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A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis

linyangchen.com

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Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis

#31

Post by Apofis »

xp84 wrote: post #25

Reading 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…

I totally skimmed that whole article wondering where the font was and only realized it when I finished. Pretty timeless!

Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis

#33

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

pezezin wrote: post #28
juujian wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

For some reason the last “x4” confused me but then I remembered the z-axis. Then it had me thinking how a 4x4x3 Rubik’s Rectangular Cuboid would work. It can’t be turned 90 degrees on one axis. Anyway, for the next time you have a thesis to avoid, maybe.

Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis

#34

Post by Tainnor »

This font is slightly too messy for me, but I agree that "modern typography" is often too soulless. I'm also hoping for a renaissance of serif fonts - I'm not really buying the narrative that they're not suitable for the web.

Not a big typography expert, but one font I like and try to use often, is Baskerville.

On the other hand, while I love LaTeX, I absolutely abhor Computer Modern. Maybe it's not the font's fault, but rather the fact that by using it every paper ends up looking the same - but it just bores me to death.

Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis

#36

Post by ashton314 »

cperciva wrote: post #32
twic wrote: post #4

When I was trying to avoid writing my thesis I just played video games

When I was trying to avoid working on my thesis I wrote FreeBSD Update and bsdiff.

That’s one incredible flex. If only I could have half your productivity while procrastinating.

Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis

#37

Post by GMoromisato »

What I wish for is rather than encoding the wavy imperfections in the font, they should be procedurally generated at rasterization time. This way, the graininess can stay at the same resolution regardless of the font-size. As it is now, if you have a 120pt font, the rough edges are magnified.

Is there a way to specify something like that in the font language? Or does the rasterization engine have to implement that?

Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis

#39

Post by ilya_m »

GMoromisato wrote: post #37

What I wish for is rather than encoding the wavy imperfections in the font, they should be procedurally generated at rasterization time. This way, the graininess can stay at the same resolution regardless of the font-size. As it is now, if you have a 120pt font, the rough edges are magnified. Is there a way to specify something like that in the font language? Or does the rasterization engine have to implement that?

Anything procedurally generated is antithetical to professional font design. Fonts at different sizes are carefully fine-tuned exactly for the reasons that you mentioned, i.e., small features at larger sizes start looking wrong.
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