Reading this page I actually wonder, why don't we do it all the time. It never occurred to me before, and I'm even used to the idea that bland sans-serif fonts are somehow required of the screen, but web-fonts look like shit compared to your typical older book typeface. This page is simply more pleasant to read.
A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
91–100 of 139 posts
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did spend at least 1-2 weeks at the beginning of my thesis solely tweaking the typography. ;)
Doesn't everyone spend a couple weeks figuring out their latex template?
except those who write in Word and then spend the last 2 days before the deadline trying to recover lost footnotes
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#93I took slight offence at the passage "a live performance of a great symphony, in which musical instruments played by humans are never perfectly in tune and occasionally quite far out of tune" after mentioning the Wiener Philharmoniker. I don't think they ever play out of tune.
I did hear orchestras play out of tune occasionally, but it has never been an agreeable experience. It never made me think "how human". Instead, hearing a botched entry in the chorale in Mendelssohn 5 helped me understand the brass players' addiction to beta blockers.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#94I took slight offence at the passage "a live performance of a great symphony, in which musical instruments played by humans are never perfectly in tune and occasionally quite far out of tune" after mentioning the Wiener Philharmoniker. I don't think they ever play out of tune. I did hear orchestras play out of tune occasionally, but it has never been an agreeable experience. It never made me think "how human". Instea…
> ... mentioning the Wiener Philharmoniker. I don't think they ever play out of tune.
On the contrary: they never play in tune. They are consistently 12 cents sharp!
(They play A=443, when most of the world uses A=440. Joking not joking.)
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#95Reading 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 really not that weird: there are open source fonts and proprietary fonts, just as there is open source software and proprietary software.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#96What 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?
I wonder what the impact on energy expenditure would be for a widely used font.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#97The 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…
anglo-centrist take of quotation rules
Anglo font. In an Anglo language. That is discussing the nuances of an Anglo typeface.
Ya think?
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#98What 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?
There used to be. In ‘Type 3’ fonts, each glyph is defined by a Postscript routine. They were not supported by any of the major display systems (Windows, Mac, X). Maybe NeWS or NeXT did; I don't know.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#99This 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,…
Likely because while Computer Modern was a great font for 1978, its last update was in 92 & it’s painfully outdated & low quality compared to modern digital typefaces.
Its continued usage is a crime given how good Latex’s typesetting is.
Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of its stale "Didone" style either. It’s a style that does better in advertising or magazine covers than for reading.
Re: A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
#100For a version of the Fell fonts that is variable with cleaner shapes, see Elstob, https://psb1558.github.io/Elstob-font/ You can play with the sliders and it is easy to get the same spacing effect as what the article talks about.
It's not really an alternative. The appeal is the very organic and human look. The one you liked is certainly more apt for medieval stuff, but it still looks digital