[HN Gopher] A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
___________________________________________________________________
A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
Author : _emacsomancer_
Score : 458 points
Date : 2023-07-20 21:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.linyangchen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.linyangchen.com)
| Timwi wrote:
| For someone so deeply into typography, they sure seem to have
| trouble distinguishing a single open quote (') from a grave
| accent (`).
| tylercrompton wrote:
| 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.
| anotherthrway wrote:
| 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.
| causality0 wrote:
| _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.
| rcme wrote:
| Fonts aren't copyrightable anyway, just the font files are.
| Nzen wrote:
| 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://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-
| art.pdf "Visual Art Works" page 13 paragraph 6
| causality0 wrote:
| Is it not trivial to create font files from images of the
| characters?
| arrakeen wrote:
| It is not
| Terretta wrote:
| Also, it's here:
| https://www.myfonts.com/collections/founders-caslon-font-itc
| Sunspark wrote:
| For 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.
| tmoertel wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation!
| Sunspark wrote:
| You're welcome. If you liked that one, go up a level in the
| github link and check out the other fonts, especially
| Junicode.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| [Junicode](https://junicode.sourceforge.io/) is a great
| font as well.
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| 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
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Like the lack of typeface requirements, I think there was also a
| belief that the university regulations still allowed phd theses
| to be submitted in Latin, though I'm not aware of anyone trying
| it.
| twic wrote:
| When I was trying to avoid writing my thesis I just played video
| games
| juujian wrote:
| It's amazing what kind of epic projects a thesis can motivate
| you to take on (rather than your thesis).
| pezezin wrote:
| I learnt to solve the Rubik's cube (actually the Rubik's
| revenge, the 4x4x4 variant) during the last month of my
| undergraduate thesis...
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| 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.
| twic wrote:
| Thinking about it, i suppose what i actually did to avoid
| working on my thesis (and pay the bills) was get a part-time
| programming job, and then that job became full-time, and i
| never finished the thesis. So, in a sense, fifteen years
| later, i am still procrastinating.
| i-use-nixos-btw wrote:
| I balanced a consulting job and my PhD, so thesis time was
| incredibly productive. When I didn't want to do one, I'd
| become very productive on the other, and when I got tired of
| that, I'd switch and get very productive again.
| eru wrote:
| Compare https://structuredprocrastination.com/
|
| > ``. . . anyone can do any amount of work, provided it
| isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment."
| -- Robert Benchley, in Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949
| cperciva wrote:
| When I was trying to avoid working on my thesis I wrote FreeBSD
| Update and bsdiff.
| ashton314 wrote:
| That's one incredible flex. If only I could have half your
| productivity while procrastinating.
| cperciva wrote:
| To be fair, I wasn't just procrastinating from writing; I
| was also dealing with being diagnosed with a life-
| threatening illness. I semi-officially took a retroactive
| leave of absence for a term (I was a bit behind schedule,
| mentioned the medical issue as having contributed to
| delays, and the head of the department said "we could say
| that you had a leave of absence but I don't want to bother
| with the paperwork if you don't want to").
| Tainnor wrote:
| I did spend at least 1-2 weeks at the beginning of my thesis
| solely tweaking the typography. ;)
| cperciva wrote:
| Doesn't everyone spend a couple weeks figuring out their
| latex template?
| Tainnor wrote:
| except those who write in Word and then spend the last 2
| days before the deadline trying to recover lost footnotes
| lgeorget wrote:
| And "cleaning up the bibliography" as well...
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I spent a good couple of weeks writing some Perl and TeX
| macros to handle noweb forward-references for my 3rd year
| Uni project report.
| gerikson wrote:
| This is a typeface I'd be prepared to enable Google Fonts to
| use...
| thedailymail wrote:
| Links for OpenType and TrueType downloads at the bottom of this
| page: https://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts/
| cratermoon wrote:
| https://fonts.google.com/?query=Igino+Marini
| russfink wrote:
| TL;DR - where can i get the font files?
| thedailymail wrote:
| https://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts/
| cratermoon wrote:
| Also https://fonts.google.com/?query=Igino+Marini
| edent wrote:
| That's wonderful!
|
| Does anyone know the best way to convert an old printed
| manuscript into a font file?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Get the highest resolution scan that you can manage. Break it
| into glyphs. Select your representative glyphs.
|
| Become frustrated that in eighteen pages, there are no examples
| of [#%|\=/x{}!*/] or a capital X or Z or five digits. Find
| substitutes.
|
| Use FontForge. Read the whole FAQ.
| waldothedog wrote:
| I've used Glyphs before for drawing type and can't recommend it
| enough. Reasonably priced, quite powerful, fast and fluid to
| use. Drawing--even re-drawing--type is almost addicting. When
| you get the Bezier curves dialed in just right it's so
| satisfying!
