fonts and try to change some letters.
Given that, there are two major programs used for font design on the
Amiga, TypeSmith 2.5 ($150) and FontDesigner ($100). These programs
will allow you to import scanned images, and then trace them with
drawing tools. The programs will then generate Adobe type 1, 3,
TrueType, AGFA Intellifont, DMF and Bitmap fonts for either the
Amiga, the Macintosh or the IBM PC. They will also generate automatic
hinting. They also open previously constructed outline fonts,
allowing them to be modified, or converted into another format.
As far as I know, there are no shareware programs that allows you to
generate outline fonts.
There are also two programs for creating bitmap fonts. Personal Fonts
Maker and Calligrapher. The second one has not been updated for several
years, but it still is a good tool to work with. The first Program was
created by adding some features to a good bitmap paint program
(Personal Paint).
There are some shareware tools to create bitmap fonts which you can
convert to outline (vector) fonts with TypeSmith.
Problems and Possible Solutions
===============================
1. Pagestream does not recognize your newly installed font.
This happens when you have two fonts with the same ID. The
solution is to load such a font into a font editor and enter a
new ID for one of the fonts. Still it might happen that you
choose another one, that has already been used by!
2. Your application does not find the IntelliFont.
This happens when you haven't set the locigal device FONTS: to
your drawer. You can change this by typing the following
command into your SHELL or add this line to your
`S:User-Startup' file:
ASSIGN Fonts: <your_drawer> ADD
3. You're using a non-latin font and the wrong characters appear when
typing.
This happens when you forget to set the appropriate keymap file.
Enter the Prefs directory and start the program `INPUT'. There
you can choose your keymap file.
Adobe Type 1 fonts for the Amiga
================================
Darrell Leland contributes the following information:
There are now three high end DTP packages for the Amiga that can
directly or indirectly use Adobe Type 1 Fonts or AGFA Compugraphic
fonts. The best of the lot in both my and Amiga World's opinions is
SoftLogik's Pagestream, currently in version 2.2 but about to go to
version 3.0. Pagestream can take Adobe fonts in MS-DOS format directly
with no format conversion needed. All you have to do is get them on an
Amiga format disk, which is very easy using the new version of
Commodore's Workbench operating system. Pagestream has import modules
for MacWrite, Adobe Illustrator, and every other format in the universe
(seems like). It is generally a very stable and well behaved program
with a lot of features. I haven't had a chance to see 3.0 yet, but they
are claiming it's going to be a real killer. We shall see. It does color
seps, twists and rotates fonts, etc. Pagestream's job has been made
easier with Commodore's (about time) release of their own Postscript
printer drivers and Preferences postscript printer control tools.
SoftLogik also sells a program called Typesmith, which is (at last!) a
structured font maker/editor for the Amiga. Typesmith will work with
both formats mentioned above plus SoftLogik's own font format, which I
get the impression they are discontinuing in favor of Postscript. They
also sell ArtExpression, a very nice structured drawing package that
does everything I can think of. I understand SoftLogik has also been
getting several Mac and PC font makers to make Amiga fonts for them too.
They even have a program system that allows programs to publish to other
programs, sort of like in Mac System 7.0. They are lisencing it out to
any Amiga developer who pays a paltry sum to lisence it.
Subject: 9. Atari ST/TT/Falcon Information
Erlend Nagel contributed the following information about the Atari
ST/TT/Falcon.
Subject: 9.1. SpeedoGDOS
SpeedoGDOS is similar to ATM.
Fonts included with SpeedoGDOS 4.x
==================================
14 fonts are included with SpeedoGDOS 4.x.
Bitstream Cooper Black, Dutch 801 Roman, Dutch 801 Bold, Dutch 801
Italic, Dutch 801 Bold Italic, Monospace 821, More Wingbats SWC, Park
Avenue, Swiss 721, Swiss 721 Bold, Swiss 721 Italic, Swiss 721 Bols
Italic, Symbol Monospaced, and VAG Rounded
Fonts included with SpeedoGDOS 5.x
==================================
24 fonts are included with SpeedoGDOS 5.x. All fonts included with
SpeedoGDOS 4.x plus the following:
American Garamond Roman, American Garamond Bold, American Garamond
Italic, American Garamond Bold Italic, AD LIB Regular, Allegro Regular,
Amelia Regular, and Cataneo Bold
Subject: 9.2. Atari File Formats
Atari Font formats
==================
The standard Atari OS in ROM does not support any type of fonts. To use
different fonts in applications, either the application has to have
built-in support for some font format, or an add-on program is needed.
This add-on program is called a GDOS, a Graphical Device Operating
System. There are many different versions of GDOS.
The earliest versions of GDOS supported only GEM bitmap fonts (*.FNT).
These versions include GDOS, AMC-GDOS (Atari), G-plus (Codehead) and
Font-GDOS (Atari again). Font-GDOS (available for free) added caching
to the font-manager, so not all fonts need to reside in memory at the
same time.
FontGDOS and FSM-GDOS were develloped in parallel and are both
successors of Atari-GDOS (1.x). The FSM stands for Font Scaling
Manager and allowed vector fonts to be used. FSM-GDOS was only
included with Wordflair II and G-Man. FSM-GDOS also still supported GEM
bitmap fonts. The font format is the QMS/Imagen format.
After FSM-GDOS, Atari introduced SpeedoGDOS 4.0, using Speedo font
scaling technology licensed from Bitstream. 14 fonts are included with
this version (see 1.15). SpeedoGDOS 4.0 and 4.1 can use GEM bitmap,
Atari encrypted and commercially encrypted Speedo fonts. As of version
4.2 also the publicly available X11 Speedo fonts can be used.
SpeedoGDOS offers improved speed and reliability over FSM-GDOS, as well
as track- and pair-kerning.
Recently Compo Software introduced SpeedoGDOS 5.x which supports GEM
bitmap, Speedo, Truetype and Type 1 fonts. Included are 22 Speedo fonts
(see 1.15).
For more information about the GDOS format, consult the GDOS FAQ:
ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/atari/Gdos/gdosi??e.txt. The "??" is the
version number; as of 01 Mar 95, the versions are: 24 in English and 25
in German. A LaTeX version of the German edition is also available.
Also recently introduced was NVDI 3.0 by Behne & Behne, which supports
GEM bitmap, Speedo and Truetype fonts. The biggest difference when
compared to SpeedoGDOS 5.x is the improved speed, because NVDI is
written in Assembler instead of C. Only 2 fonts are included with NVDI
3.0.
These fonts are transparent to programs. There are a few other options
that require support by the program using the fonts. Two major font
formats are supported in this way on the Atari, namely
Signum!2/Signum!3 fonts and Calamus fonts.
The Signum!2 font format is a bitmapped font format supported by many
wordprocessors and some drawing packages. Amazing print quality on
9-needle printers. Many high quality designs are available in Signum!2
and Signum!3 format (Mostly German), especially for some special
languages like Polish. There are also many PD fonts available in this
format.
