summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/info/digests/texline/no14/fonts.tex
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'info/digests/texline/no14/fonts.tex')
-rw-r--r--info/digests/texline/no14/fonts.tex301
1 files changed, 301 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/info/digests/texline/no14/fonts.tex b/info/digests/texline/no14/fonts.tex
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..1f31bb9740
--- /dev/null
+++ b/info/digests/texline/no14/fonts.tex
@@ -0,0 +1,301 @@
+\title{BCS ep group meetings}
+The next meeting of the BCS ep group
+is at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in
+London on Wednesday 1st~April and will be
+concerned with `Text Management and
+Indexing', or `how to help the reader find what
+s/he wants'. Topics to be covered will include:
+`The way in' to documents; aspects of indexing
+and indexing software; databases, both text
+and relational; various case studies.
+
+The next two planned meetings will be on
+Thursday 4th June, again at SOAS, when the
+topic will be `Input and Output Devices', and
+Tuesday 2nd September at Nottingham. The
+latter meeting is at the invitation of Professor
+David Brailsford and his Electronic
+Publishing Research Group and will centre on
+the work they are doing. This is mainly in the
+area of document structure. It is planned that,
+as well as speakers from Nottingham, there
+will be other speakers on this topic.
+
+For more details, contact
+
+{\parindent10pt\obeylines
+David Penfold
+BCS ep Office
+30 Edgerton Road
+Huddersfield HD3 3AD
+tel: 0484 519462}
+
+
+\bar
+\title{Typefaces Meeting}
+The BCS Electronic Publishing group held a
+meeting on 15th October 1991 at
+the St Bride Foundation Institute (just
+off Fleet Street), a suitable
+venue in view of its historical relevance to
+printing (unfortunately, not so suitable
+acoustically, with much of the audience
+finding it difficult to hear all the speakers,
+having to deal with poor sound dispersion,
+echoes, and street sounds!).
+
+Alison Black, who is freelance consultant on
+information design, and Paul Stiff of Reading
+University (hence, Stiff\&Black) began, with a talk entitled `Cut the
+Hype about Type'. They looked at a number
+of `received wisdoms', especially those foisted
+on us by manufacturers, and compared these
+with the customers' requirements. For
+example, there is the `democratic fallacy' --
+everyone will be able to have typefaces to suit
+their personal needs. But the problem is
+not enough fonts, but not enough users who
+know how to use those that are already
+available. The manufacturers are not so much
+responding to demand but creating it, to
+produce a world of type-fanciers and type-%
+addicts who will need more and more fonts to
+satisfy their cravings!
+
+James Mosley (St Bride Printing Library)
+took us on what he called 'a brief canter
+through history', tracing the development of
+the Bodoni typeface and the historical
+influences that have a bearing on modern text
+design, including the thick\slash thin stresses that
+arose from using reeds, quills and brushes,
+and the pure geometry of styles on wax.
+Bodoni is characterised by very pronounced
+thicks and thins, which required exceptional
+press work to reproduce well in letterpress;
+offset litho helped to refine them even further.
+
+Mary Dyson (Reading University) updated us
+on the {\sc didot} (Digitising and Designing for
+Type) project. This multinational European
+project has been going for just over a year and
+has another two to run. Its main activity for
+the next two years is to design, implement and
+evaluate a curriculum for digital typography.
+It will also organise
+seminars, workshops and summer schools for
+typographers\slash graphic artists and computer
+specialists, trying to bring these two fields
+together. The computer specialists tend to see
+`digital typography' in terms of type design,
+font acquisition, font manipulation and
+rendering, whereas the typographers tend to
+be interested in the broader context of letter
+spacing, word spacing, leading, line length,
+type area, page margins. Bringing them
+together allows useful exploration of such
+issues as image processing, printing and
+display technology, character recognition,
+curve-fitting techniques, cultural and artistic
+tradition, visual perception, {\sc cad}, and
+knowledge-based systems. To date, {\sc didot}
+seminars have been more successful in
+attracting designers, but later meetings have
+been better balanced.
+
+Probably the most controversial presenation
+was given by Lyn Woosey of Adobe. She
+gamely introduced us to Multiple Mastering
+(MM) which is an extension to Adobe's Type~1
+font format. Instead of using hints and
+encryptions to cope with the problems of
+scaling one master outline font, MM gives you
+different masters for different sizes. This
+doesn't mean you'll have to buy a master for
+every conceivable point size because MM
+allows interpolation between master designs.
+That is, if you buy a 6\,pt master and a 12\,pt
+master but you want 8\,pt, MM will be able to
+produce this by `intelligent interpolation'. But
+interpolation doesn't stop there -- you can
+interpolate between roman and italic,
+condensed and expanded, even serif and san-%
+serif if the font is available in both varieties --
+you name a set of typographic variables and
+you can interpolate to your heart's content, at
+least in principle. Now, it seems only fair to
+point out that this horrified the audience
+rather than gratified them. Remembering
+Alison Black and Paul Stiff's strictures earlier
+in the day, we had visions of font anarchy.
+However, it looks likely that Adobe will not
+give its customers a completely free hand.
+Some practical examples of the uses of MM
+were given, for example, fitting type to measure,
+equalising columns of text translated into
+various languages, simulating character
+widths when there is a need to print from a
+printer not loaded vith the right typeface.
+However, the examples tended to be seen as
+either solvable by other means, of limited
+application, or trivial. The first multiple
+masters should be available early 1992.
