Re: An important article about computer typography

Henrik Theiling wrote:

>
> Hi!
>
> "Nicholas Bodley" <nbodley@...> writes:
> >...
> > Long ago, Scientific American printed a paragraph in which certain
> > parameters (numbers that define, in this case) for the letters of the text
> > were changed just a wee bit for each consecutive letter. I've forgotten
> > details, but the progressive transformation might have been, say, from
> > serif to sans.
>
> Nice! Yes, if you program your Meta-font correctly, you can simply
> change one parameter and get such a sequence.
>
> BTW, I did use Metafont for my earliest conlang Fukhian. I programmed
> several font styles in one file. Very easy to select attached serifs,
> etc. Some font samples are here:
>
> http://www.theiling.de/conlang/s1/compiled/hitchhiker.gif
> http://www.theiling.de/conlang/s1/fuch.gif
> http://www.theiling.de/conlang/s1/sample.gif
> http://www.theiling.de/conlang/s1/sample.ps
> http://www.theiling.de/conlang/s1/compiled/fuch.ps
>
> > Although Metafont is brilliant work, as far as I know, the faces created
> > by it that I have seen (not many, to be sure) somehow were more functional
> > than attractive -- lacking beauty.
>
> Right. As far as I know, only two fonts are thoroughly implemented,
> both by Knuth himself: the standard TeX font Computer Modern, and
> another one he used for one of his books. I forgot its name.
> However, both are not very aesthetical to me either. When I generate
> documents with TeX, I'll always switch the font to a PS font (normally
> Palatino), so although I like Metafont a lot, the lack of nice looking
> fonts makes me neglect it, too...

I'm glad you said that. As far as I'm concerned, TeX output is hideous
-- I assume most of it is done in this "Computer Modern" -- with serifs
that are far too big, default leading that's far too wide, and the worst
sort of Scotch Roman hooks on the italics. I know mathematicians love it
because it's easy to compose formulas in the system (I just picked up
that enormous history of mathematics pub. Norton at Strand for $15), but
there's really no excuse for anyone else. E.g. the Santa Fe volume on
language origins ed. Hawkins and Gell-Mann, or anything Ruhlen puts out,
...

See also Jonathan Rodgers's translation of W. Fischer's Arabic grammar
(Yale) -- the default Arabic is pretty bad, too. So is the Hebrew -- I
forget where I've seen it.

Now if Gentium could somehow be married to TeX ...
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...