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A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
- gerikson 3y agoThis is a typeface I'd be prepared to enable Google Fonts to use...
- cratermoon 3y agohttps://fonts.google.com/?query=Igino+Marini https://fonts.google.com/?query=Igino+Marini
- thedailymail 3y agoLinks for OpenType and TrueType downloads at the bottom of this page: https://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts/ https://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts/
- mcbuilder 3y agoCrazy or not, it looks great!
- twic 3y agoWhen I was trying to avoid writing my thesis I just played video games
- juujian 3y agoIt's amazing what kind of epic projects a thesis can motivate you to take on (rather than your thesis).
- i-use-nixos-btw 3y agoI balanced a consulting job and my PhD, so thesis time was incredibly productive. When I didn’t want to do one, I’d become very productive on the other, and when I got tired of that, I’d switch and get very productive again.
- eru 3y agoCompare https://structuredprocrastination.com/ https://structuredprocrastination.com/ > ``. . . anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment." -- Robert Benchley, in Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949
- pezezin 3y agoI learnt to solve the Rubik's cube (actually the Rubik's revenge, the 4x4x4 variant) during the last month of my undergraduate thesis...
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y agoFor some reason the last “x4” confused me but then I remembered the z-axis. Then it had me thinking how a 4x4x3 Rubik’s Rectangular Cuboid would work. It can’t be turned 90 degrees on one axis. Anyway, for the next time you have a thesis to avoid, maybe.
- twic 3y agoThinking about it, i suppose what i actually did to avoid working on my thesis (and pay the bills) was get a part-time programming job, and then that job became full-time, and i never finished the thesis. So, in a sense, fifteen years later, i am still procrastinating.
- cperciva 3y agoWhen I was trying to avoid working on my thesis I wrote FreeBSD Update and bsdiff.
- ashton314 3y agoThat’s one incredible flex. If only I could have half your productivity while procrastinating.
- cperciva 3y agoTo be fair, I wasn't just procrastinating from writing; I was also dealing with being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. I semi-officially took a retroactive leave of absence for a term (I was a bit behind schedule, mentioned the medical issue as having contributed to delays, and the head of the department said "we could say that you had a leave of absence but I don't want to bother with the paperwork if you don't want to").
- Tainnor 3y agoI did spend at least 1-2 weeks at the beginning of my thesis solely tweaking the typography. ;)
- cperciva 3y agoDoesn't everyone spend a couple weeks figuring out their latex template?
- lgeorget 3y agoAnd "cleaning up the bibliography" as well...
- zimpenfish 3y agoI spent a good couple of weeks writing some Perl and TeX macros to handle noweb forward-references for my 3rd year Uni project report.
- Tainnor 3y agoexcept those who write in Word and then spend the last 2 days before the deadline trying to recover lost footnotes
- edent 3y agoThat's wonderful! Does anyone know the best way to convert an old printed manuscript into a font file?
- dsr_ 3y agoGet the highest resolution scan that you can manage. Break it into glyphs. Select your representative glyphs. Become frustrated that in eighteen pages, there are no examples of [#%|\=÷×{}!*/] or a capital X or Z or five digits. Find substitutes. Use FontForge. Read the whole FAQ.
- waldothedog 3y agoI’ve used Glyphs before for drawing type and can’t recommend it enough. Reasonably priced, quite powerful, fast and fluid to use. Drawing—even re-drawing—type is almost addicting. When you get the Bézier curves dialed in just right it’s so satisfying!
- moritz 3y agoglyphtracer [1] can help with this, but letter shapes are only a small part of what makes a typeface. (Typography is about whitespace, or as Miles Davis said, “it‘s not about the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play that matter”.) [1]: https://github.com/jpakkane/glyphtracer https://github.com/jpakkane/glyphtracer
- lordleft 3y agoLooks like it’s time to put this on my kindle.
- NoGravitas 3y agoI've had the IM Fell fonts on my Kobo for a while. They don't work for every book, but they make a good change. I didn't see a link to his final adjusted font, though?
- fumeux_fume 3y agoThis is fantastic work. It's very hard to find historic fonts that haven't been overly modernized. For fun, I like to restore and re-print old playing card/tarot decks and other ephemera for use by a modern audience. In order to make them more legible it makes sense to use translated or reconstructed text. Having fonts like these readily available makes this work so much easier.
- kccqzy 3y ago> that one should never change the letterspacing of the lowercase letters But with the microtype package it is acceptable to slightly expand or contract the letters to avoid hyphenation. Typically the limit is set to around 0.025em. Anecdotally if you are applying letterspacing to uppercase letters, 0.025em is also a good default value to use.
- russfink 3y agoTL;DR - where can i get the font files?
- thedailymail 3y agohttps://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts/ https://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts/
- cratermoon 3y agoAlso https://fonts.google.com/?query=Igino+Marini https://fonts.google.com/?query=Igino+Marini
- phlakaton 3y agoSure enough, if you go from the end of the blog post straight to the thesis, you can totally hear the introduction of Also Sprach Zarathustra coming out of the title page.
- sdfsdfdsfsf 3y agoThe quote marks on that page are a real mess. Best practice is to use double curly quotes or single curly quotes—not backtick and apostrophe. See https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html ("Summary: Please do not use the ASCII grave accent (0x60) as a left quotation mark together with the ASCII apostrophe (0x27) as the corresponding right quotation mark (as in `quote').") Also, Founder's Caslon is commercially available, at least, it is now. https://www.myfonts.com/collections/founders-caslon-font-itc https://www.myfonts.com/collections/founders-caslon-font-itc
- autumn-antlers 3y agoThat's really informative! Funnily enough, I picked up the habit of using graves for my opening quotes from working with old Unix software like ELisp without any context. I think it's a fine practice, particularly when used as markup that's transformed into curly-quotes on the user-faceing side, and it's even seeped into my handwriting as exaggerated opening quotes. I'll still draw nice curly quotes or mirrored ticks when writing neatly, but for sloppy writing and markdown alike, I find the clear distinction between opening and closing delimiters to be more readable than using just single quotes. On this, reasonable minds may differ c: Thanks for sharing!
- Timwi 3y ago> I find the clear distinction between opening and closing delimiters to be more readable than using just single quotes. The correct characters to use are ‘/“ and ’/”. There is a clear distinction between opening and closing delimiters. I think you're falling for a false dilemma brought on by outdated software that is limited to ASCII (i.e., stuck in the 1960s).
- leguminous 3y agoI assume the author picked up the quotation mark habit from LaTeX. Backticks and apostrophes (single or double) get rendered as proper left and right quotation marks. It's also possible this was copy+pasted from a LaTeX source and they forgot to fix the quotation marks. The italics on the page are also missing, for me at least. I am seeing them as obliques. The upright roman face is tilted, rather than using the separate set of italic glyphs. Some systems do this if the italic glyphs can't be found or something is misconfigured.
- causality0 3y agoSadly it is no longer commercially available after he died of a heart attack at the age of 41 in 2005 If it's an exacting replica of a preexisting typeface it shouldn't be covered under copyright and thus you should be able to freely share it.
- rcme 3y agoFonts aren't copyrightable anyway, just the font files are.
- Nzen 3y agoA typeface is not a copyright protected work in the United States of America at the time that I wrote this [0]. However, files that font rendering programs can use to display typeface glyphs are protected works [1]. [0] https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf "Works Not Protected by Copyright" page 3, section 2 ; though, it does call out limited protections for heavily ornamented calligraphy and the like [1] https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf "Visual Art Works" page 13 paragraph 6
- Terretta 3y agoAlso, it's here: https://www.myfonts.com/collections/founders-caslon-font-itc https://www.myfonts.com/collections/founders-caslon-font-itc
- causality0 3y agoIs it not trivial to create font files from images of the characters?
