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"But the Deskjet Didn't Come Out Until 1988"

Started by Recusant, September 16, 2017, 03:48:12 PM

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Dave

Back in the early days of Windows I had a font designer app.

What I did not have was the need or patience required to use it!

Decades ago a programme on font design featured a master engraver creating the master copies for making the moulds to create the actual type pieces.

Impressive.
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

hermes2015

Quote from: Dave on September 17, 2017, 05:32:43 PM
Back in the early days of Windows I had a font designer app.

What I did not have was the need or patience required to use it!

Decades ago a programme on font design featured a master engraver creating the master copies for making the moulds to create the actual type pieces.

Impressive.

Dave, you haven't told us which typeface best expresses your personality.
"Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se."
― Charles Eames

Dave

Quote from: hermes2015 on September 17, 2017, 06:22:25 PM
Quote from: Dave on September 17, 2017, 05:32:43 PM
Back in the early days of Windows I had a font designer app.

What I did not have was the need or patience required to use it!

Decades ago a programme on font design featured a master engraver creating the master copies for making the moulds to create the actual type pieces.

Impressive.

Dave, you haven't told us which typeface best expresses your personality.

Well, nit really sure hut I think I would like to be Comic Sans.

Or, if a little more formal Trebuchet.



Just a little less stark than other ss fonts
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

xSilverPhinx

I associate you with the Gloucester MT Extra Condensed font, even though it has serifs. :grin:

I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Dave

^
Never met that one before, not bad as those fiddly serifed jobs go!

I supposed I am a bit "condensed", well, short anyway . . .
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

xSilverPhinx

Serifs aren't all that bad. :grin: There are a number of papers that suggest serifed fonts require less neurocomputational power, and so are recommended for long texts such as books. They are less tiresome to read. Others say that there is no difference so it seems there isn't much of a consensus.

I believe that serifed fonts with adequate spacing between letters are easier to read than the more rounded sans serif ones.  The 'e' and 'c' look a little more different, so do the 't' and 'f'.
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Dave

Quote from: xSilverPhinx on September 17, 2017, 08:31:14 PM
Serifs aren't all that bad. :grin: There are a number of papers that suggest serifed fonts require less neurocomputational power, and so are recommended for long texts such as books. They are less tiresome to read. Others say that there is no difference so it seems there isn't much of a consensus.

I believe that serifed fonts with adequate spacing between letters are easier to read than the more rounded sans serif ones.  The 'e' and 'c' look a little more different, so do the 't' and 'f'.

Yes, "Times" was designed for readbility. However I changed my Kindle to a sans serif font, just seem to prefer it. I especially like Trebuchet because it is easier to differentiate between small "L" and capital "i". One sentence in a sci-fi story included, "...AI [short for "Allan"] her Al [Artificial Intelligence]..." Bit silly of the author to pick a name that could be ambiguous in this ereader age.

I also like nice square, or circular, icons for apps, very slightly radiused corners at most, not these modern jelly mold things in pastel colours! Simple and ergonomic.
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

Tank

Serif fonts don't work as well on digital display media as there is always a display compromise depending on the app interpreting the presentation on screen. Digital printing isn't quite so bad as the resolution would be 300dpi which is on the limit of the ability of the human eye to resolve at normal viewing distances.
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Dave

Quote from: Tank on September 17, 2017, 09:06:31 PM
Serif fonts don't work as well on digital display media as there is always a display compromise depending on the app interpreting the presentation on screen. Digital printing isn't quite so bad as the resolution would be 300dpi which is on the limit of the ability of the human eye to resolve at normal viewing distances.

OK, grant you that, Tank, been playing with the gonts on my Kindle and serifed fonts guve tge eye more "clues" as to what the letter is. And deginitely no ambiguity between "l" and "l" ! But, donehow, to me most of them look too dense, too "crowded". Bsttle between my personal sense of the aesthreic and pragmatism.

On the other hand there sre websites out there that use a very thin sans serif font that is very difficult to read, especially if it is one if those sites I can't magnify on the tablet.

Wirse case of choice/colour/environment was at B&Q (big DIY chain). Tins of paint, "Bold" letters, about 8 pixel, white, sans serif text on a curved "chromed" surface in a place with hundreds of flourescent tubes causing bright highlights. Even when shadowing the text with a hand the lack of contrast (and still highlights) made reading it very difficult. Even black colouring would not have helped much, red or royal blue might have. Another triumph of artistic styling over practicality!

If .i were designing a forum like this I would try to use more of the page width for the text window and a 30 to 50% larger face. Mobile devices need a whole difference style than a 13" or 15" lsptop screen. Need supplimentary lenses to see HAF on my phone! Bad enough on this 10" tablet but at least I can stretch the tect window to the sides - still very small if I do that on my 7" phone.
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

Icarus

When I was a high school kid, I lived in a foster home. I was treated very well but I had no money. Teen agers need money. I had some limited graphic arts talent and I set myself up as a sign painter. I actually made a little bit of money doing that stuff. Not much mind you, but enough to keep me interested in the pursuit.

