5 ms·

I guess today 2017 "font" now equals "typeface."

blatherard 9y ago
I'd say this has been the case for a minimum of the past 20 years, at least in the US. Here's a screenshot from an early mac control panel. Notice the use of the word "Font" for typeface. http://www.amd.e-technik.uni-rostock.de/ma/rs/lv/hoqt/fog_files/Old_Control_Panel.gif http://www.amd.e-technik.uni-rostock.de/ma/rs/lv/hoqt/fog_fi...
- rjsw 9y ago
  Original Mac typefaces were not scalable so you were actually selecting a font in the control panel.
pavlov 9y ago
You're decades late with this observation. It happened when the first GUI word processors labeled the setting as "font". Users are not typography experts and will call it as the software does.
dghf 9y ago
I think "font" is the right term here. They talk about it being "available to download" and "available as part of a Windows pre-release", all of which make more sense when talking about the font (calibri.ttf) rather than the typeface, inasmuch as it one can meaningfully distinguish the two: I'm not aware of any other implementations of Calibri (e.g. OTF), but I'm happy to be corrected.
- Stratoscope 9y ago
  Ah, but .ttf stands for True TypeFace. Doesn't it?
  - itsameta4 9y ago
    TrueType Font, actually.
  - taejo 9y ago
    TrueType Font, I believe :)
    - Stratoscope 9y ago
      It was a play on words, a comment on the ongoing confusion over "font" vs. "typeface". (Having worked on font-related software at Adobe, I'm fairly familiar with this.) I did think it was an interesting coincidence that .ttf could be misinterpreted as True TypeFace. Guess I should have thrown a /s in there...
wolfgke 9y ago
> I guess today 2017 "font" now equals "typeface." As a non-native English speaker I really don't understand the subtle difference between these words.
- tangue 9y ago
  Roughly speaking typeface is the design and font is the digital file. It dates back from time when fonts were made of lead in a wooden case and is ill suited to our digital world. A modern approximation of typeface is "font-family". That being said ,except for typography nerds nobody gives a s* about that, and unless you're on a design forum the two are interchangeable.
- dghf 9y ago
  Typeface is the design, font is the implementation. In movable-type printing, a font is a set of metal slugs, each bearing a character from the typeface. In digital typography, a font is typically a TTF or OTF file.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Nobody except Donald Knuth and recreational pedants bothers to make that distinction.
- pluma 9y ago
  https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-between-a-font-and-a-typeface https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-be... > Even among type professionals, there’s a growing acceptance that for most people, the terms font and typeface can be used interchangeably. Only experts really need to worry about it. > “For most people in most situations, those terms can swap around without any trouble,” Tobias Frere-Jones tells Co.Design. “The distinction would matter in type design, obviously, but also contexts which involve engineering, like app development or web design.” I'd agree with that. To save you reading the entire article, here's the rough definition presented in it: Typeface refers to the set of all the distinct shapes. It's what most people mean when they say "font" in everyday life. Font refers to a specific weight at a specific size. Even as a web developer I find that distinction confusing because a single "font" file will usually support any number of sizes and can be rendered in different weights or even as oblique, although of course the result will be less sophisticated than using the "hand-crafted" weight variants or italics. And of course there are file formats that can actually contain more than one such "font" (even from different typefaces). So outside of actual type design or technical specifications I would say that the terms should be treated as interchangeable because nobody can be bothered using them correctly. I'd actually argue even type designers don't care much what you call them. Or at least that seems to go for the kind of type designers that actually design types rather than correcting people on the Internet.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
abrowne 9y ago
It's Jef Raskin's fault: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/business/jef-raskin-61-developer-of-apple-macintosh-is-dead.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/business/jef-raskin-61-dev...

I'd say this has been the case for a minimum of the past 20 years, at least in the US. Here's a screenshot from an early mac control panel. Notice the use of the word "Font" for typeface. http://www.amd.e-technik.uni-rostock.de/ma/rs/lv/hoqt/fog_files/Old_Control_Panel.gif http://www.amd.e-technik.uni-rostock.de/ma/rs/lv/hoqt/fog_fi...

rjsw 9y ago
Original Mac typefaces were not scalable so you were actually selecting a font in the control panel.

pavlov 9y ago

You're decades late with this observation. It happened when the first GUI word processors labeled the setting as "font". Users are not typography experts and will call it as the software does.

dghf 9y ago

I think "font" is the right term here. They talk about it being "available to download" and "available as part of a Windows pre-release", all of which make more sense when talking about the font (calibri.ttf) rather than the typeface, inasmuch as it one can meaningfully distinguish the two: I'm not aware of any other implementations of Calibri (e.g. OTF), but I'm happy to be corrected.

Stratoscope 9y ago
Ah, but .ttf stands for True TypeFace. Doesn't it?
- itsameta4 9y ago
  TrueType Font, actually.
- taejo 9y ago
  TrueType Font, I believe :)
  - Stratoscope 9y ago
    It was a play on words, a comment on the ongoing confusion over "font" vs. "typeface". (Having worked on font-related software at Adobe, I'm fairly familiar with this.) I did think it was an interesting coincidence that .ttf could be misinterpreted as True TypeFace. Guess I should have thrown a /s in there...

wolfgke 9y ago

> I guess today 2017 "font" now equals "typeface." As a non-native English speaker I really don't understand the subtle difference between these words.

tangue 9y ago
Roughly speaking typeface is the design and font is the digital file. It dates back from time when fonts were made of lead in a wooden case and is ill suited to our digital world. A modern approximation of typeface is "font-family". That being said ,except for typography nerds nobody gives a s* about that, and unless you're on a design forum the two are interchangeable.
dghf 9y ago
Typeface is the design, font is the implementation. In movable-type printing, a font is a set of metal slugs, each bearing a character from the typeface. In digital typography, a font is typically a TTF or OTF file.
pjc50 9y ago
Nobody except Donald Knuth and recreational pedants bothers to make that distinction.
pluma 9y ago
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-between-a-font-and-a-typeface https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-be... > Even among type professionals, there’s a growing acceptance that for most people, the terms font and typeface can be used interchangeably. Only experts really need to worry about it. > “For most people in most situations, those terms can swap around without any trouble,” Tobias Frere-Jones tells Co.Design. “The distinction would matter in type design, obviously, but also contexts which involve engineering, like app development or web design.” I'd agree with that. To save you reading the entire article, here's the rough definition presented in it: Typeface refers to the set of all the distinct shapes. It's what most people mean when they say "font" in everyday life. Font refers to a specific weight at a specific size. Even as a web developer I find that distinction confusing because a single "font" file will usually support any number of sizes and can be rendered in different weights or even as oblique, although of course the result will be less sophisticated than using the "hand-crafted" weight variants or italics. And of course there are file formats that can actually contain more than one such "font" (even from different typefaces). So outside of actual type design or technical specifications I would say that the terms should be treated as interchangeable because nobody can be bothered using them correctly. I'd actually argue even type designers don't care much what you call them. Or at least that seems to go for the kind of type designers that actually design types rather than correcting people on the Internet.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

abrowne 9y ago

It's Jef Raskin's fault: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/business/jef-raskin-61-developer-of-apple-macintosh-is-dead.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/business/jef-raskin-61-dev...