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| This is the kind single minded, damn everyone's opinions, deep
| dive into madness I can get behind.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| 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?
| drones wrote:
| I was already writing a comment about procedural generation
| before I saw yours. I was thinking about placing shapes on the
| boundary of a basic character shape, and placing random points
| within those shapes which then have lines/splines drawn between
| them. You could change the size of the shape depending on how
| much you want the shape to vary. That way you can still
| exercise control over what specific features are preserved. I'm
| sure someone can come up with something better.
| ilya_m wrote:
| 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.
| rob74 wrote:
| Usually, yes, but this font tries to reproduce the
| imperfections of text printed centuries ago (or, to quote the
| article, "look badass with its kinks and nicks"), so having
| two glyphs of the same type look exactly identical feels a
| bit jarring. Same as with other "rough" fonts which try to
| emulate stencils, handwriting etc. All of these would benefit
| from some randomness...
| imd wrote:
| In this case, the digitized font is taken not from the metal
| types themselves, but from specimens printed on paper. The
| paper was less uniform and smooth than modern paper, and
| there was a noticable amount of ink bleed. Since OP is
| interested in the "character" given to the letterforms by
| this era of printing technology, it makes sense to suggest
| some way of simulating this uneven bleed and spread.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| so how do SVG fonts handle this? Or do they?
|
| on edit: asking as you probably have in depth technical
| knowledge on this it would be nice to get some pointers on.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Yeah, I was idly wondering if it might be fun to try rendering
| fonts through a basic physics simulation of inks and paper
| types. It would probably be wasteful to do most of the time in
| font rendering, but it might be fun to try when doing things
| like rendering final slides or PDFs (that are themselves not
| intended to be sent to printers, because that would be silly).
| kps wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wonder what the impact on energy expenditure would be for a
| widely used font.
| dizhn wrote:
| I didn't know Caslon had such a strong heritage. It is my
| favorite font for reading books but I could probably live without
| the upper case Q.
| lordleft wrote:
| Looks like it's time to put this on my kindle.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I've had the IM Fell fonts on my Kobo for a while. They don't
| work for every book, but they make a good change.
|
| I didn't see a link to his final adjusted font, though?
| kevinwang wrote:
| The absolute madman
| ohmyohmyoh wrote:
| > 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...
|
| :)
| tgv wrote:
| I 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.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> ... 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.)
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| This is actually my favorite font execution and post I've seen on
| this site, and believe me, I click on _all_ of them.
|
| (I'm also writing a book, and typeface distraction obviously
| comes with the territory.)
| gdwatson wrote:
| I'm usually a fan of Windows-style font rendering that snaps on-
| screen text to the pixel grid. But for this typeface it seems to
| heavily exaggerate the roughness as the different serifs snap all
| over. The pictures of the print pages look much nicer.
|
| How does it look on a Mac monitor?
| dbtc wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/93x1FZu non-retina
|
| How does it look on windows?
| gdwatson wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/5UebhP4
|
| Something about taking a screenshot on a scaled display makes
| my first image (at 125% scaling) look bigger than it should
| be; at 80% magnification it looks about the same size as it
| does in my browser, so edges may not come across quite right.
| (100/125 = 0.8, so that's probably not a coincidence.)
|
| I set scaling to 100% for the second image, and that one
| looks true to life size, so it's probably the better
| reference.
|
| Edit: On comparison, it's not the serifs. Maybe it's the
| lighter overall color on the page, or maybe it's the way that
| autohinting exaggerates the contrast between thick and thin
| strokes.
| [deleted]
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" 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).
| dfan wrote:
| This is exactly what I miss about modern computer-typeset sheet
| music. There's a lovely organicness to the very slightly splotchy
| noteheads etc. in old sheet music, and modern scores feel very
| antiseptic to me by comparison.
| mkesper wrote:
| Try lilypond for setting sheet music. http://lilypond.org/
| phlakaton wrote:
| Sure enough, if you go from the end of the blog post straight to
| the thesis, you can totally hear the introduction of _Also Sprach
| Zarathustra_ coming out of the title page.
| nocoiner wrote:
| A 21st-century font in a 17th-century thesis would have been much
| more compelling.
| winrid wrote:
| I don't know why but I wanted to combine it with the Arwes[0]
| colors/assets and I kinda love it:
| https://blog.winricklabs.com/sci-fi-old-font.png
|
| [0] https://arwes.dev/
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| This is fantastic work. It's very hard to find historic fonts
| that haven't been overly modernized. For fun, I like to restore
| and re-print old playing card/tarot decks and other ephemera for
| use by a modern audience. In order to make them more legible it
| makes sense to use translated or reconstructed text. Having fonts
| like these readily available makes this work so much easier.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| 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...