I did things like restaurant signs for special promotions. At one time I got a job with a restaurant to make a  considerable number of  large menus.  Well I had not figured on the huge number of letters on the large menus. After about one or two of them done by hand, with Speedball nibs, I could see that I have vastly underestimated my ability to produce these things for the price I had agreed upon. What is as poor kid to do?....... I went to the library to read about screen printing. 

I managed to make a screen in a primitive way, and stole the windshield wiper blade from the car of the people I lived with. The wiper blade became the necessary squeegee with which to apply ink through the screen.  I got in trouble for that but I did finish the job in a fairly short period of time.

Some 45 years later I perfected a screen printing tool that sold well enough to gain attention. A large corporation bought my patent and that is how I made a few dollars more than I had to have in order to survive.

I also designed and  manufactured some internationally sold measuring instruments that were an essential tool for the screen printing industry. I sold that business about three years ago. .......all that is because I had some very limited talent graphic arts talent, but high ambitions, as a kid who foolishly thought that he could paint or use ink to make signs. 

Thank you Speedball.

Dave

Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

hermes2015

Quote from: Icarus on September 18, 2017, 02:05:59 AM
When I was a high school kid, I lived in a foster home. I was treated very well but I had no money. Teen agers need money. I had some limited graphic arts talent and I set myself up as a sign painter. I actually made a little bit of money doing that stuff. Not much mind you, but enough to keep me interested in the pursuit.

I did things like restaurant signs for special promotions. At one time I got a job with a restaurant to make a  considerable number of  large menus.  Well I had not figured on the huge number of letters on the large menus. After about one or two of them done by hand, with Speedball nibs, I could see that I have vastly underestimated my ability to produce these things for the price I had agreed upon. What is as poor kid to do?....... I went to the library to read about screen printing. 

I managed to make a screen in a primitive way, and stole the windshield wiper blade from the car of the people I lived with. The wiper blade became the necessary squeegee with which to apply ink through the screen.  I got in trouble for that but I did finish the job in a fairly short period of time.

Some 45 years later I perfected a screen printing tool that sold well enough to gain attention. A large corporation bought my patent and that is how I made a few dollars more than I had to have in order to survive.

I also designed and  manufactured some internationally sold measuring instruments that were an essential tool for the screen printing industry. I sold that business about three years ago. .......all that is because I had some very limited talent graphic arts talent, but high ambitions, as a kid who foolishly thought that he could paint or use ink to make signs. 

Thank you Speedball.

Icarus, I admire people like you. Your story is very interesting and inspirational.
"Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se."
― Charles Eames

joeactor

... and don't even get me started on kerning!

(anyone remember those sheets of font letters that you could apply to paper by rubbing on the back?)

I used to work with a small lotto paper publisher in the eighties. Everything was cut, paste - literally. cutting out printed bits and using glue-stick to make the master for the photo plates.

Dave

Quote from: joeactor on September 18, 2017, 04:55:30 PM
... and don't even get me started on kerning!

(anyone remember those sheets of font letters that you could apply to paper by rubbing on the back?)

I used to work with a small lotto paper publisher in the eighties. Everything was cut, paste - literally. cutting out printed bits and using glue-stick to make the master for the photo plates.

Yeah, had a publishing prog with adjustable kernjng - quite useful for type setting actually. And good old Lettraset gas been mentioned (still got some somewhere, it resists the etchant used on printed circuit boards so great for putting your initials on any nickel plated, steel, brass or copper items.)

I had to cut and paste the 48 page monthly village magazine when I was editor - that was Sunday morning occupied, and to the printer (a "retired" guy with all the gear in his, very large, garden shed) in the pm. Then I got a PC and a decentish printer, bought Serif's PagePlus (and DrawPlus for adverts and the cover) and could do it all on screen!

Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

Recusant

#29
Thanks for the interesting stories, Icarus and Dave. :)

In my wanderings I came across the irony mark (⸮) proposed as a way of denoting irony or sarcasm. Too bad it never took off--it would be rather useful on the internet. I suppose that the common problem of people's intentions being misunderstood when communicating in text is a small price to pay for avoiding the clutter of yet another punctuation mark⸮

In the Wikipedia article on the irony/sarcasm mark, some other potentially useful punctuation marks are shown.

QuoteThe irony point (⸮) (French: point d'ironie) was proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm (alias Marcel Bernhardt) in his 1899 book L'ostensoir des ironies to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level (irony, sarcasm, etc.). It is illustrated by a glyph resembling, but not identical to, a small, elevated, backward-facing question mark. The same mark was used earlier by Marcellin Jobard in an article dated June 11, 1841, and commented in an 1842 report.

Hervé Bazin in his 1966 essay Plumons l'Oiseau ("Let's pluck the bird"), used the Greek letter ψ with a dot below for the same purpose. In the same work, the author proposed five other innovative punctuation marks:

the "doubt point" 


"certitude point"


"acclamation point"


"authority point" 


and "love point"

Of course we have smileys/emoticons, but I think another punctuation mark or two would be more elegant.
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken