The absolute madman
A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
21–30 of 139 posts
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#22Sadly it is no longer commercially available after he died of a heart attack at the age of 41 in 2005 If it's an exacting replica of a preexisting typeface it shouldn't be covered under copyright and thus you should be able to freely share it.
Fonts aren't copyrightable anyway, just the font files are.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#23Sadly it is no longer commercially available after he died of a heart attack at the age of 41 in 2005 If it's an exacting replica of a preexisting typeface it shouldn't be covered under copyright and thus you should be able to freely share it.
A typeface is not a copyright protected work in the United States of America at the time that I wrote this [0]. However, files that font rendering programs can use to display typeface glyphs are protected works [1].
[0] https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf "Works Not Protected by Copyright" page 3, section 2 ; though, it does call out limited protections for heavily ornamented calligraphy and the like
[1] https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf "Visual Art Works" page 13 paragraph 6
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing what kind of epic projects a thesis can motivate you to take on (rather than your thesis).
I balanced a consulting job and my PhD, so thesis time was incredibly productive. When I didn’t want to do one, I’d become very productive on the other, and when I got tired of that, I’d switch and get very productive again.
Compare https://structuredprocrastination.com/
> ``. . . anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment." -- Robert Benchley, in Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#25Reading this really helps illustrate why and how a font is considered a computer program and thus eligible for copyright protection. I don’t think most laypeople (and even many programmers) intuitively think of it that way because they seem like a collection of little pictures, but so much work goes into these fonts. We are fortunate to have so many good ones to choose from today, and that someone has footed the bill for their construction, since most people never directly license a font.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#26That's wonderful! Does anyone know the best way to convert an old printed manuscript into a font file?
I’ve used Glyphs before for drawing type and can’t recommend it enough. Reasonably priced, quite powerful, fast and fluid to use. Drawing—even re-drawing—type is almost addicting. When you get the Bézier curves dialed in just right it’s so satisfying!
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#27The quote marks on that page are a real mess. Best practice is to use double curly quotes or single curly quotes—not backtick and apostrophe. See https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html ("Summary: Please do not use the ASCII grave accent (0x60) as a left quotation mark together with the ASCII apostrophe (0x27) as the corresponding right quotation mark (as in `quote').") Also, Founder's Caslon is commercially…
That's really informative!
Funnily enough, I picked up the habit of using graves for my opening quotes from working with old Unix software like ELisp without any context. I think it's a fine practice, particularly when used as markup that's transformed into curly-quotes on the user-faceing side, and it's even seeped into my handwriting as exaggerated opening quotes. I'll still draw nice curly quotes or mirrored ticks when writing neatly, but for sloppy writing and markdown alike, I find the clear distinction between opening and closing delimiters to be more readable than using just single quotes. On this, reasonable minds may differ c:
Thanks for sharing!
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#28When I was trying to avoid writing my thesis I just played video games
It's amazing what kind of epic projects a thesis can motivate you to take on (rather than your thesis).
I learnt to solve the Rubik's cube (actually the Rubik's revenge, the 4x4x4 variant) during the last month of my undergraduate thesis...
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#29Are those statements about “eye strain” for serif, sans and sans serif fonts scientific? Every time I see them they are not supplied by evidence but by some mumbo jumbo.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#30This font's ragged looking nature — is it primarily because of the way the font was printed at the time? I would assume there is some loss of clarity and other artefacts introduced by how metal type printing prints. It seems like these fonts were created only by looking at printed works. Could the original metal blocks (sorts/matrixes/punches) still be around?