The Calamus (*.CFN) format was introduced by DMC, in their Calamus DTP
program that uses soft-RIPping. The Calamus font format has no hinting
since it is meant to be used on very high resolution type setting
machines. Also supported by Digital Art's (DA's) software. Many
professional designs are available in this format, as well as a lot of
PD fonts.
Atari Font Format Extensions
============================
File formats specific to the Atari platform:
* .E24
Bitmapped Signum!2 screen font.
* .L30
Bitmapped Signum!2 printer font for Laser and Deskjet printers.
* .OTL
Vector font table used by FSM-GDOS.
* .P9
Bitmapped Signum!2 printer font for Hi-Res 9-needle printers
(214*196 dpi).
* .P24
Bitmapped Signum!2 printer font for 24-needle printers.
* .QFM
Vector font used by FSM-GDOS.
Subject: 9.3. Frequently Requested Atari Fonts
Some fonts, including a few Speedo fonts are available from various
archives. The most important Atari archive is atari.archive.umich.edu.
Most fonts can be had from PD/Shareware distributors around the world...
Subject: 10. X11 Information
This section needs a lot of work. At the time of this release, I'm not
in a position to write it so I'm leaving it basically blank. Even if
you don't have time to write it, if you know what should be in this
section, please forward it to norm.
Subject: 10.1. Getting X11
The standard location for X software is ftp.x.org.
Subject: 10.2. Historical Notes about X11
The X Window System has been in widespread use through releases 3, 4,
and now 5 of X Version 11.
Fonts weren't really treated by the X Consortium very well until X11
release 5 (X11R5). In X11R3 and X11R4, the default format used by the X
servers was called SNF (server normal format). Basically the font was
formatted on disk in such a way that the X server could quickly read and
use it (it was basically a memory-dump). The important element of the
SNF format is that it was not a portable format: it depended on the
architecture of the machine running the server (little endian vs. big
endian, for example) and as a consequence you needed different directory
structures for different systems on your network. On top of that,
several systems vendors implemented their own font format, making font
portability even more difficult.
With X11R5, two things changed: the font service protocol was defined as
a standard and interoperable way for an X server to obtain fonts
(independent of their format, origin, or current location on disk) and
the default format for storing fonts was changed from SNF to PCF
(Portable Compiled Font). PCF is a format originally developed by DEC.
Its primary advantage is that it is not architecture dependent. That
is, if you compile a font to PCF format on different systems, then you
may end up having two different PCF files, but each system will be able
to read the other's file correctly.
Subject: 10.3. X11 Font Formats
There are many different font formats that can play a role in an X11
system configuration. The following table summarizes some of the
common formats:
* BDF
The Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) is the standard format for
distribution of fonts. It is an ASCII format so it can easily be
edited it with your favourite editor or E-mailed to other users.
As the name suggests, it stores bitmap fonts only.
Another virtue of the BDF format is that most font format
converters convert to or from this format. Means if you want to go
from format A to format B, neither of which is BDF, then you are
likely to convert A to BDF, then BDF to B.
The BDF format is defined by Adobe. A document describing the
format is available by ftp from Adobe's file server at
"[email protected]". It is also available in the standard X
distribution. Look under ../X11R4(5)/mit/hardcopy/BDF. This
document is also reproduced in any text describing the X standard.
* SNF
The Server Normal Format (SNF) is an older format for bitmap
fonts. The format is X Server and host dependent. This means that
if you have two SNF files, their actual format may be different.
Also, if you have an "snftobdf" utility, it may not be able to
read font files from other systems. Convert to BDF format before
you move it off the host system.
Snftobdf is one utility that can generate a BDF file from a SNF
file. It was part of the X11R4 contrib release. To compile under
X11R5, you need some of the X11R4 snf include files.
* PCF
The Portable Compiled Font (PCF) format is a binary format for
bitmap fonts. The binary contains sufficient information to be
readable by other systems.
* PHIGS
These fonts are only applicable in PEX environments. PHIGS fonts
don't really have any relationship to the normal X font mechanism.
* DWF
The DECWindows Fonts (DWF) are bitmap fonts.
* Intellifont
These are HP scalable fonts.
* PFA/PFB
These are Adobe Type 1 PostScript fonts.
They can be used in X11R5 based X servers and font servers because
IBM has donated a renderer for this format to the X Consortium.
The renderer can be found on the X11R5 contrib, and on ftp.x.org.
* Speedo
This is a format from Bitstream, Inc. Bitstream has also donated a
font renderer to the X Consortium, and a couple of fonts.
I have been told that in order to use commercial fonts from
BitStream, you must patch the renderer somewhat to make it use the
right decryption code for the font.
* FB
These are Sun X11/NeWS format bitmap fonts used by the Sun
OpenWindows system.
You can use "convertfont" which comes with OpenWindows to convert
to/from BDF.
* F3/F3B
This is the scalable Sun Folio format, also used by OpenWindows.
You can use "convertfont" to convert to (not from) BDF.
Subject: 10.4. X11 Font Server
X11 Release 5
=============
With X11 Release 5, the X Consortium has created a network-based
standard font protocol. As a user of the X Window System, you have an X
server on your desktop, which does the interface between the hardware
(screen, mouse, keyboard), and the X network protocol. This X server
needs fonts. Before X11R5, the only way it could get to those fonts
was to make font directories readable for the X server on that host,
either by NFS-mounting or by copying.
With the X Font Service protocol, you just tell your X server that it
must use the services of a font server, which is a daemon process
sitting on a host on your network. The font server is a program which
talks a standardized protocol on the network, and which is capable of
reading several font formats.
The font server sources are modular, such that it is easy to add a
renderer for an additional font format to the existing code. This is
obviously also the intention: the X Consortium provides the core
technology, and supposes that all systems vendors will add font
renderers for their proprietary formats to the code, and then ship that
to their customers.
If you have a multi-vendor environment, then you are supposed to run a
font server on every host that carries the font files. Then all of the
X servers on your network can put all the fonts they need in their font
path. Automatically, IBM fonts will be requested from the font server
on an IBM host, DEC fonts from a DEC host, etc.
Other benefits of using font server technology include the ability of
the font server to implement caching, provide for fault-tolerant setup,
etc.
A final example of the good use of the font server is the combination
of a font server with a Type 1 font renderer. As mentioned above, IBM
donated a Type 1 font renderer which can easily be built into the X
font server. As the Type 1 font format, and the ATM format are the same,
it is perfectly possible to use commercial ATM fonts with the X Window
System. See also /contrib/fonts/lib/font/Type1/ in the X11
distribution.
X11 Release 6
=============
The X11R6 font server is very similar to the X11R5 server described
above. Under X11R6, the font server has been renamed to xfs and the
Type 1 rendering engine is now incorporated into the base
distribution--it is no longer a contributed package.
