Usenet 1993 July/InfoMagic USENET CD-ROM July 1993.ISO/answers/fonts-faq/part2

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From: [e-mail] (Norman Walsh)
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Subject: comp.fonts FAQ.1B.General-Info (2/3)
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Date: 21 Jun 1993 13:19:07 GMT
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Summary: This posting answers frequently asked questions about fonts.
         It addresses both general font questions and questions that
     are specific to a particular platform.
Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.fonts:9140 comp.answers:1068 news.answers:9617

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Archive-name: fonts-faq/part2
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    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 market 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.

    1.13.4 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 that 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 provenience 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; and by a reluctance of congress to deal with
    the complex issue 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 several
    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.

    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 probably be awful, but it wouldn't violate copyright. Of
    course, the plagiarist would 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 type 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
    elapsed, 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
    Internation, 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. 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
    as case. Ultimately, some firm will hold out for a court judgement,
    and the matter will be decided.

    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 enthused 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 plagiarisms.

    ATypI

    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
    from the ATypI Board of Directors in protest over the
    organization's flaccid attitude toward the 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 the public 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 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 are 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; that is determined by the laws of a particular country.

    Charles Bigelow is a professor of digital typography at Stanford
    University and a professional designer of original digital
    typefaces for electronic printers and computer workstations. Mr.
    Bigelow and his partner Kris Holmes designed the Lucida typeface
    family which is now widely used on various laser printers.

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.

1.14.1. 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.

    * .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
      wrapper.

    * .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.

1.14.2. 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.

1.14.3. 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

    * .chr

      Borland stroked font file

    * .ff, .f3b, .fb

      Sun formats. More info when I know more...

    * .fot

      MS-Windows TrueType format fonts

    * .gf

      Generic font (the output of TeX's MetaFont program (possibly
      others?))

    * .fli

      Font libraries produced by emTeX fontlib program. Used by emTeX
      drivers and newer versions of dvips.

    * .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

    * .tfm

      TeX font metric file

    * .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 <[e-mail]> 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 Quim 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. ]

Subject: 1.16. Standard Laser Printer Fonts

    * 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.

    * 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 Tyography 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 geomentry, ``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.

    0-486-20792-7. Revised 1942 edition.