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From: ted@mbunix.mitre.org (Edward J. Ede)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Italic & Oblique
Message-ID: <44253@linus.UUCP>
Date: 1 Feb 89 18:44:34 GMT
References: <1603@csuna.UUCP> <1989Jan23.144822.29002@cs.rochester.edu> <43873@linus.UUCP> <323@iconsys.UUCP>
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In article <323@iconsys.UUCP> bryan@iconsys.UUCP (Bryan Cardoza) writes:

>>In article <1989Jan23.144822.29002@cs.rochester.edu> ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) writes:
>>>Small nit: it's Helvetica Oblique. Italics are for serif fonts.
>
>In article <43873@linus.UUCP> ted@mbunix (Ede) writes:
>>Correct me if I'm wrong (he says, reaching for his flame retardent
>>suit).  I was told that an Oblique font was just a normal font tilted
>>(by an algorithm) a certain number of degrees and an Italic font was
>>one that was re-designed (by hand) at that angle.
>
>You were told wrong; Ken is correct according to my professional designer
>friends.

     Designers of what?  Hardware, software, home fashions...

>-- 
>Bryan Cardoza			uunet!iconsys!bryan

In my previous posting I gave an example.  I guess Bryan chose to
ignore it.  ITC Lubalin Graph is a typeface designed by Herb Lubalin.
It HAS serifs.  Its slanted version is called OBLIQUE, not italic.
(If this is not painfully obvious, let me know and I'll expand it to a
small novella.)

Italic fonts are redesigned versions of the original fonts.  Look at
the little "a" in Times.  The roman version of this letter is not the
same as the italic version.  This is what I'm talking about. 

In general, serif-oblique fonts look funny.  This is due to varying
width strokes in Roman fonts.  So, the fonts are redesigned and they
become serif-italic fonts.  But in Lubalin Graph, the stroke width is
constant, so slanting the font does not make it look bad.  And that is
what is done to produce Lubalin-Oblique, an oblique font with serifs.
So, it is not true to say that italics are for serif fonts.

This information comes from two sources.  The instructor at my
PostScript class (one of Adobe's first twenty employees) and our lead
typographer in our publications and graphics department (35 years
experience; used to kern letters with a hacksaw.)  I consider both
of the people pretty reliable sources in the typesetting field.

I know I am probably going overboard on this issue, but I am annoyed by
people that spread misinformation as fact.  If you want to speculate,
go ahead, I'm all for it, just preface it with some kind of warning.

|Ted Ede -- ted@mbunix.mitre.org -- The MITRE Corporation -- Burlington Road|
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