Subject: 10.5. Fonts and utilities for X11
Here's a quick list of possible steps to get from "what you got" to X:
* Mac format bitmaps:
No idea. If you know how to read a Mac format bitmap file on some
other platform, please tell norm.
* PC format bitmaps:
Conversion to BDF is possible from TeX PK format and LaserJet
softfont format. Other conversions are also within the realm of
possibility. Feel free to ask norm for more information if you
have a specific conversion in mind.
* TeX PK format bitmaps:
PKtoBDF gets us directly to BDF format from here.
* Mac format postscript:
Under MS-DOS, conversion to PC format postscript allows the font to
be accessed with PS2PK (under *nix or MS-DOS). See above for TeX
PK to X conversions.
* PC/Unix format PostScript
Conversion to TeX PK with PS2PK allows you to get to BDF
(indirectly).
* XtoBDF, getbdf, FStoBDF
XtoBDF and getbdf are two public-domain applications which are
capable of asking an X server to give them all it knows about a
given font. They then print the BDF representation of that font on
stdout.
You can use these if you have an X server that can read some font
file, but nothing else can.
FStoBDF is distributed with X11R5.
If you use one of these programs, you may actually be converting a
scalable font into a bitmap font, but converting a bitmap font to a
scalable one is not currently possible.
Subject: 11. Utilities Information
I have just started collecting information about font utilities. I
will gladly add any information that you can pass my way. Please send
your submissions to norm.
I would appreciate it if you could include a paragraph or so of
description and the appropriate site/filename for retrieval.
Subject: 11.1. How do I convert AFM files to PFM files
You can get afm2pfm and pfm2afm files from
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/FAQ-tools.html.
Subject: 11.2. PS2PK
PS2PK is a utility for converting Type1 postscript fonts into TeX PK
files. The source code is distributed and it has been compiled for
both *nix boxes and MS-DOS based machines.
Here is the original announcement:
Ps2pk-1.2 available
-------------------
(June 1992)
Version 1.2 of ps2pk is now available on:
ftp.urc.tue.nl (address: 131.155.2.79)
directory: /pub/tex
files: ps2pk12.README ( 1k) This file
ps2pk12.tar.Z (391k) Sources
ps2pk386.zip (232k) MSDOS executables
utopia.tar.Z (342k) Adobe Utopia font family
courier.tar.Z (207k) IBM Courier font family
For people having difficulties in handling UNIX `.tar.Z' format I
have made some UNIX tools (only executables) available in:
directories: /pub/unixtools/dos
/pub/unixtools/vms
See the system specific TARZ file for some help.
Ftp.urc.tue.nl can not handle E-mail requests. But sites are free
to put the ps2pk12 stuff on any server that can.
When do you need ps2pk?
=======================
Ps2pk is a tool that converts a PostScript type1 font into a corres-
ponding TeX PK font. The tool is especially interesting if you want to
use fully hinted type1 fonts in your DVI previewer (instead of the
unhinted type1 fonts currently used in GhostScript) or on a printer
that has no PostScript interpreter.
In order to use the ps2pk generated fonts your driver and previewer need
to support virtual fonts. The reason is that PostScript fonts and TeX
fonts do have a different font encoding and handle ligatures in a
different way. With virtual fonts the PostScript world (encoding +
ligatures) can be mapped to the old style TeX world on which the current
plain macro packages still are based (despite the fact that TeX3.0 can
handle 8bits).
It is also possible to use the ps2pk generated PK fonts directly
Subject: 11.3. TeX Utilities
There are many TeX font utilities. For TeX related questions, I direct
you to comp.text.tex or the Info-TeX mailing list. I will happily list
any utilities here that the comp.fonts public feels should be present.
I am listing MetaFont because it is the obvious font-specific component
of TeX and PKtoSFP because it allows anyone to use PS2PK to create
LaserJet softfonts.
Liam R. E. Quin is the original author of the MetaFont section. It has
been hacked at a bit by norm to make it fit the tone of the comp.fonts
FAQ. Assume that norm is responsible for any errors, not Liam.
MetaFont
========
About MetaFont:
---------------
Metafont is a programming language for describing fonts. It was
written by Donald Knuth and is documented in
Computers & Typesetting/C: The METAFONTbook
Knuth, Donald E.
Addison Wesley, 1986
ISBN 0-201-13445-4, or 0-201-13444-6 (soft cover)
Library access: Z250.8.M46K58, or 686.2'24, or 85-28675.
A font written in MetaFont is actually a computer program which, when
run, will generate a bitmap (`raster') for a given typeface at a given
size, for some particular device.
What do you need in order to use the fonts:
-------------------------------------------
You cannot print the MetaFont fonts directly (unless you want a listing
of the program, that is). Instead, you must generate a bitmap font and
use that to print something.
If you are using TeX, the sequence of steps is something like this:
MF to MetaFont to GF
Convert a MetaFont program into a bitmapped font. Also produces a
TFM file.
MF to MetaFont to TFM
Covnert a MetaFont program into a TFM file. Also produces a
GF bitmapped font.
GF to GFtoPK to PK
Convert a GF bitmapped font into a compressed PK font.
TEX + TFM to TeX to DVI
Produce a device independent output file.
DVI + PK to dvi driver to output format
Produce a device-specific output file (or preview).
The above steps are idealized. In reality, you have to make sure that
the fonts get installed in the correct places and you may have to
adjust description files, etc. The friendly folks on comp.text.tex can
probably get it staightened out for you if you can't find a local guru.
If you are not using TeX, it's almost impossible to predict. At some
point in the above sequence, you'll insert some other conversion
program and proceed differently. Here, for example, is how you might
use TeX fonts with WordPerfect and a LaserJet printer.
PK to PKtoSFP to SFP
Convert a TeX PK file into an HP LaserJet softfont.
SFP to SFP2Auto to TFM
Make HP AutoFont Tagged Font Metric file.
SFP + HP AutoFont TFM to PTR to Installed in WP
Install the new font in WordPerfect.
Use WordPerfect as you normally would.
Subject: 11.4. MFPic
MFpic is a macro package for including pictures in TeX documents. The
idea behind this package is to have Metafont do the actual drawing, and
store the pictures in a font that TeX can include in the document. The
macros have been designed so that the user should never have to learn
Metafont to use these macros--the TeX macros actually write the
Metafont file for you.
Subject: 11.5. fig2MF
Briefly, fig2MF uses the mfpic macros to create formatted, commented MF
code from the fig graphics language. This means that programs like xfig
can be used as interactive font creation tools. I wrote fig2MF so that
I could portably illustrate TeX documents, but I suppose one could use
it to design letterforms as well.
The package consists of a single C source code file, modified mfpic
macros, documentation, and sample fig files. It is available at the
shsu archives.
Subject: 11.6. GNU Font Utilities
Here is a brief description of the programs included:
* imageto extracts a bitmap font from an image in PBM or IMG format,
or converts the image to Encapsulated PostScript.
