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Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.mathworks.com!zombie.ncsc.mil!newsgate.duke.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!paperboy.wellfleet.com!news3.near.net!amber.ora.com!not-for-mail From: norm@ora.com (Norman Walsh) Newsgroups: comp.fonts,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: comp.fonts FAQ: General Info (3/6) Supersedes: <font-faq-3_817479312@ora.com> Followup-To: poster Date: 14 Aug 1996 10:34:20 -0400 Organization: O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. Lines: 1027 Sender: norm@ruby.ora.com Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Distribution: world Expires: 27 Sep 1996 14:34:08 GMT Message-ID: <font-faq-3_840033248@ora.com> References: <font-faq-1_840033248@ora.com> Reply-To: norm@ora.com (Norman Walsh) NNTP-Posting-Host: ruby.ora.com Summary: This posting answers frequently asked questions about fonts. It addresses both general font questions and questions that are specific to a particular platform. X-Web-Homepage: http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/ Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.fonts:48300 comp.answers:20514 news.answers:79235 Archive-name: fonts-faq/part3 Version: 2.1.5 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 <dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu> 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 <dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu> 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 <dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu> 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 <dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu> 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 <dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu> 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 <cameron@symcom.math.uiuc.edu> 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 <lee@sq.com> 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 <ari@netcom.com> 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 <dmandl@bilbo.shearson.com> 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 <wdr@world.std.com> 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 <wdr@world.std.com> 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 <brown@ncoast.org> 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 <lee@sq.com> 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 <ath@linkoping.trab.se> 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 <unicode-inc@unicode.org> 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 <abe@keleida.com> Glenn Adams <glenn@metis.COM> Daniel Amor <daniel.amor@student.uni-tuebingen.de> Borris Balzer <borris@boba.rhein-main.DE> Charles A. Bigelow <bigelow@cs.stanford.edu> David J. Birnbaum <djbpitt@pitt.edu> Tim Bradshaw <tim.bradshaw@edinburgh.ac.UK> Morgan S. Brilliant <???> Arlen Britton <arlenb@mcad.edu> Stan Brown <brown@ncoast.org> Scott Brumage <brumage@mailer.acns.fsu.edu> Lee Cambell <elwin@media.mit.edu> Terry Carroll <tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com> Gerd Castan <G.Castan@physik.uni-stuttgart.de> Ari Davidow <ari@netcom.com> Eve Damaziere <bortzmeyer@cnam.fr> (c/o Stephane Bortzmeyer) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@waikato.ac.nz> Pat Farrell <pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu> James Matthew Farrow <matty@cs.su.oz.au> Stephen Friedl <friedl@mtndew.Tustin.CA.US> Peter J. Gentry <peter@utas.artsci.utoronto.ca> Yossi Gil <yogi@techunix.technion.ac.IL> Timothy Golobic <an314@cleveland.Freenet.EDU> Kesh Govinder <govinder@ph.und.ac.za> Piercarlo Antonio Grandi <pcg@decb.aber.ac.uk> Robert Green <rag5@cornell.edu> Rick Heli <Rick.Heli@Eng.Sun.COM> Jeremy Henderson <jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk> Henry ??? <henry@trilithon.COM> Gary <Gocek.Henr801C@Xerox.COM> Berthold K.P. Horn <bkph@ai.mit.edu> Peter Honig <peterh@macsch.com> Don Hosek <dhosek@quixote.com> Bharathi Jagadeesh <bjag@nwu.edu> Chang Jin-woong <jwjang@krissol.kriss.re.kr> Darrell Leland <dleland@nmsu.edu> David Lemon <lemon@adobe.com> Jon <jgm@cs.brown.EDU> ??? <vkautto@snakemail.hut.FI> ??? <robertk@lotatg.lotus.COM> Otto Makela <otto@jybox.jyu.fi> David Mandl <dmandl@bilbo.shearson.com> Kate McDonnell <C_MCDON@pavo.concordia.ca> George Moore <georgem@microsoft.com> Robert Morris <ram@claude.cs.umb.EDU> Stephen Moye <SMOYE@BROWNVM.brown.edu> Erlend Nagel <error@stack.urc.tue.nl> Terry O'Donnell <odonnell@mv.us.adobe.COM> Rick Pali <Rick_Pali@f328.n163.z1.jammys.net> Sean Palmer <sean.palmer@delta.com> Jon Pastor <pastor@VFL.Paramax.COM> PenDragon <REGY116@cantva.canterbury.ac.nz> Stephen Peters <speters@us.oracle.COM> Bill Phillips <wfp@world.std.com> Thomas W. Phinney <75671.2441@compuserve.com> Jim Reese <Jim.Rees@umich.edu> Bill Ricker <wdr@world.std.com> Liam Quin <lee@sq.com> Henry Schneiker <?> Tom Scott <tims@megatek.com> Bill Shirley <bshirley@gleap.jpunix.COM> Cameron Smith <cameron@symcom.math.uiuc.edu> Daniel S. Smith <dsmith@jericho.mc.com> Frank F. Smith <ffs1@cornell.edu> Werenfried Spit <SPIT@vm.ci.uv.ES> Anthony Starks <ajs@merck.com> Ike Stoddard <stoddard@draper.com> Danny Thomas <vthrc@mailbox.uq.oz.au> Anders Thulin <ath@linkoping.trab.se> Ian Tresman <72240.3447@compuserve.com> Bill Troop <biltroop@ix.netcom.com> Erik-Jan Vens <E.J.Vens@icce.rug.nl> Amanda Walker <amanda@visix.com> Jason Lee Weiler <weilej@nuge110.its.rpi.edu>