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Times New Bastard

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61–70 of 138 posts

Re: Times New Bastard

#61
post #3

I'm not sure if the serif-icity is the jarring part, I think it's the different point size (or whatever that word is for the horizontal height lines that fonts live within). I'm curious why type/font technology hasn't developed for variation in letters, where a handwriting or printing typeface (or "Ransom" :) could vary the letter "a" so all the "a"'s don't look alike, the same as happens irl.

> I'm curious why type/font technology hasn't developed for variation in letters, where a handwriting or printing typeface (or "Ransom" :) could vary the letter "a" so all the "a"'s don't look alike, the same as happens irl. Why would you want that? It seems like it would be harder to read for no benefit.

>Why would you want that?

call me OCD but when I look at stuff written in script my eyes check to see if all the a's are the same, all the b's are the same, all the... and then what I see is manufactured uniformity, a communique from The Machine.

it wouldn't take much variation (say, three different a's) to make me feel a sense of relief that it's warmer and cuddlier

Re: Times New Bastard

#63
One can get a similar, extremely ugly effect if one is reading Japanese text rendered on a Chinese language system.

Many kanjis in the Japanese text will default to the glyphs in the system Chinese font. However, the kanas as well as some kanjis are not included in the Chinese font will be rendered with a failback font, frequently in a very different style.

Re: Times New Bastard

#64
Since this font is published under AGPL – is Times New Roman available under an open license? Or is this based on an open alternative?

Re: Times New Bastard

#66

It reminds me of lawyergrams, where the language is constructed to antagonize and threaten while still being logically and legally specific and correct - a kind of ransom note with airs. I'd wonder if some white shoe firm has gone to the trouble of commissioning an in-house font based on similar design principles to this Times New Bastard, just for that purpose.

The word you used, “lawyergrams” is so niche that it shows up only in a couple places on internet and no one knows what it means, including dictionaries and ChatGPT.

I have read a great deal of fiction and I write a lot, so sometimes that means having to just make the perfect word.

Re: Times New Bastard

#67
post #2

How does this work? I thought ligatures were just different glyphs stored in the font that would replace some number of other individual characters. Does that mean there’s a ligature glyph for every combination of 7 characters?!

There's a whole, let's say, scripting engine that lets the font decide which glyph is going to be used that goes way further than just simple ligature substitution. People have even implemented "games" as fonts this way: https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html

Have there been any high profile exploits of these font scripting engines?

I guess that must be where stuff like

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/bewar...

comes from.

It seems quite risky, I’m used to not downloading and executing shady programs, but downloading and executing… characters… is hard to avoid.

Re: Times New Bastard

#68
post #21

The biggest problem with this is that it's too obvious, if you really want to fuck with people it should require more effort for them to tell what's wrong. An insidious little niggle that grates upon the mind.

Maybe Times New Roman, but every seventh letter is Papyrus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ

Related: "Papyrus: The World's 2nd Most Hated Font"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t1D3ebc6h0

Re: Times New Bastard

#69
post #28
post #21

The biggest problem with this is that it's too obvious, if you really want to fuck with people it should require more effort for them to tell what's wrong. An insidious little niggle that grates upon the mind.

So something like Helvetica but every so often you sneak in Arial?

Isn't that just Arial?

Re: Times New Bastard

#70
post #19
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's the different point size (or whatever that word is for the horizontal height lines that fonts live within). Agreed! The x-height [0] (among other things) differs jarringly between the serif and sans fonts used. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-height#:~:text=In%20typogr... .

I wish you could specify the x-height of a font in CSS. If you mix serif and sans serif you want them to look like they have the same size. It would have been nice if the default browser fonts were selected to have the same x-height.

Soon! https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/commit/1fae25fa283c708f7...
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