* xbfe is a hand-editor for bitmap fonts which runs under X11.
* charspace adds side bearings to a bitmap font.
* limn fits outlines to bitmap characters.
* bzrto converts a generic outline font to Metafont or PostScript.
* gsrenderfont renders a PostScript outline font at a particular
point size and resolution, yielding a bitmap font.
* fontconvert can rearrange or delete characters in a bitmap font,
filter them, split them into pieces, combine them, etc., etc.
* imgrotate rotates or flips an IMG file.
We need volunteers to help create fonts for the GNU project. You do not
need to be an expert type designer to help, but you do need to know
enough about TeX and/or PostScript to be able to install and test new
fonts. Example: if you know neither (1) the purpose of TeX utility
program `gftopk' nor (2) what the PostScript `scalefont' command does,
you probably need more experience before you can help.
If you can volunteer, the first step is to compile the font utilities.
After that, contact me [ed: Karl Berry] ([email protected]). I will
get you a scanned type specimen image. The manual explains how to use
these utilities to turn that into a font you can use in TeX or
PostScript.
You can get the source by ftp from any GNU archive site.
You can also order tapes with GNU software from the Free Software
Foundation (thereby supporting the GNU project); send mail to
[email protected] for the latest prices and ordering information, or
retrieve the file DISTRIB from a GNU archive.
This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the
input file FAQ.texinfo.
Subject: 11.7. Font Editors
* Editors for BDF fonts
There is a bdf font editor that comes with HP/Apollo workstations.
It's called 'edfont'. It's not the best but it works.
Gary reports:
The standard X distribution for X11R5 contains "xfed", which
allows you to play with BDF fonts. "xfedor" has a more elaborate
user interface, and is available on most contrib directories.
The last time I tried:
"xfedor" couldn't handle BDF files with more than 256 characters.
"xfed" aborts if the BDF file contains a COMMENT line with no other
text. The workaround is to edit the BDF file, to put text after
the word COMMENT. A single blank space is sufficient. For some
reason, the standard BDF files included in the X release contain
blank spaces on the otherwise empty COMMENT lines. It was
probably easier to add the space to the COMMENT lines of every BDF
file than it was to fix the lex code for xfed. :-)
* Editors for PK fonts
The GNU font utilities include an X-based editor called Xbfe which
edits bitmapped fonts under X.
Eberhard Mattes' emTeX includes PKedit.
Subject: 11.8. The T1 Utilities
This is a snippet from the README file for I. Lee Hetherington's
t1utils package:
t1utils is a collection of simple type-1 font manipulation programs.
Together, they allow you to convert between PFA (ASCII) and PFB
(binary) formats, disassemble PFA or PFB files into human-readable
form, reassemble them into PFA or PFB format. Additionally you can
extract font resources from a Macintosh font file (ATM/Laserwriter).
Subject: 11.9. Where to get bitmap versions of the fonts
There are archives containing the bitmaps of many of these fonts at
various sizes and resolutions. The fonts must have been generated for
the correct print engine: e.g. write-white or write-black. The
archives generally hold only the sizes used by TeX. These are
`magstep' sizes, and are not exact point sizes. It is probably better
to generate them from the Metafont sources yourself if you can.
The best place to look for raster fonts was almost certainly:
mims-iris.waterloo.edu
but it isn't any more, the fonts have all gone. Let me know if you
find them elsewhere. Most people seem to have moved to using
PostScript fonts or Bitstream ones instead now.
Some other sites are:
ftp.cica.indiana.edu
mac.archive.umich.edu
ftp.shsu.edu
ftp.tex.ac.uk
ftp.dante.de
The occasional posting of ftp sites to comp.misc and comp.archives
lists these and several other sites.
Subject: 11.10. Converting between font formats
Conversions to and from pbm and pk format were posted to comp.text.tex
and to alt.sources on the 9th of August, 1990 by Angus Duggan. The
program is pbmtopk, and there are also at least two patches.
Chris Lewis' psroff package includes a program to go from pk both to
the HP LaserJet and to PostScript.
John McClain <[email protected]> has some conversion programs for
various graphics formats to/and from pk files.
A PC program, CAPTURE, turns HPGL files into PK format, US$130 from
Micro Programs Inc., 251 Jackson Ave., Syosset, NY 11791 U.S.A.
Metaplot can take pen-plotter files and prouce metafont files. Note:
Pat Wilcox is no longer at Ohio State.
Kinch Computer Company sell .pk fonts derived from PostScript fonts.
Kinch Computer Co., 501 S. Meadow St.Ithaca, NY 14850 U.S.A.
telephone: +1 607 273 0222; fax: +1 607 273 0484
Subject: 11.11. Getting fonts by FTP and Mail
If you are using ftp, you will need either the name of the host or the
Internet number. For example, to connect to ftp.ora.com, listed as
ftp: ftp.ora.com [198.112.208.11] you will need to type something like
ftp ftp.ora.com
If that doesn't work, try using the number:
ftp 198.112.208.11
If that doesn't work, on Unix systems you can use nslookup (it's
usually /usr/etc/nslookup) to find the host number - it might have
changed. Type the entire host name, and after a few seconds nslookup
will give you the address. Of course, if you have nslookup installed,
the first form will probably work...
Once you have connected, you will need to go to the appropriate
directory, lists its contents, and retrieve the files.
Most of the machines listed here run Unix, and you use "ls" and "cd" to
list files and to change directories. On machines that run VMS, you
will have to put square brackets around directory names, like [this].
Remember that although Metafont sources are text files, pk fonts are
not ASCII, and you will have to use binary mode for them. In general,
use text mode for README files and *.mf files, and binary mode for
other font files. Files ending in .Z are compressed binary files - you
will need to use binary mode, and then uncompress the files when you
get them.
There is an ftp-by-mail BITNET service, BITFTP, for BITNET users.
Before getting large files by mail, please remember to get permission
from all intervening sites. Ask your site administrator, who can send
mail to Postmaster at each site on the way if necessary.
Subject: 11.12. MetaFont to PostScript Conversion
There are (I believe) three programs that perform this task. At least
one of them is called "mf2ps". If you have any more information about
these tools, please let me know.
Chang Jin-woong reports that he found the "mf2ps" package with Archie.
It is written by Shimon Yanai <[email protected]> and Daniel M.
Berry <[email protected]>. The source programs are written in
Pascal.
MetaFog, a commercial conveter by Richard Kinch, is available on request
to TrueTeX owners.
Subject: 11.13. How to use Metafont fonts with Troff
If, when you run troff, you get the message `typesetter busy', you have
the original Ossanna-troff, also called otroff. Chris Lewis has a
package which will let you use TeX fonts with troff - it's called
psroff, and comes with documentation.
ftp: gatekeeper.dec.com (16.1.0.2) pub/misc/psroff-3.0
ftp: ftp.cs.toronto.edu [128.100.1.105] pub/psroff-3.0/*
If, when you run troff, you get something like this:
x T 300
x res 300 1 1
you have ditroff. This is sometimes called titroff or psroff. In this
case, you will probably need to do the following:
1. convert the font to your printer's format
2. generate a width table for the font
3. add the font to the DESC file for the appropriate device
4. arrange for troff to download the font
5. tell troff about the font by running `makedev DESC' in the
right place.
