Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!bbn.com!rsalz
From: rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Computers and fonts
Message-ID: <611@fig.bbn.com>
Date: 10 Apr 88 22:06:39 GMT
Organization: BBN Laboratories, Cambridge MA
Lines: 43
Summary: Get the ATypI proceedings printed in Visible Language

I highly recommend that participants in this newsgroup get the Volume XIX,
Number 1 (Winter, 1985) issue of _Visible Language_.  This special issue
contains the proceedings of an international seminar, "The Computer and
the Hand in Type Design" held at Stanford in 1983.  It provides some
interesting historical perspective and insights from world-reknowned
experts.  (It's a humbling correction for the computer-based hubris Knuth
has brought into the field.)

Quoting from the introduction:
	Typography is _writing_ in the industrial era.  Computer
	typography may be less than two decades old, but we are the
	literate heirs to a scribal tradition that began with
	cuneiform writing five millennia ago in the Sumeria
	city-states of Mesopotamia.  Computer literacy and its
	problems can best be understood in the context of writing.

Quoting from Herman Zapf writing on future tendencies in type design:
	As an example, digitizing my Optima roman presented many
	difficulties.  The well-balanced shape of the stems is
	contrary to the digital principle, especially in low
	resolutions, some of which go down to 300 lines per inch.
	The design must be reduced to a heart-breaking compromise.
	The answer to this problem is that Optima was never designed
	for digital storage.  If I had been asked, I would have done
	a new design, used another principle and another name, but
	would have tailored it to the needs of limitations of today's
	equipment.

(BTW, Zapf says that Times Roman was designed in England in 1932
by Stanley Morison, executed by Victor Lardent for the
British Monotype Corporation.)

For information on subscriptions and back issues (normally $6),
write to
	Visible Language
	Box 1972 CMA
	Cleveland OH  044106
	USA

	Phone 1 216 421 7340
	/rich $alz
-- 
Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.