- arrakeen 3y agoIt is not
- causality0 3y ago
- kevinwang 3y agoThe absolute madman
- xp84 3y agoReading this really helps illustrate why and how a font is considered a computer program and thus eligible for copyright protection. I don’t think most laypeople (and even many programmers) intuitively think of it that way because they seem like a collection of little pictures, but so much work goes into these fonts. We are fortunate to have so many good ones to choose from today, and that someone has footed the bill for their construction, since most people never directly license a font.
- Apofis 3y agoI totally skimmed that whole article wondering where the font was and only realized it when I finished. Pretty timeless!
- p-e-w 3y ago> Reading this really helps illustrate why and how a font is considered a computer program and thus eligible for copyright protection. Copyright protects all creative works, with very few exceptions. Whether or not a font is a computer program has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is eligible for copyright protection. Even if the font was just "a collection of little pictures" (that is, a bitmap font), it would still fall under copyright protection, unless the pictures were all in the public domain already, or some other special circumstances apply (e.g. creative threshold not met, created by the government, etc.).
- pgeorgi 3y agoUnder US law, typefaces aren't copyrightable, and even in other copyright regimes, they only get a shorter protection duration. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... for an overview. The digital workaround is to have bytecode in font files that is copyrightable.
- p-e-w 3y agoInteresting, I didn't know that some countries don't give protection to typefaces. Does that mean that if you take a commercial font file and strip the bytecode, retaining only the glyph shapes, you can do as you wish with the result? And does that mean all bitmap fonts are actually public domain in the US?
- zebracanevra 3y agoThis font's ragged looking nature — is it primarily because of the way the font was printed at the time? I would assume there is some loss of clarity and other artefacts introduced by how metal type printing prints. It seems like these fonts were created only by looking at printed works. Could the original metal blocks (sorts/matrixes/punches) still be around?
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoThe article says the original wooden blocks are mostly lost. They were not metal.
- galkk 3y agoAre those statements about “eye strain” for serif, sans and sans serif fonts scientific? Every time I see them they are not supplied by evidence but by some mumbo jumbo.
- Sunspark 3y agoYes and no. To a certain extent there is brain familiarity with letter shape, but screen resolution plays a role. Sans fonts are simply more legible on low-resolution displays.
- Terretta 3y agoFrom above: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/ http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s... TL;DR: No. The long-standing debate over serif versus sans-serif for readability is likely less important than we thought. Other factors, like the height of the letter or spacing between them, change how easy a text is to read more than the presence or absence of serifs.
- Tainnor 3y agoThis font is slightly too messy for me, but I agree that "modern typography" is often too soulless. I'm also hoping for a renaissance of serif fonts - I'm not really buying the narrative that they're not suitable for the web. Not a big typography expert, but one font I like and try to use often, is Baskerville. On the other hand, while I love LaTeX, I absolutely abhor Computer Modern. Maybe it's not the font's fault, but rather the fact that by using it every paper ends up looking the same - but it just bores me to death.
- gdwatson 3y agoComputer Modern is okay on paper, but I find it very frustrating to read on screen. I wonder if the Fell types are similar ‐‐ the scan of the thesis, where the letters aren't fit to the pixel grid, looks a lot nicer. I do like Baskerville, but I am a little sad that the only open source version I know of, Libre Baskerville, changes the design so much for the screen. Caslon is in the same boat.
- gdwatson 3y agoToo late to edit, but I was thinking of the lorem ipsum screenshots when I said the thesis. That'll teach me to reply off the cuff.
- _emacsomancer_ 3y agoI think the Fell types actually read pretty well on screen. (In contrast to Computer Modern, a typeface I really like, but agree does not read as well on screen.)