If, when you run troff, you get something like this:
X hp(SCM)(CM)(AF)(AD) 300 1 1
Y P default letter 2550 3300 0 0 90 90 2460 3210
you have sqtroff:
1. convert the font to your printer's format
2. generate a width table for the font
3. add the font to the DESC file for the appropriate device
4. put the font in the appropriate raster directory
5. tell sqtroff about the font by running `sqmakedev DESC' or
`sqinstall'.
In each case, you should be able to get help from your vendor.
Note that Chris Lewis' psroff package has software to make width tables
for troff from pk files.
Subject: 11.14. PKtoBDF / MFtoBDF
From the SeeTeX distribution, programs to help previewers under X11.
They convert TeX PK files into X11 BDF fonts (which can be further
converted into one or more server native formats).
Subject: 11.15. PKtoPS
Included in the psroff distribution, this utility converts PK fonts
into PostScript fonts (bitmaps, I presume). If you have any more
information about these tools, please let me know.
Subject: 11.16. PKtoSFP / SFPtoPK
Convert fonts from TeX PK format to HP LaserJet softfont (bitmap)
format.
Subject: 11.17. PostScript to MetaFont
ps2mf started out as a way of creating bitmaps via MF for TeX. Only,
when I had just finished it, Piet Tutelaers came with ps2pk. This was a
far superior way runtime-wise. He uses the IBM X11-R5 fontutilities
library, which is extremely ugly code. But, it works. So, to generate
bitmaps, I suggest everyone use ps2pk.
To generate a MF outline description, ps2mf is *the* tool. Yannis
Haralambous has just started a project where he wants to create
meta-ized fonts for MF from Postscript descriptions. ps2mf does the
basic conversion. This project wants to revive the use of MF for it is
a truly beautiful program with enormous possiblities.
The following information comes from the README file for ps2mf:
This is pfb2mf. It is a copyleft program. See the file COPYING for more
details. I suggest that for the translation of Type-One to readable
PostScript you use I. Lee Hetherington's Type-1-Utils. You can find
these somewhere on obelix.icce.rug.nl in pub/erikjan.
If you find any bugs, please do report.
If you have any complaints, please do report.
Now for some info about the different stages. This package contains
four programs:
* pfb2pfa
* pfa2chr
* chr2ps
* ps2mf
pfb2pfa
=======
pfb2pfa will decompress an IBM (!) Postscript type 1 fontfile into
readable and downloadable hexadecimal data.
The resulting file still contains two layers of encryption:
* eexec encryption
* charstring encryption
pfa2chr
=======
pfa2chr will do an eexec-decryption of a readable hexadecimal font file
to a fontfile with encrypted charstrings.
chr2ps
======
chr2ps will perform a charstring-decryption of a font file with
encrypted charstrings to fontfile with postscript commands for type 1
fonts.
With a "-" as filename, these programs will read from <stdin> and write
to <stdout>. This way you can pipe the results, as in:
pfb2pfa garmnd - | pfa2chr - - | chr2ps - garmnd
This will create a garmnd.ps from garmnd.pfb without explicitely
creating the intermediate files.
These previous stages can be replaced by (when using Lee Hetherington's
type-1-utils):
t1disasm garmnd.pfb garmnd.ps
ps2mf
=====
This last stage will convert to a MetaFont program with the use of the
corresponding .afm file and a mapping configuration file. It can
convert to an ordinary form with Bezier controlpoints. It can also
generate a curl specification. For this last option specifify -C.
Subject: 11.18. Mac Bitmaps to BDF Format
I [ed: who?] have posted a program which I hacked together for
extracting all NFNT and FONT resources from a MacBinary form of a
standard Mac file and dumping the fonts as Adobe BDF files. It has only
been compiled and tested on a Sun system to date. It can be fetched
from METIS.COM, /pub/mac2bdf.c.
I wrote this tool to be able to use Mac Bitmaps under X Windows and
OpenWindows (which take Adobe BDF format files).
Subject: 12. Vendor Information
Type/Font Vendors
=================
The following list is based on information from Masumi Abe, Norm Walsh
and many others. I (Don Hosek) have been calling vendors and attempting
to make sure information is up to date. I have removed a number of
vendors who do not sell fonts. Fonts bundled with applications (e.g.,
the bitmap fonts which are part of Quicken) are not considered enough
to merit inclusion in the list. Also, a number of the vendors on the
list actually were selling various printing software but no fonts per
se and were likewise removed. Finally, some companies seem to have
disappeared, most likely gone out of business. I've indicated the
verification date of any information which appears on the list. I would
appreciate aid in contacting those companies which are listed as
unverified (particularly companies outside the US). Please send updates
and corrections to me at [email protected]
Achtung Entertainment TrueType (shareware) for Macs, 300+
508 N. College Ave. #215 fonts. HyperCard demo disk $3.00
Bloomington, IN 47404 (refundable/order)
no phone number
ADH Software (Mac)
P.O. Box 67129
Los Angeles, CA 90067
Adobe Systems Incorporated : Type 1 (Mac, PC)
1585 Charleston Rd. : Originals, designs licensed from
P.O. Box 7900 : Linotype, Monotype, Berthold, and
Mountain View, CA 94039-7900 : others
(415) 961-4400
(800) 344-8335
Verified: 16 Feb 1994
Agfa Division, Miles Inc. : Type 1 Truetype, (PC, Mac),
90 Industrial Way : Intellifont (PC), Compugraphic
Wilmington, MA 01887 : typesetter fonts. Originals,
(800) 424-TYPE : fonts licensed from Adobe.
(508) 657-0232
FAX: (508) 657-8568
Verified: 17 Feb 1994
Allotype Typographics : Downloadable Fonts (Mac)
1600 Packard Rd. Suite #5 Kadmos (Greek)
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Czasy & Szwajcarskie
(313) 663-1989 Demotiki
Alphabets, Inc. : Type 1, TrueType (PC, Mac)
P.O. Box 5448 : New and licensed designs
Evanston, IL 60204-5448
(800) 326-8973
(708) 328-2733
Verified: 9 Feb 1994
Alphatype Corp.
220 Campus Dr., Suite 103
Arlington Heights, IL 60004
(708) 259-6800
Altsys Corporation, : FONTastic Fonts,
269 West Renner Road, : Fontographer Fonts (Mac)
Richardson,
Texas 75080.
(214) 680-2060.
