Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!mlb.semi.harris.com!trantor.harris-atd.com!trantor!chuck From: chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) Newsgroups: comp.windows.open-look Subject: Re: Lucida, and the OPEN LOOK Functional Specification Message-ID: <4881@trantor.harris-atd.com> Date: 15 Nov 90 13:12:03 GMT References: <1990Nov14.130354@Unify.com> Sender: news@trantor.harris-atd.com Reply-To: chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) Organization: Advanced Technology Dept, Harris Corp, Melbourne, FL Lines: 43 In article <1990Nov14.130354@Unify.com>, grp@Unify.com (Greg Pasquariello) writes: > Is Lucida san-serif roman? Yes. And no. Sans-serif, without serifs, means that strokes end cleanly, without little caps perpendicular to the stroke. Serifs were originally created by stone cutters, who had a hard time chiseling a clean end to a stroke. By chiseling across the end of the stroke, they got an attractive ending to the stroke. Roman is the version of a font that is not italic, bold, oblique, or otherwise modified. The italic version of a face is slanted, and is usually redrawn to be slightly more "flowery" or "scripty" looking. The oblique version is usually a roman face that has been slanted. Bold has the stroke widths increased, depending on the bold amount (bold, demibold, etc). Some faces have a narrow version, like Helvetica. To my knowledge, all Lucida faces are sans-serif. Of course, there are roman, oblique, and various bold versions of Lucida. Lucida is a good display face because it was designed specifically for use by digital imaging equipment like raster displays and pixel-based printers. The strokes and bowls of the glyphs are designed to prevent ink trapping, and to let the fonts scale without sudden jumps in ink density. Charles Bigelow, the designer of Lucida, gave an interesting talk on Lucida at the 1987 SIGGRAPH. Lucida is the face used by Scientific American, by the way. I guess this brings SA closer to OPEN LOOK-compliance than any other publication. :-) The history and technology behind typefaces is just fascinating. After you learn to recognize the faces, you see them everywhere. I can't pick up Life magazine without thinking, "Palatino". I was in London and picked up a copy of the Sunday London Times, and was somewhat thrilled to see the original Times-Roman. But then, I've always been a little strange... -- Chuck Musciano ARPA : chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com Harris Corporation Usenet: ...!uunet!x102a!trantor!chuck PO Box 37, MS 3A/1912 AT&T : (407) 727-6131 Melbourne, FL 32902 FAX : (407) 729-2537 A good newspaper is never good enough, but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever. -- Garrison Keillor