- isametry 3y ago> I'm not really buying the narrative that they're not suitable for the web. Good, because from a technical perspective, you don't need to. The legibility argument has been less and less relevant as screen resolutions have gotten good enough to display serifs in a reasonably print-like manner. (Which was arguably around 2010–2014 when Apple normalized “Retina” displays above 200 dpi, but is especially true today, now that the majority of web browsing occurs on mobile devices). What makes the difference is of course the cultural and branding associations with serif typefaces. But actually thinking about it now, I feel like I've been seeing a lot more serif typography on the web recently, even in modern, tech-related contexts. And looking at the big example of theverge.com with its quirky redesign, I think you might just get your renaissance soon :) (Related: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/ http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s...)
- GMoromisato 3y agoWhat I wish for is rather than encoding the wavy imperfections in the font, they should be procedurally generated at rasterization time. This way, the graininess can stay at the same resolution regardless of the font-size. As it is now, if you have a 120pt font, the rough edges are magnified. Is there a way to specify something like that in the font language? Or does the rasterization engine have to implement that?
- ilya_m 3y agoAnything procedurally generated is antithetical to professional font design. Fonts at different sizes are carefully fine-tuned exactly for the reasons that you mentioned, i.e., small features at larger sizes start looking wrong.
- bryanrasmussen 3y agoso how do SVG fonts handle this? Or do they? on edit: asking as you probably have in depth technical knowledge on this it would be nice to get some pointers on.
- imd 3y agoIn this case, the digitized font is taken not from the metal types themselves, but from specimens printed on paper. The paper was less uniform and smooth than modern paper, and there was a noticable amount of ink bleed. Since OP is interested in the "character" given to the letterforms by this era of printing technology, it makes sense to suggest some way of simulating this uneven bleed and spread.
- rob74 3y agoUsually, yes, but this font tries to reproduce the imperfections of text printed centuries ago (or, to quote the article, "look badass with its kinks and nicks"), so having two glyphs of the same type look exactly identical feels a bit jarring. Same as with other "rough" fonts which try to emulate stencils, handwriting etc. All of these would benefit from some randomness...
- drones 3y ago
- nocoiner 3y agoA 21st-century font in a 17th-century thesis would have been much more compelling.
- utopcell 3y agoI think the author didn't procrastinate enough: the math equations, the plots and the figure legends are so late 20th century.
- Sunspark 3y agoFor a version of the Fell fonts that is variable with cleaner shapes, see Elstob, https://psb1558.github.io/Elstob-font/ https://psb1558.github.io/Elstob-font/ You can play with the sliders and it is easy to get the same spacing effect as what the article talks about.
- tmoertel 3y agoThanks for the recommendation!
- Sunspark 3y agoYou're welcome. If you liked that one, go up a level in the github link and check out the other fonts, especially Junicode.
- _emacsomancer_ 3y ago[Junicode](https://junicode.sourceforge.io/ https://junicode.sourceforge.io/) is a great font as well.
- Sunspark 3y agoVersion 2 has been updated a lot since version 1. https://psb1558.github.io/Junicode-font/ https://psb1558.github.io/Junicode-font/
- CrampusDestrus 3y agoIt's not really an alternative. The appeal is the very organic and human look. The one you liked is certainly more apt for medieval stuff, but it still looks digital
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoThis is actually my favorite font execution and post I’ve seen on this site, and believe me, I click on all of them. (I’m also writing a book, and typeface distraction obviously comes with the territory.)
- floren 3y agoAh, I've found my new terminal font: https://building-m.net/xbackbone/jOGE6/sUGEqePe74/raw.png https://building-m.net/xbackbone/jOGE6/sUGEqePe74/raw.png
- fouronnes3 3y agoThis together with export LC_ALL=Latin.UTF-8 will do nicely to bring to life the metaphor that programmers are really wizards doing spells!
- flobosg 3y agoLooks great! It’s giving me some Sun Gallant Demi vibes (https://i.stack.imgur.com/g1qkf.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/g1qkf.png), which is one of my favorite terminal fonts.
- CrampusDestrus 3y agoWhich terminal are you using that supports variable length fonts this well?