Artworx Software Co. (Mac)
1844 Penfield Rd. Hebrew Typefaces
Penfield, NY 14526
(716) 385-6120
(800) 828-6573
Architext, Inc. (HP/IBM)
121 Interpark Blvd. Suite 1101
San Antonio, TX 78216
(512) 490-2240
Asiagraphics Technology Ltd. (Mac)
9A GreatMany Centre Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai
109 Queen's Road East
Wanchai, Hong Kong
(5) 8655-225
Fax: (5) 8655-250
Modem: (5) 865-4816
Autologic, Inc. (Mac)
1050 Rancho Conejo Blvd.
Newbury Park, CA 91320
(805) 498-9611
Azalea Software, Inc.
PO Box 16745
Seattle WA 98116-0745 USA
800 48-ASOFT 206 932.4030 206 937.5919 FAX
[email protected]
Bear Rock Technologies,
4140 Mother Lode,
Shingle Springs,
California 95682-8038.
(916) 672-0244
Berthold of North America
7711 N. Merrimac Avenue
Niles, IL 60648
(708) 965-8800
Bitstream, Inc.
Athenaeum House
215 First St.
Cambridge, MA 02142
(617) 497-6222
(800) 237-3335
A representative of Bitstream sent the following correction to me.
Bitstream offers:
**1100 PostScript Type 1 fonts for the Mac & PC. (These can
be ordered direct from Bitstream or thru several resellers.)
** Bitstream Type Treasury - the Bitstream Type Library for
the Mac (Type 1 format) on CD ROM.
** Bitstream Type Essentials-a series of 4 Typeface Packages
for PC & Mac that were selected to work well for different
jobs (Letters, Memos & Faxes; Newsletters, Brochures &
Announcements; Spreadsheets, Graphs & Presentations;
Headlines).
**Bitstream Typeface Packages for the PC - 52 packages (most
with 4 faces each) that include a total of over 200 faces,
with mutiple font formats in each package (Bitstream Speedo,
Type 1, Bitstream Fontware)
** Bitstream TrueType Font Packs 1 & 2 for Microsoft Windows
** Bitstream PostScript Font Packs 1 & 2 for the PC **
Bitstream FaceLift for Windows ** Bitstream FaceLift for
WordPerfect - both are font scaling/font management
utilities.
** Bitstream MakeUp for Windows - a type manipulation/
special effects program.
** Bitstream Li'l Bits - a new product line of novelty fonts
in TrueType format for Windows 3.1. The first release began
shipping last week and includes The Star Trek Font Pack, The
Flintstones Font Pack and The Winter Holiday Font Pack.
We offer OEM customers an extensive range of non-latin type
(as you have noted in the current listing), but these faces
are not currently available to individual end-users.
We also offer font-scaling and rasterizing technology to OEM
customers.
Blaha Software/Janus Associates : Big Foot (Mac) (HP/IBM)
991 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 354-1999
Blue Sky Research : Type 1 (Mac)
534 SW Third Avenue, #816 : Computer Modern in PostScript
Portland, OR 97204
(800) 622-8398
Carter & Cone
Casady & Greene, Inc. : Fluent Fonts, Fluent Laser Fonts (Mac)
26080 Carmel Rancho Blvd. #202 Russian/Ukranian/Bulgarian/Serbian
P.O. Box 223779 Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Kana, Polish
Carmel, CA 93922 Glasnost
(408) 484-9228
(800) 331-4321 -------------no longer valid
(800) 851-1986 (California)-no longer valid
Caseys' Page Mill (Mac)
6528 S. Oneida Court
Englewood, CO 80111
(303) 220-1463
Castle Systems : (Truetype, Type1) (Mac, IBM)
1306 Lincoln Avenue : Revivals of art deco faces,
San Ragael, CA 94901-2165 : calligraphy, variations of
(415) 459-6495 : existing designs
Century Software (MacTography) font developer for MacTographyc
702 Twinbrook Parkway : LaserFonts (Mac)
Rockville, MD 20851
(301) 424-1357
Callifonts
P.O. Box 224891
Dallas, TX 75222
(214) 504-8808
Coda Music Software
1401 E. 79th St.
Mineapolis, MN 55425-1126
(612) 854-1288
(800) 843-1337
Compugraphic Corporation (Mac) (HP/IBM)
Type Division
90 Industrial Way
Wilmington, MA 01887
(800) 622-8973 (U.S.)
(800) 533-9795 (Canada)
Computer EdiType Systems (HP/IBM)
509 Cathedral Parkway, Ste. 10A
New York, NY 10025
(212) 222-8148
Computer Peripherals, Inc. : JetWare (HP/IBM)
2635 Lavery Ct. #5
Newbury Park, CA 91320
(805) 499-5751
Computer Prod. Unlimited (Mac)
78 Bridge St.
Newburgh, NY 12550
(914) 565-6262
Coniglio Communications
124 Woodside Green #2B
Stamford, CT 06905-4918
(203) 975-8111
[email protected]; [email protected]
Conographic Corp. (Mac) (HP/IBM)
17841 Fitch
Irvine, CA 92714
(714) 474-1188
Corel Systems Corp. (HP/IBM)
1600 Carling Ave.
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA KIZ 7M4
(613) 728-8200
Data Transforms (HP/IBM)
616 Washington St.
Denver, CO 80203
(303) 832-1501
Devonian International software Co. (Mac)
P.O. Box 2351 Cyrillic
Montclair, CA 91763
(714) 621-0973
Digi-Fonts (HP/IBM)
528 Commons Drive Greek, Cyrillic
Golden, Colorado 80401
(303) 526-9435
Fax: (303) 526-9501
Digital Type Systems (DTS) (HP/IBM)
38 Profile Circle
Nashua, NH 03063
(603) 880-7541
Dubl-Click Software, Inc. : World Class Fonts (Mac)
9316 Deering Ave.
Chatsworth, CA 91311
(818) 700-9525
Ecological Linguistics (Mac)
P.O. Box 15156 Cyrillic, Greek
Washington, DC 20003
(202) 546-5862
The Electric Typographer : Type 1 and TrueType (Mac & PC)
2216 Cliff Dr. : Original designs
Santa Barbara, CA 93109
(805) 966-7563
Verified: 9 Feb 1994
EmDash : EmDash Fonts (Mac)
P.O. Box 8256
Northfield, IL 60093
(312) 441-6699
The Font Company
12629 N. Tatum Boulevard
Suite 210
Phoenix, AZ 85032
(602) 996-6606
The Font Factory (HP/IBM)
2400 Central Parkway
Ste. J-2
Houston, TX 77092
FontCenter (HP/IBM)
509 Marin St., #121
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
(805) 373-1919
Font FunHouse CD-ROM (PC/Mac)
Wayzata
PO Box 807
Grand Rapids, Minnesota 55744
(800) 735-7321
FontHaus North America (United States)
1375 King's Hwy East
Fairfield, CT 06430
(800) 942-9110 or (203) 367-1993
(203) 367-1860 Fax
FontHaus UK (Faces Ltd.)
