The Typeset of Wall·E (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#61

Post by adamomada » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:48 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #41

PaulRobinson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stood out to me too, as was sure that was not true. I'm a native Brit, I'm on the wrong side of mid-40s, often read historical literature that uses pre-decimal currency (and notation), and have never seen an interpunct used at all, or heard it referenced in terms of British currency until today. Unfortunately, I'm the sort of pedant who on seeing somebody state an incorrect fact with such certainty, I doubt the verac…

Born in the late 70s, so also mid-40s, I worked retail in the 90s and older pricing guns often used a raised · rather than one aligned with the baseline, so I didn't doubt that it might have been common, or even official, in the past, when I read it. Such guns would sometimes have “old style” alignment with the baseline for the numbers¹ too. The “still in use today” part is quite definitely wrong though. ---- [1] htt…

Even in North America, old school cash registers printed their receipts with the decimal as the dot in that purple ditto ribbon colour. I’m also remembering ticker tape calculators were the same as well.

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#62

Post by eCa » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:55 PM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #30

> The interpunct is still in use today [...] decimal point [...] dot product [...] separate titles, names, and positions Some·times it is it al·so seen To cla·ri·fy the way That syl·la·bles and me·ter meet In things we say to·day Which ex·tends from hea·vy use In pla·ces not so mer·ry For proof of this phen·o·men·on Con·sult a dic·tion·ary

The most surprising place I’ve seen it in is in the name of a certain street[1] in Barcelona, where it is used for pronounciation purposes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avinguda_del_Paral·lel

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#63

Post by adamomada » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:59 PM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #17

SiempreViernes wrote: post #6

> “10^6” in the corner, and are marked “ten million dollars.” Being a factor of ten off when writing out such a common SI prefix as Mega is a bit impressive.

I think the idea is that in the financial world of 2100, when on currency , 10⁶ should be read as short-hand for 10E6, not 1E6. Thus, 99⁶ should be interpreted as 99E6, hence 99 million, as the author says. We know already that SI isn't universally followed. As a rough comparison, if a food item contains 160 calories, we know that's 160 kilocalories - and calorie isn't an SI unit. Or, 1GB of RAM is often 1024^3 bytes…

If you look closely, kcal is always written Calorie not calorie. It’s interesting that even in otherwise metric based countries, the joule is completely foreign. It must be what most Americans experience when they see Celsius

RAM is always GiB - it’s how it works. I’d love to see an example of it being mangled though

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#64

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 10:43 PM UTC

parpfish wrote: post #58

autoexec wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just glad they stopped putting so many opening credits in films. It's basically insufferable to watch old movies with 10+minutes of opening credits. I'm annoyed by the 3-5 minutes of production credits at the start of movies today as it is.

That’s ALSO a George Lucas thing. Not having the directors name in the opening of Empire got him kicked out of the director’s guild https://screenrant.com/star-wars-george-lucas-quit-dga-empir...

Wow, it never even registered to me until I read this comment that the Star Wars movies didn't have opening credits. They're usually so forgettable anyway, and after reading that article, it seems so silly and ridiculous that all the various Guilds and Associations and Hollywood Political Units got so butthurt over that decision.

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#65

Post by stzsch » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 10:54 PM UTC

chefandy wrote: post #39

It's funny how big of a difference perspective makes. I think this is a neat portrayal of how differently designers and engineers reason about design topics. I was surprised to see an article about type that didn't involve code editors so heavily upvoted on HN, but as soon as I read the first few paragraphs, I realized why-- it was clearly written by an engineer that has learned a lot about design, and not a designer…

"When art critics get together they talk about style, trend and meaning. When painters get together, they talk about where you can get the best turpentine."

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#66

Post by Terr_ » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 11:53 PM UTC

agalunar wrote: post #51

Terr_ wrote: post #30

> The interpunct is still in use today [...] decimal point [...] dot product [...] separate titles, names, and positions Some·times it is it al·so seen To cla·ri·fy the way That syl·la·bles and me·ter meet In things we say to·day Which ex·tends from hea·vy use In pla·ces not so mer·ry For proof of this phen·o·men·on Con·sult a dic·tion·ary

Those aren’t syllable divisions, they’re hyphenation points! From the footnote on page 219 of Word by Word by Kory Stamper (formerly a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster): > Here is the one thing that our pronunciation editor wishes everyone knew: those dots in the headwords, like at “co·per·nic·i·um,” are not marking syllable breaks, as is evident by comparing the placement of the dots with the placement of the hyphen…

Fair 'nuff, so a small patch would be:

    - Which ex·tends from hea·vy use
    + Which re·sem·bles hea·vy use

I'd argue in both cases the dot is serving an additional role (beyond those mentioned in the article) of marking significant positions within a word.

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#67

Post by pacaro » Fri, Jul 12, 2024, 12:53 AM UTC

agalunar wrote: post #52

Terr_ wrote: post #30

> The interpunct is still in use today [...] decimal point [...] dot product [...] separate titles, names, and positions Some·times it is it al·so seen To cla·ri·fy the way That syl·la·bles and me·ter meet In things we say to·day Which ex·tends from hea·vy use In pla·ces not so mer·ry For proof of this phen·o·men·on Con·sult a dic·tion·ary

To save someone the lookup, this is: U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT = midpoint (in typography); Georgian comma; Greek middle dot (ano teleia) • also used as a raised decimal point or to denote multiplication; for multiplication 22C5 is preferred But note there is a separate Unicode scalar value for the dot operator: U+22C5 DOT OPERATOR • preferred to 00B7 for denotation of multiplication

.M and .P for those that use vim digraphs

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#68

Post by bb88 » Fri, Jul 12, 2024, 1:33 AM UTC

I still remember this golden article from that same site:

https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyss...

    While he’s doing so, there’s a dramatic…
 
    COMPUTER MALFUNCTION

    …in the hibernation pods, which causes the life support
    machines of the hibernating science crew to start reporting…

    LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL

    …and end up with their…

    LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED

    …which isn’t what they wanted AT ALL.

    Still: if it is going to happen, it may as well happen in what is 
    probably Univers 67 Bold Condensed.

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#69

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Jul 12, 2024, 3:46 AM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #15

SiempreViernes wrote: post #6

> “10^6” in the corner, and are marked “ten million dollars.” Being a factor of ten off when writing out such a common SI prefix as Mega is a bit impressive.

Given that 99^6 is supposed to mean 99,000,000, it seem clear that the superscript is not meant to be exponentiation but rather just denote the number of zeroes following (ie. short for scientific notation à la the 99e6 syntax used in programming languages.)

Hyperinflation requires austerity measures.

Re: The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)

#70

Post by chefandy » Fri, Jul 12, 2024, 5:04 AM UTC

chefandy wrote: post #39

It's funny how big of a difference perspective makes. I think this is a neat portrayal of how differently designers and engineers reason about design topics. I was surprised to see an article about type that didn't involve code editors so heavily upvoted on HN, but as soon as I read the first few paragraphs, I realized why-- it was clearly written by an engineer that has learned a lot about design, and not a designer…

As an aside, Microsoft hired Carter to design a high-quality serif typeface that was easy to render on under-powered PCs. When you're designing type, having a standard set of words you can use to compare revisions is important; for this task, they made up a tabloid headline "Alien Heads Found in Georgia," and that's where the typeface "Georgia" comes from!

(When I was in design school, I heard that it was "Pickup Truck of Severed Heads Found in Georgia" but I haven't found a single citation that supports it. I imagine the person that told me was mistaken.)