- beowulfey 3y agoThat’s beautiful. A monotype version would be something to see.
- sambeau 3y agoIt reminds me of my old Sun workstation at Glasgow University sigh
- gdwatson 3y agoI'm usually a fan of Windows-style font rendering that snaps on-screen text to the pixel grid. But for this typeface it seems to heavily exaggerate the roughness as the different serifs snap all over. The pictures of the print pages look much nicer. How does it look on a Mac monitor?
- dbtc 3y agohttps://imgur.com/a/93x1FZu https://imgur.com/a/93x1FZu non-retina How does it look on windows?
- gdwatson 3y agohttps://imgur.com/a/5UebhP4 https://imgur.com/a/5UebhP4 Something about taking a screenshot on a scaled display makes my first image (at 125% scaling) look bigger than it should be; at 80% magnification it looks about the same size as it does in my browser, so edges may not come across quite right. (100/125 = 0.8, so that’s probably not a coincidence.) I set scaling to 100% for the second image, and that one looks true to life size, so it’s probably the better reference. Edit: On comparison, it’s not the serifs. Maybe it’s the lighter overall color on the page, or maybe it’s the way that autohinting exaggerates the contrast between thick and thin strokes.
- sinuhe69 3y agoVery interesting that one can reproduce these “un-sharp” effects using digital fonts. But for the eligibility, I find old typesets like these Fell fonts harder to read.
- winrid 3y agoI don't know why but I wanted to combine it with the Arwes[0] colors/assets and I kinda love it: https://blog.winricklabs.com/sci-fi-old-font.png https://blog.winricklabs.com/sci-fi-old-font.png [0] https://arwes.dev/ https://arwes.dev/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- psychphysic 3y agoThis is some top grade dissertation procrastination.
- Timwi 3y agoFor someone so deeply into typography, they sure seem to have trouble distinguishing a single open quote (‘) from a grave accent (`).
- tylercrompton 3y agoIn LaTeX, the open quote is denoted by a grave accent and the close quote is denoted by the apostrophe. Look back at the article and you'll find that the author consistently uses these characters in this manner. Why they didn't get processed to the proper Unicode characters, however, is beyond me.
- anotherthrway 3y agohttps://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/e2af1f55-5e1a-440c-8557-382371c6172a/content https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/... Thesis does read very nicely and the quotes (see example in references) are converted to expected double quote pair.
- Wildgoose 3y agoWhat an incredibly productive way of idling away your time. Wonderful!
- rpastuszak 3y agoI tried a similar approach but via CSS for my "medieval content farm" (https://tidings.potato.horse https://tidings.potato.horse), but for perf. reasons ended up only randomising the opacity and tint of its individual characters and removed the transforms. My next step is to add those little padded areas hiding the empty spaces on the right side of the text[1][2], so the column of the text feels neater (horror vacui was a big thing then it seems). Weirdly enough, this gets much easier with container queries and stable diffusion: 1. feed SD with some examples of patterns, then scale them to 10 or so sizes 2. then use those images as backgrounds for elements fitting the empty space in each line 3. select the right image using a container query This should give them a neat but organic look. And hey I can brag about not using any JS! [1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2f/46/2d/2f462df256f4bd509b489ad1fe3f67bd.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2f/46/2d/2f462df256f4bd509b48... [2] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/68/a8/ac68a86da5ec457960d0b865170ee6bc.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/68/a8/ac68a86da5ec457960d0...
- prox 3y agoGreat site and I just love that domain name.
- rpastuszak 3y agothanks, still thinking about changing my main email address to hay@potato.horse
- prox 3y agoStop thinking and do it :)
- WhrRTheBaboons 3y agothat's an awesome site
- clucas 3y agoIf you haven't yet, you should play Pentiment. It's set in the early 1500s as the printing press is spreading across Europe, and each character's dialog text reflects how they would write (or print, for the people who operate presses). The text rendering is truly beautifully done, the ink dries a few moments after the text is written out and everything. I've been hoping for a technical blog on their text rendering techniques but haven't seen one yet.