44-127-638-888
349 Yorktown Road
College Town, Camberley
Surrey GU15 4PX
UK
FontHaus Australia (Lasermaster Aus. Pty. Ltd.)
61-3-747-9301
#31 Rosina Drive
Melton, Victoria 3337
Australia
FontHaus France (Signum Art)
33-1-48-89-6046
Fax: 33-1-48-89-6045
94 avenue Victor Hugo
94100 Saint Maur des Fosses
France
FontHaus Germany (Elsner & Flake)
49-40-39-88-3988
Friedensallee 44
22765 Hamburg
Germany
FontHaus Sweden (FontBolaget)
46-8-16-81-00
Tulegatan 15 A
113 53 Stockholm
Sweden
FontHaus is a manufacturer of typefaces and a licensed reseller for
Adobe, Monotype, Bitstream, Elsner+Flake, Giampa Textware,
Treacyfaces, Panache Graphics, and others around the world.
FontHaus discounts most Adobe fonts up to 40% off list price, and
have CD-ROM discs available so you can buy individual fonts instead
of entire families. All their fonts are available in Macintosh Type
1; most are also available in PC format; and a growing number are in
TrueType format. In addition, some type manufacturers support other
platforms through thier CD-ROM font libraries (i.e. Monotype for Mac,
PC, or NeXT). Contact them regarding availability for the fonts and
formats you want.
FontHaus ships internationally and also has several agents overseas,
although these agents may not have everything available as the main
office here in the US.
Rhyscon Systems (Canada)
PO Box 245 Clarkson PO
Mississauga Ontario L51 3Y1
416 278 2600
416 278 3298 Fax
TypoGabor (France)
5, rue de 8 Mai 1945
92586 Clichy (Paris)
33 1 4739 6600
33 1 4739 0638 Fax
Elsner+Flake Fontinform GmbH (German)
Friedensallee 44
D-22765 Hamburg
49 40 3988 3988
Signus Limited (Britain)
South Bank TechnoPark
90 London Road
London SE1 6LN
71 922 8805
71 261 0411 Fax
Font Bolajet (Sweden, Finland, Norway)
Kungstengaten 18
113 57 Stockholm
46.8.16.81.00
Font World (Mac)
2021 Scottsville Rd. Cyrillic, Hebrew
Rochester, NY 14623-2021
(716) 235-6861
Genny Software R&D (Mac)
P.O. Box 5909
Beaumont, TX 77706
(409) 860-5817
Gradco Systems Inc.
7 Morgan
Irvine, CA 92718
(714) 770-1223
Handcraftedfonts Co.
Box 14013
Philadelphia, PA 19122-0013
Tel/Fax: 215-634-0634
Our fonts are licensed to Monotype Typography, ITC DesignPalette,
International TypeFounders, Precision Type and Phil's Fonts.
Hewlett-Packard (HP/IBM)
P.O. Box 15
Boise, ID 83707
(208) 323-6000
ICOM Simulations, Inc.
648 S. Wheeling Rd.
Wheeling, IL 60090
(312) 520-4440
(880) 877-4266
Image Club Graphics, Inc. : (Mac & PC)
729-24th Ave. SE
Calgary, AB
T2G 5K8
Canada
(800) 661-9410
(403) 262-8008 (Canada)
Image Processing Systems :Turbofonts (HP/IBM)
6409 Appalachian Way, Box 5016
Madison, WI 53705
(608) 233-5033
Invincible Software (Mac)
9534 Burwick
San Antonio, TX 78230
(512) 344-4228
Kabbalah Software
8 Price Drive
Edison, NJ 08817
(908) 572-0891
(908) 572-0869 Fax
Hebrew fonts for PC and Mac. While I am part owner, so I am biased,
we have been reviewed in the October 27 1992 issue of PC Mag as
having high-quality fonts.
Keller Software (HP/IBM)
1825 Westcliff Dr.
Newport Beach, CA 92600
(714) 854-8211
Kensington Microware Ltd. (Mac)
251 Park Ave. S
New York, NY 10010
(212) 475-5200
Kingsley/ATF Type Corp. (Mac)
200 Elmora Ave.
Elizabeth, NJ 07202
(201) 353-1000
(800) 289-TYPE
Laser Technologies International : Lenord Storch Soft Fonts
15403 East Alondra Blvd. (HP/IBM)
La Mirada, CA 90638
(714) 739-2478
LaserMaster Corp. : LM Fonts (HP/IBM)
7156 Shady Oak Rd.
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
(612) 944-9330
(800) LMC-PLOT
Fax: (612) 944-0522
LeBaugh Software Corp : LeFont (HP/IBM)
2720 Greene Ave.
Onaha, NE 68147
(800) 532-2844
Letraset USA : LetraFont (Mac)
40 Eissenhower Dr.
Paramus, NJ 07653
(201) 845-6100
(800) 634-3463
Linguists' Software, Inc. (Bitmap, Type 1, Truetype) (Mac, IBM)
P.O.Box 580 Fonts for numerous alphabets. Not all
Edmonds, WA 98020-0580 fonts available in all languages.
(206) 775-1130 They support ~50 languages.
Fax: (206) 771-5911
Verified: 16 Feb 1994
Linotype Company (Mac)
425 Oser Ave.
Hauppauge, NY 11788
(800) 842-9721 (US)
(516) 434-2706 (FAX)
MacTography
326-D North Stonestreet Ave.
Rockville, MD 20850
(301) 424-3942
Megatherium Enterprises : Mac The Linguist 2 (Mac)
P.O. Box 7000-417
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 545-5913
Metro Software, Inc. (HP/IBM)
2509 N. Cambell Ave., Ste. 214
Tucson, AZ 85719
(602) 299-7313
Microcosm
819 Devon Court
San Diego, CA 92109
619-488-4462
619-488-3087 fax
email: Tom Wright <[email protected]>
Provides fonts for resale to (mostly Unix & MS-DOS) software companies
& hardware comapnies in its own portable file format together with
portable C font rendering code. Pricing plans include royalty-free
option & end-user site licenses. Standard Type-1 & TrueType formats
also supplied. Font files from your artwork available too.
Modern Graphics :Organic Fonts (Mac)
P.O. Box 21366
Indianapolis, IL 46221
(317) 253-4316
Monotype Typography Inc.
Suite 504-53 West Jackson Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60604
(312) 855-1444
(800) MONOTYPE
Network Technology Corp. : LaserTEX Font Library (HP/IBM)
6825 Lamp Post Lane
Alexandria, VA 22306
(703) 765-4506
Nippon Information Science Ltd. (NIS) (Mac)
Sumire Bldg. 4F
5-4-4 Koishikawa
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112
Japan
(03) 945-5955
Olduvai Corporation : Art Fonts (Mac)
7520 Red Road, Suite A
South Miami, FL 33143
(305) 665-4665
(800) 822-0772 (FL)
Page Studio Graphics : PIXymbols (Mac)
3175 N. Price Rd. #1050
Chandler, AZ 85224
(602) 839-2763
Paperback Software : KeyCap Fonts
2830 9th St.