+
+Following lunch, Peter Rosenfeld spoke about
+Font Technology and Intelligent Font Scaling.
+Peter works for URW, a German company
+who produce type tools such as Ikarus
+(designing typefaces), Linus (autotracing) and
+Nimbus (intelligent font scaling). They
+digitise about 200 new typefaces a year. Most
+of this is hand-digitised (using a digitising
+tablet) rather than scanned, and most designs
+are created manually rather than designed on
+screen. (Screens are not accurate enough, and
+a design takes longer, especially if corrections
+are required.)
+
+The day ended with Glenn Jones giving a
+fascinating account of the effect of desktop
+publishing on his
+company (GBM), an advertising typesetting
+house in Manchester. This used to be a
+Berthold house, and resisted moving to
+Macintoshes initially because of the lower
+quality. However, Macintoshes allowed access
+to a much wider type library and the ability to
+create one's own type, which is very important
+in this market. Berthold were dragging their
+feet, so the plunge to Macs was made. Two
+years ago, there were ten advertising
+typesetters in Manchester, all Berthold; now
+there are two, both using Macs. Their work
+has diversified, so that in addition to
+typesetting, they now also offer bureau work
+and font digitisation. They are very pleased to
+find that, as the requirement for trade
+typesetting has declined (with the recession
+hitting advertising badly, and many companies
+now producing their own adverts), they have
+found a future that builds upon their previous
+experience.
+
+The formal part of the meeting ended with a
+lively question-and-answer session, following
+which all attendees were kindly invited by
+James Mosley to take a look around the
+Printing Library -- a wonderful opportuniy to
+see some mediaeval digitisation, interpolated
+on the fly!\author{Cliff Morgan}
+
+\bar\title{Update on Didot}
+With the {\sc didot} (Digitising and Designing of
+Type) project now in its second year, it must
+be time to look at some of the past
+activities.
+
+We should remind ourselves of the
+aims of this three year, {\sc comett ii} project.
+These are to:
+\bitem design, implement and evaluate a
+curriculum for digital typography,
+\bitem organise seminars\slash workshops for
+typographers\slash graphic artists and
+computer specialists;
+\bitem publish and distribute information.
+
+The main activities to date have been:
+ 1990,18th--19th September, Introduction to
+\PS, held in Lausanne; 23 October,
+Presentation of {\sc didot} project, also in
+Lausanne; 4 December, Fonts, in Paris.
+1991: 28th February--1st March, Type design:
+radition and innovation, held in Reading;
+23rd--28th September, First European Summer
+School in Digital Typography, in Lausanne,
+yet again.
+
+In more detail, the 1991 activities started off
+with a seminar\slash workshop at Reading University.
+We worked together with our partners at
+Basel, Sch\"ule f\"ur Gestaltung, and with the UK
+Associate of URW to put on this
+seminar\slash workshop. The main purpose of this
+workshop was to explore ways of introducing
+people to some of the issues surrounding
+letterform design.
+
+Workshop activities ranged from exercises in
+producing letterforms by making marks on
+paper, to demonstrations of type production
+methods. The traditional methods of punch
+cutting, matrix making and type casting were
+contrasted with computer-based methods,
+IkarusM.
+
+Seminars dealt with the concept of a
+workshop, in conjunction with workshop
+activities. There were also lectures which gave
+us an insight into the major influences on the
+development of the letterform, and a view of
+what digital techniques have done to the
+relationship between designer, production
+method and final result.
+
+We were hoping to meet designers, educators,
+and computer scientists, but the 30
+participants were mostly from backgrounds of
+type design or production, and education.
+Despite this bias, the meeting did bring
+together an unlikely mix of people, and an
+unusual juxtaposition of old and new
+technologies. The problem with mixing
+people in this way is that we don't know how
+to talk to each other. The language of the
+seminars was not the normal language of
+computer scientists. But, we hope that {\sc didot}
+and more of these meetings will break down
+these barriers.
+
+The next activity, the Lausanne Summer School was a larger
+scale affair, lasting a week, with about fifty
+participants. Activities spanned technical
+talks, talks combined with workshops,
+computer-aided type design workshops, and
+lectures on relaed issues. If we chose to be
+technical in the mornings, we learned about
+font metrics, rasterisation grid fitting
+techniques, splines, autohinting, font
+descriptions, autotracing, and type forms for
+grey scale. If we preferred getting our hands
+on mice and keyboards, we were given
+opportunities with workshops on
+Fontographer, {\sc Typo}, Ikarus, the design of
+grey level fonts, or grappling with complexity
+in font design.
+
+Because of the choice provided in the
+programme, a sense of frustration did develop
+amongst those people who wished to do all
+things. But a very positive aspect of the week
+was the flexible organisation. In response to
+demand, we were offered mini workshops to
+enable us to sample virtually all the systems.
+The only difficulty remaining was to decide
+whether to wear a technical hat or a design
+hat. Don't we wear the one that we know fits
+us well, so that we don't have to struggle in the
+wind? Yes, there we were in our niches,
+confirming the need for the {\sc didot} project.
+
+
+If you would like to be added to the database
+of those interested in the project, you can
+contact Jacques Andr\'e directly (project
+coordinator) or I will pass on your details:
+Jacques Andr\'e (email: {\tt jandre@irisa.fr}).
+\author{Mary Dyson}
+
+
+
+\endinput