- dizhn 3y agoI didn't know Caslon had such a strong heritage. It is my favorite font for reading books but I could probably live without the upper case Q.
- perihelions 3y ago- "It is certainly not as far-fetched as Leonard Bernstein's controversially slow reading of Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations with the BBC Symphony Orchestra." That link got Google-holed, but I think it's the same content as this one (?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkklz0Vird4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkklz0Vird4 ("Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations | BBC Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein") (1984? or 1982?) (Or it might have referenced a specific passage of that recording, but I can't easily figure out which).
- bb123 3y agoI actually found this really pleasant to read. My eye seemed to be able to move from each word to the next more smoothly. It is interesting to note how the slightly uneven weights on each character are similar to fonts designed to aid Dyslexic readers like OpenDyslexic. I wonder if that is why. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDyslexic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDyslexic
- giraffe_lady 3y agoThere are probably other factors (some shapes just are more readable...) but I believe it's a big part of it yes. There was a typography trend in the late 90s, 2000s, and you still see echoes of it, towards "mathematical," "geometric" design in fonts. Eg using exactly the same curves, exactly the same bowl size and proportion, exactly the same serif etc across all characters. Now this is mostly regarded as a dead end. The text ends up feeling inhuman or bland, and the readability gains are at best negligible but often simply worse. It seems that the small inconsistencies aid quick character identification, if not too distracting. Right now the trend is more towards specific, intentionally introduced inconsistency. Most of them are too subtle to notice unless you're specifically studying the font, but ideally in aggregate they give it a certain organic feel and differentiate similar shapes used in different characters.
- dfan 3y agoThis is exactly what I miss about modern computer-typeset sheet music. There's a lovely organicness to the very slightly splotchy noteheads etc. in old sheet music, and modern scores feel very antiseptic to me by comparison.
- mkesper 3y agoTry lilypond for setting sheet music. http://lilypond.org/ http://lilypond.org/
- krick 3y agoReading this page I actually wonder, why don't we do it all the time. It never occurred to me before, and I'm even used to the idea that bland sans-serif fonts are somehow required of the screen, but web-fonts look like shit compared to your typical older book typeface. This page is simply more pleasant to read.
- tgv 3y agoI took slight offence at the passage "a live performance of a great symphony, in which musical instruments played by humans are never perfectly in tune and occasionally quite far out of tune" after mentioning the Wiener Philharmoniker. I don't think they ever play out of tune. I did hear orchestras play out of tune occasionally, but it has never been an agreeable experience. It never made me think "how human". Instead, hearing a botched entry in the chorale in Mendelssohn 5 helped me understand the brass players' addiction to beta blockers.
- jefftk 3y ago> ... mentioning the Wiener Philharmoniker. I don't think they ever play out of tune. On the contrary: they never play in tune. They are consistently 12 cents sharp! (They play A=443, when most of the world uses A=440. Joking not joking.)
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoThis is the kind single minded, damn everyone's opinions, deep dive into madness I can get behind.
- xwdv 3y agoLooks good and the anachronistic feel lends a gravity to the dissertation you just don’t get with thin modern fonts.
- ohmyohmyoh 3y ago> The very first specimen book of the Fell types, printed at Oxford University Press in 1693, when J. S. Bach was only 8 years old. Only four copies are known to exist. Furthermore, many of the original punches and matrices, some of which were made of wood, have been lost (Oxford University Press 1900), so these specimens are the only record. Ah so this is THE Dr Fell from an old remembered nursery rhyme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_do_not_like_thee,_Doctor_Fell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_do_not_like_thee,_Doctor_Fel... :)
- dan-robertson 3y agoLike the lack of typeface requirements, I think there was also a belief that the university regulations still allowed phd theses to be submitted in Latin, though I’m not aware of anyone trying it.