| prox wrote:
| Great site and I just love that domain name.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| thanks, still thinking about changing my main email address
| to hay@potato.horse
| prox wrote:
| Stop thinking and do it :)
| WhrRTheBaboons wrote:
| that's an awesome site
| clucas wrote:
| 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 techniques
| but haven't seen one yet.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| 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/
| clucas wrote:
| Added to cart, thank you!
| pradn wrote:
| There is a post about their font design actually. It's by
| Lettermatic, the font design house that helped them with the
| game.
|
| https://lettermatic.com/custom/pentiment
| clucas wrote:
| Thank you!
| bb123 wrote:
| 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
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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.
| Wildgoose wrote:
| What an incredibly productive way of idling away your time.
|
| Wonderful!
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| Very interesting that one can reproduce these "un-sharp" effects
| using digital fonts.
|
| But for the eligibility, I find old typesets like these Fell
| fonts harder to read.
| sdfsdfdsfsf wrote:
| 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 available, at least, it
| is now. https://www.myfonts.com/collections/founders-caslon-font-
| itc
| autumn-antlers wrote:
| That's really informative!
|
| Funnily enough, I picked up the habit of using graves for my
| opening quotes from working with old Unix software like ELisp
| without any context. I think it's a fine practice, particularly
| when used as markup that's transformed into curly-quotes on the
| user-faceing side, and it's even seeped into my handwriting as
| exaggerated opening quotes. I'll still draw nice curly quotes
| or mirrored ticks when writing neatly, but for sloppy writing
| and markdown alike, I find the clear distinction between
| opening and closing delimiters to be more readable than using
| just single quotes. On this, reasonable minds may differ c:
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| Timwi wrote:
| > I find the clear distinction between opening and closing
| delimiters to be more readable than using just single quotes.
|
| The correct characters to use are '/" and '/". There is a
| clear distinction between opening and closing delimiters. I
| think you're falling for a false dilemma brought on by
| outdated software that is limited to ASCII (i.e., stuck in
| the 1960s).
| dfan wrote:
| 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.
| autumn-antlers wrote:
| I'm stuck to the letters on my keyboard, though I suppose I
| could change that :p
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| anglo-centrist take of quotation rules
| photonerd wrote:
| Anglo font. In an Anglo language. That is discussing the
| nuances of an Anglo typeface.
|
| Ya think?
| q87b wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| are you critizising my comment?
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's an article in English, being discussed in English.
| leguminous wrote:
| I assume the author picked up the quotation mark habit from
| LaTeX. Backticks and apostrophes (single or double) get
| rendered as proper left and right quotation marks. It's also
| possible this was copy+pasted from a LaTeX source and they
| forgot to fix the quotation marks.
|
| The italics on the page are also missing, for me at least. I am
| seeing them as obliques. The upright roman face is tilted,
| rather than using the separate set of italic glyphs. Some
| systems do this if the italic glyphs can't be found or
| something is misconfigured.
| xp84 wrote:
| 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 for their
| construction, since most people never directly license a font.
| p-e-w wrote:
| > Reading this really helps illustrate why and how a font is
| considered a computer program and thus eligible for copyright
| protection.
|
| Copyright protects all creative works, with very few
| exceptions. Whether or not a font is a computer program has
| absolutely nothing to do with whether it is eligible for
| copyright protection.
|
| Even if the font was just "a collection of little pictures"
| (that is, a bitmap font), it would still fall under copyright
| protection, unless the pictures were all in the public domain
| already, or some other special circumstances apply (e.g.
| creative threshold not met, created by the government, etc.).
| pgeorgi wrote:
| Under US law, typefaces aren't copyrightable, and even in
| other copyright regimes, they only get a shorter protection
| duration. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_prop
| erty_protecti... for an overview.
|
| The digital workaround is to have bytecode in font files that
| is copyrightable.
| p-e-w wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know that some countries don't give
| protection to typefaces.
|
| Does that mean that if you take a commercial font file and
| strip the bytecode, retaining only the glyph shapes, you
| can do as you wish with the result? And does that mean all
| bitmap fonts are actually public domain in the US?
| adrian_b wrote:
| Stripping the bytecode may make the font look ugly at low
| display resolutions, though many modern font rendering
| programs use various auto-hinting algorithms to alleviate
| that (which were invented in order to circumvent the
| patents that could forbid the execution of the bytecode).