Berkeley, CA 94710
(415) 644-2116
PenUltimate Fonts : Vernacular type for Mac and PC
14101 Walters Rd. #805 : Custom font design
Houston, TX 77014
Houston, TX 77014
E-Mail: [email protected] Send $2 for catalog
Prosoft (HP/IBM)
7248 Bellair Ave., P.O. Box 560
North Hollywood, CA 91605
(818) 764 3131
Qume Corp. (HP/IBM)
2350 Qume Dr.
San Jose, CA 95131
(800) 223-2479
Ragnarok Font Line: Scriptorium Font Library
POB 140333 120+ original calligraphic, display
Austin, TX 78714 and art font designs. SASE for catalog.
(512) 472-6535 $15 for 12 font sampler disk. Specify
Macintosh or PC preference when ordering.
R.M.C. : PrintR fonts (HP/IBM)
12046 Willowood Dr.
Woodbridge, VA 22192
(703) 494-2633
Richard Beatty Designs : Type 1 and TrueType (PC, Mac)
2312 Laurel Park Highway : 45 fonts decorative elements
Hendersonville, NC 28739 : 270 alphabets, 50 original
(704) 696-8316 : rest translated from lead and
Verified: 9 Feb 1994 : phototype. Goudy a specialty
S. Anthony Studios : Fonts Vol. 1
889 DeHaro Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Scholar's Press : (Mac)
P.O. Box 15399 : 2 Greek fonts
Atlanta, GA 30333-0399
(404) 727-2320
FAX: (404) 727-2348
Verified: 9 Feb 1994
Scriptorium Font Library
(See Ragnarok)
SoftCraft, Inc.
16 North Carrol St., Suite 220
Madison, WI 53703
(608) 257-3300
FAX: (608) 257-6733
Verified: 9 Feb 1994
Software Complement : (TrueType, Type 1) (Mac, IBM, Next)
8 Penn Ave. : Designer of fonts for Cassidy & Greene
Metamoras, PA 18336 : Custom logos and signatures.
(717) 491-2492
FAX: (717) 491-2443
Applelink: SOFTCOMP
CompuServe: 70244,3214
Verified: 16 Feb 1994
Straightforward : ZFont (HP/IBM)
15000 Halldale Ave.
Gardena, CA 90249
(310) 324-8827
SWFTE International (HP/IBM)
Box 5773
Wilmington, DE 19808
(800) 237-9383
SystemSoft America, Inc. : Kanji
P.O. Box 4260
Vero Beach, FL 32964
Typographics Ltd. : Typo
46, Hehalutz St.
Jerusalem 96222
Israel
U-Design, Inc. : TrueType, Type1 (Mac & PC)
270 Farmington Avenue : Originals, licensed designs clones
Hartford, CT 06105
(203) 278-3648
BBS: (203) 525-5117
FAX: (203) 278-3003
Verified: 9 Feb 1994
The Underground Phont Archive (TrueType,Shareware)
395 Kaymar Dr.
Amherst, NY 14228
USA.
Varityper, Inc. : (Mac)
11 Mt. Pleasant Ave.
East Hanover, NJ 07936
(800) 631-8134 (US except NJ)
(201) 887-8000 ext. 999 (NJ)
VS Software : HP Bitmaps (PC)
P.O. Box 6158 : CG, ITC and original fonts
Little Rock, AR 72216
(501) 376-2083
Verified: 9 Feb 1994
Weaver Graphics : HP Bitmaps (PC only),
5165 S. Hwy A1A : Adobe Type 1, Truetype (PC and Mac)
Melbourne Beach, FL 32951 : Mostly clone fonts, some originals
(407) 728-4000
Fax: (407) 728-5978
Verified: 9 Feb 1994
Wu Corp. : FeiMa (Mac) Chinese wordprocessor
46 West Avon Rd.
Avon, CT 06001
(203) 673-4796
Y&Y, Inc. : Type 1 format, Mac, PC, Unix
45 Walden Street : Computer Modern, Lucida Bright
Concord, MA 01742 : AMS, LaTeX/SliTeX, MathTime
(800) 742-4059 : Lucida Sans Typewriter etc
(508) 371-3286
Fax: (508) 371-2004
[email protected]
ZSoft Corp. : Soft Type
450 Franklin Rd. Suite 100
Marietta, GA 30067
(404) 428-0008
Fax: (404) 427-1150
Clip Art Vendors
================
This section was submitted by Dmitry S. Simanenkov in Aug, 1993.
Although not directly related to type, a list of clip art vendors seems
to compliment the list of type/font vendors.
3G Graphics, Inc. eps borders, simbols for MAC
114 Second Ave.South, Suite 104
Edmonds, WA 98020
(206) 774-3518
(206) 771-8975
ArtBytes Hi-Fi Borders for security
Ozerkova 51-2-13 paper, stock, certificate etc.
Peterburg bitmap & eps, CorelDraw
198903 IBM & MAC
Russia
[email protected]
ArtBeats
20083
San Bernardino, CA, 92406
(800) 444-9392
(714) 881-1200
Best Impression
3844 W. Channel Islands Blvd.
Suite. 234
Oxnard, CA 93035
(805) 984-9748
Dynamic Graphics, Inc.
Designers Club, Creative Art
6000 N. Forest Park Dr.
Peoria, IL 61656-1901
(800) 255-8800
(309) 688-8800
(309) 688-5873
FM Waves
70 Derby Alley
San Francisco, CA 94102
(800) 487-1234
(415) 474-7464
Grafx Associates Borders
12811
Tucson, AZ 85732-2811
(800) 628-2149
Kinetic Presentation, Inc.
250 Distillery Commons
Louisville, KY 40206
(502) 583-1679
Metro Image Base, Inc.
18623 Ventura Blvd
Suite 210
Tarzana, CA 91356
(800) 525-1552
(818) 881-1997
Micrografx, Inc.
1303 Arapaho Rd.
Richardson, TX 75081
(800) 733-3729
(214) 234-1769
Migraph, Inc.
200 S.333 Rd. Suite 220
Federal Way, WA 98003
(800) 223-3729
(206) 838-4677
Multi-Ad Service, Inc.
1720 W. Detweiller Dr.
Peoria, IL 61615
(800) 447-1950
(309) 692-1530
Qualitas Trading Co.
6907 Norfolk Rd.
Berkley, CA 94705
(510) 848-8080
RT Computer Graphics
2257 Calle Cacique
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Stephen & Associates
8681 N. Magnolia Ave Suite E
Santee, CA 92071-4456
(619) 562-5803
Studio Advertising Art
43912
Las Vegas, NV 89116
(800) 453-1860
(702) 641-7041
Sun Shine CD-ROM, Visual Delights
4351
Austin, TX 78765
(512) 453-2334