Ah, I've found my new terminal font: https://building-m.net/xbackbone/jOGE6/sUGEqePe74/raw.png
Which terminal are you using that supports variable length fonts this well?
Looks like 9term, the Plan 9 terminal emulator.
A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
111–120 of 139 posts
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you haven't yet, you should play Pentiment. It's set in the early 1500s as the printing press is spreading across Europe, and each character's dialog text reflects how they would write (or print, for the people who operate presses). The text rendering is truly beautifully done, the ink dries a few moments after the text is written out and everything. I've been hoping for a technical blog on their text rendering te…
Sweet, thanks for the recommendation, I'm a sucker for little details like these. Something tells me you might like Inkulinati: https://store.steampowered.com/app/957960/Inkulinati/
Added to cart, thank you!
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#113For someone so deeply into typography, they sure seem to have trouble distinguishing a single open quote (‘) from a grave accent (`).
In LaTeX, the open quote is denoted by a grave accent and the close quote is denoted by the apostrophe. Look back at the article and you'll find that the author consistently uses these characters in this manner. Why they didn't get processed to the proper Unicode characters, however, is beyond me.
https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/...
Thesis does read very nicely and the quotes (see example in references) are converted to expected double quote pair.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#114Ah, I've found my new terminal font: https://building-m.net/xbackbone/jOGE6/sUGEqePe74/raw.png
It reminds me of my old Sun workstation at Glasgow University sigh
My first job, between high school and university, was at a bus company, helping with scheduling and timetabling, in the mid 90s. Me, teenage geek... with a Sparc 5 on my desk.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#115Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is it not trivial to create font files from images of the characters?
It is not
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#117Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#118Reading 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…
It's more comparable to illustration or photography, or even to a written body of html or js, than it is to the programming language. It's the output of an applied specialist technician for a specific purpose.
So similar to those other things you can find a free or cheap generic off-the-shelf one that suits your use, open source fonts exist. Or you can pay for a specific one that suits it better.
Font design is a domain several times older than the oldest reasonable precursor to computers. It's imo shitty to stomp in and demand it conform to our idea of how licensing should work.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#119I 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
There are probably other factors (some shapes just are more readable...) but I believe it's a big part of it yes.
There was a typography trend in the late 90s, 2000s, and you still see echoes of it, towards "mathematical," "geometric" design in fonts. Eg using exactly the same curves, exactly the same bowl size and proportion, exactly the same serif etc across all characters. Now this is mostly regarded as a dead end. The text ends up feeling inhuman or bland, and the readability gains are at best negligible but often simply worse. It seems that the small inconsistencies aid quick character identification, if not too distracting.
Right now the trend is more towards specific, intentionally introduced inconsistency. Most of them are too subtle to notice unless you're specifically studying the font, but ideally in aggregate they give it a certain organic feel and differentiate similar shapes used in different characters.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#120> The very first specimen book of the Fell types, printed at Oxford University Press in 1693, when J. S. Bach was only 8 years old. Only four copies are known to exist. Furthermore, many of the original punches and matrices, some of which were made of wood, have been lost (Oxford University Press 1900), so these specimens are the only record.
Ah so this is THE Dr Fell from an old remembered nursery rhyme
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_do_not_like_thee,_Doctor_Fel...
:)