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From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: treble and bass clefs
Summary: font cost and terminology
Message-ID: <1990May2.183931.3735@ico.isc.com>
Date: 2 May 90 18:39:31 GMT
References: <5327@cbnewsl.ATT.COM> <1183@chinacat.Unicom.COM> <2501@ariel.unm.edu> <1207@chinacat.Unicom.COM>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 41

woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) writes:
> ...rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
> > Sonata is only $95, and it's one of the more expensive Adobe fonts.
...
> > Typical Adobe font prices are $185 for the usual matched set of four, or
> > $145 for some of the mix'n'match sets of three decorative faces.  That's
> > just under $50/font,...
...
> Wrong.  That is 1 font, 4 faces.  You pay $185.00 not <$50.00.

(Wrong yerself!:-)

What we have here is apparently only a terminology problem; Woody's got
things swapped.  The term "font" is not more general than "face".  In
conventional usage, a "face" was the set of shapes while a "font" was a
face at a particular size.  With scalable fonts, the distinction tends to
get lost; although we speak of buying (a license for) a font, we really
mean buying a face.

The term "family" is approximately the correct one for what Woody and I are
talking about costing $185.  A family is a set of faces, normally designed
by one person/group, given a common trademark name, having a stylistic
consistency throughout variations in boldness, slant, condensing, etc.
(In terms of generality, then, font<=face<family<style.)

Example:  You can get the Palatino _family_, which we'll say consists of
four _faces_ - those being Palatino-Roman, Palatino-Bold, Palatino-Italic,
and Palatino-BoldItalic.  For each face, you can scale it as you wish
to get a particular _font_.  (But, as I noted above, the face/font dis-
tinction is fuzzy, and getting fuzzier.  I suggest you don't nitpick at
someone who says he's buying a "font" instead of a "face" unless you're
into tendentious pedantry.)  You don't always license a complete family,
though...take Helvetica, which at last count had eleventy-seven faces.
You license some consistent, useful subset.

Of course, none of this changes the basic issue - which is that Woody
thinks that Adobe's prices are too high and a few other folk don't.  But I
thought a note on terminology might save future confusion.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com    uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd     (303)449-2870
   ...Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.