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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

#81

Post by rpastuszak »

I tried a similar approach but via CSS for my "medieval content farm" (https://tidings.potato.horse), but for perf. reasons ended up only randomising the opacity and tint of its individual characters and removed the transforms.

My next step is to add those little padded areas hiding the empty spaces on the right side of the text[1][2], so the column of the text feels neater (horror vacui was a big thing then it seems).

Weirdly enough, this gets much easier with container queries and stable diffusion:

1. feed SD with some examples of patterns, then scale them to 10 or so sizes

2. then use those images as backgrounds for elements fitting the empty space in each line

3. select the right image using a container query

This should give them a neat but organic look. And hey I can brag about not using any JS!

[1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2f/46/2d/2f462df256f4bd509b48... [2] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/68/a8/ac68a86da5ec457960d0...

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

#82

Post by chrisco255 »

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…

Probably the majority of the software I use to write code is open source, but font authors will routinely ask for exorbitant amounts for a license, they often refuse to charge a flat fee, insisting that they get a higher cut if your app has a certain number of users. Just because an app is popular, doesn't mean it's raking in the dough to spend six figures on a font license. It's just bizarre that I can build an app that serves millions of users using tech stacks like Linux, HTML, JS, CSS, Rust, Go, with tens of thousands of open source libs and modules to choose from, none of which have per-user fees, the majority of which have no fees at all, of which millions of man-hours have gone into producing and maintaining, and a font could end up being the most expensive component of my app.

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

#83

Post by Terretta »

Nzen wrote: post #23
causality0 wrote: post #20

Sadly 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…

Also, it's here: https://www.myfonts.com/collections/founders-caslon-font-itc

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

#84

Post by Terretta »

galkk wrote: post #29

Are 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.

From above: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s...

TL;DR: No.

The long-standing debate over serif versus sans-serif for readability is likely less important than we thought. Other factors, like the height of the letter or spacing between them, change how easy a text is to read more than the presence or absence of serifs.

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

#86

Post by perihelions »

- "It is certainly not as far-fetched as Leonard Bernstein's controversially slow reading of Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations with the BBC Symphony Orchestra."

That link got Google-holed, but I think it's the same content as this one (?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkklz0Vird4 ("Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations | BBC Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein") (1984? or 1982?)

(Or it might have referenced a specific passage of that recording, but I can't easily figure out which).

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

#87

Post by WhrRTheBaboons »

rpastuszak wrote: post #81

I tried a similar approach but via CSS for my "medieval content farm" ( https://tidings.potato.horse ), but for perf. reasons ended up only randomising the opacity and tint of its individual characters and removed the transforms. My next step is to add those little padded areas hiding the empty spaces on the right side of the text[1][2], so the column of the text feels neater (horror vacui was a big thing then it see…

that's an awesome site

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

#88

Post by bb123 »

I actually found this really pleasant to read. My eye seemed to be able to move from each word to the next more smoothly. It is interesting to note how the slightly uneven weights on each character are similar to fonts designed to aid Dyslexic readers like OpenDyslexic. I wonder if that is why. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDyslexic

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

#89

Post by dfan »

sdfsdfdsfsf wrote: post #17

The 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 really stuck out to me too. Given the author's care with other things and the fact that the quote marks in the dissertation itself look fine, I assume it's just an unfortunate accidental error and not the result of ignorance.
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