| chrisco255 wrote:
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > It's more comparable to illustration or photography, or
| even to a written body of html or js, than it is to the
| programming languag
|
| Yeah again I can download about a few hundred thousand open
| source tools like ffmpeg, git, Linux, Chromium, web
| servers, databases, queues, web libs, etc and almost always
| the best stuff is open source. Almost never is there some
| kind of per user fee just for copying code, and if it is,
| almost nobody is using it.
|
| It's not shitty for me to call out greedy excessive
| licensing practices.
| jefftk wrote:
| It's really not that weird: there are open source fonts and
| proprietary fonts, just as there is open source software and
| proprietary software.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| And even proprietary software used in programming web
| servers rarely ever attempts to charge a "per user" fee or
| six figures for a mildly popular app to use.
| Apofis wrote:
| I totally skimmed that whole article wondering where the font
| was and only realized it when I finished. Pretty timeless!
| kccqzy wrote:
| > that one should never change the letterspacing of the lowercase
| letters
|
| But with the microtype package it is acceptable to slightly
| expand or contract the letters to avoid hyphenation. Typically
| the limit is set to around 0.025em.
|
| Anecdotally if you are applying letterspacing to uppercase
| letters, 0.025em is also a good default value to use.
| galkk wrote:
| 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.
| Terretta wrote:
| 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.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Yes and no. To a certain extent there is brain familiarity with
| letter shape, but screen resolution plays a role. Sans fonts
| are simply more legible on low-resolution displays.
| utopcell wrote:
| I think the author didn't procrastinate enough: the math
| equations, the plots and the figure legends are so late 20th
| century.
| zebracanevra wrote:
| This font's ragged looking nature -- is it primarily because of
| the way the font was printed at the time? I would assume there is
| some loss of clarity and other artefacts introduced by how metal
| type printing prints. It seems like these fonts were created only
| by looking at printed works. Could the original metal blocks
| (sorts/matrixes/punches) still be around?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| The article says the original wooden blocks are mostly lost.
| They were not metal.
| krick wrote:
| 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.
| xwdv wrote:
| Looks good and the anachronistic feel lends a gravity to the
| dissertation you just don't get with thin modern fonts.
| psychphysic wrote:
| This is some top grade dissertation procrastination.
| mcbuilder wrote:
| Crazy or not, it looks great!
| Tainnor wrote:
| 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.
| isametry wrote:
| > I'm not really buying the narrative that they're not suitable
| for the web.
|
| Good, because from a technical perspective, you don't need to.
| The legibility argument has been less and less relevant as
| screen resolutions have gotten good enough to display serifs in
| a reasonably print-like manner. (Which was arguably around
| 2010-2014 when Apple normalized "Retina" displays above 200
| dpi, but is _especially_ true today, now that the majority of
| web browsing occurs on mobile devices).
|
| What makes the difference is of course the cultural and
| branding associations with serif typefaces. But actually
| thinking about it now, I feel like I've been seeing a lot more
| serif typography on the web recently, even in modern, tech-
| related contexts. And looking at the big example of
| theverge.com with its quirky redesign, I think you might just
| get your renaissance soon :)
|
| (Related: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-
| serif-or-s...)
| photonerd wrote:
| 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.
| gdwatson wrote:
| Computer Modern is okay on paper, but I find it very
| frustrating to read on screen. I wonder if the Fell types are
| similar -- the scan of the thesis, where the letters aren't fit
| to the pixel grid, looks a lot nicer.
|
| I do like Baskerville, but I am a little sad that the only open
| source version I know of, Libre Baskerville, changes the design
| so much for the screen. Caslon is in the same boat.
| gdwatson wrote:
| Too late to edit, but I was thinking of the lorem ipsum
| screenshots when I said the thesis. That'll teach me to reply
| off the cuff.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| I think the Fell types actually read pretty well on screen.
| (In contrast to Computer Modern, a typeface I really like,
| but agree does not read as well on screen.)
| floren wrote:
| Ah, I've found my new terminal font:
| https://building-m.net/xbackbone/jOGE6/sUGEqePe74/raw.png
| beowulfey wrote:
| That's beautiful. A monotype version would be something to see.
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| This together with export LC_ALL=Latin.UTF-8 will do nicely to
| bring to life the metaphor that programmers are really wizards
| doing spells!
| flobosg wrote:
| Looks great! It's giving me some Sun Gallant Demi vibes
| (https://i.stack.imgur.com/g1qkf.png), which is one of my
| favorite terminal fonts.
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| Which terminal are you using that supports variable length
| fonts this well?
| pneumic wrote:
| Looks like 9term, the Plan 9 terminal emulator.
| floren wrote:
| Yep, 9term from plan9port.
| sambeau wrote:
| It reminds me of my old Sun workstation at Glasgow University
| _sigh_
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2023-07-21 23:01 UTC)