Excursus » Font

Font Restrictions

Mark Eli Kalderon — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:45:06 +0000

As I have remarked before, good typography does not merely have aesthetic virtue. Importantly, it has cognitive virtue as well. Good typesetting makes your work easier to understand. A good font is but one element of typesetting, and a font may be appropriate to one context but not others. Still, font choice is one of those important decisions in typesetting your documents that you are forced to make.

Legislation that has not kept abreast of changing technology can make the choice difficult.

As a philosopher, I write research papers, drafts of which are distributed on the web as PDFs. Open access to evolving research is important, and I am committed to it. Since I want to give my work the best chance of being understood, I take the time to properly typeset the PDFs with XeLaTeX. There is a problem, however, with distributing PDFs over the web.

PDF files can contain font information in a way that is easily extractable from the file. While the licensing of some type foundries allow embedded fonts in PDFs, many (especially smaller type foundries) do not. Indeed the ones that did probably did so at Adobe’s urging when PDF distribution on the web was relatively small and so not that great of a risk.

I would like to support small type foundries by buying their fonts. There are some brilliant type designers out there, and they should be rewarded. Unfortunately, since the main thing I want these fonts for is for web distributed PDFs, I can’t do that without violating licensing restrictions. And that’s not support.

There are of course open source fonts. Some of them are fine pieces of work. But the choice is limited, and important design decisions should not be so constrained.

DRM is not the answer, as the recent history of music distribution online sadly reveals.

I don’t know how to resolve this problem. It is partly technological, partly, legal. But I thought I would highlight for other academics who distribute their work online.

Upon finishing this post, I came across this essay that has more information about the legal and technological obstacles with some discussion of potential solutions.

Aurulent Sans Mono

Mark Eli Kalderon — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:05:47 +0000

While on matters typographical, I thought I would continue the monospaced font roundup with Aurulent Sans Mono a free (as in speech and beer) monospace font by Stephen G. Hartke. Available under the Open Font License, Aurulent Sans Mono is a humanist sans serif that comes in italic, bold, and bold italic variants (no slashed zero though). There is a thread about Aurulent Sans Mono at Typophile.

Do Androids Dream in Monospace Fonts?

Mark Eli Kalderon — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:37:45 +0000

Continuing the series of posts on monospace fonts, we consider the question “Do androids dream in monospace fonts?”

Steve Matteson of Ascender Corporation has designed the Droid Typeface Family for the Open Handest Alliance’s Android platform. Released under the Apache license, Droid Sans Mono is an attractive monospace font.

It is not without its limitations, however:

No bold variant
No italic variant
No slashed zero

Nevertheless, given its licensing, perhaps these limitations will be addressed in time.

DPCustomMono2

Mark Eli Kalderon — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:55:08 +0000

I have been planning a follow up to my previous post about monospace fonts. This is not the planned follow up. However, background reserarch has uncovered an interesting monospace font with special properties. DPCustomMono2, commissioned by Distributed Proofreaders, is designed to maximize the legibility of text for the purposes of proofreading. Given the special context, there is an understandable emphasis on the distinctness of characters. This comparison of DPCustomMono2 and Arial gives a good sense of this. It ain’t pretty. I don’t think I would use it as my default font. But proofreading your own writing is hard. Paul Benacerraf once suggested to me that this may be due, in part, to the cognitive difference between encoding thoughts and decoding thoughts. (They are, after all, your thoughts; so what’s to decode?) Given the special challenges of proofreading your own work, especially if it is long, like a book or thesis, it may be worth printing out your text in DPCustomMono2.¹

Yes print out. Proofreading on paper is easier and less eye strain than proofreading on screen. At the very least do it on paper at the final stages of the project. ↩

Helvetica Turns Fifty

Mark Eli Kalderon — Fri, 11 May 2007 23:03:14 +0000

Based on the sans serif typeface Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica was designed by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry (later assimilated by Linotype). Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its name was updated to Helvetica apparently derived from the latin name for Switzerland—Helvetia. Caught up in an enthusiasm for Swiss modernist design, Helvetica became popular among add agencies and is now ubiquitous. If you get a chance, try to see the movie. At the very least, show some respect and don’t confuse it with Arial.

Monospaced Obsession

Mark Eli Kalderon — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 03:05:34 +0000

I am a theme whore. Not only have I downloaded all the themes on the TextMate Wiki, I have tried my hand at making my own. Switching between themes helps cut down the eye-strain, and some are better suited to different ambient lighting conditions than others. But there is more to this inconstancy. Though irrational, in my heart of hearts I yearn for the One True Theme. There is no such thing, I know. Just as I know that existing themes are pale shadows of the One True Theme.

It is not only themes that elicit this obsessive-compulsive behavior but monospace fonts as well. While I find that proportional fonts, especially serif fonts, are easier to read, I much prefer writing with a monospace font. Even if my text editor supported proportional fonts, I wouldn’t use them. Fortunately, the asynchronous WYSIWYG nature of LaTeX allows me the best of both worlds. I write the LaTeX source in a text editor with a monospace font. And when I edit, I read the PDF it produces with a proportional font (currently Hoefler). Monospace fonts that I have used include Bitstream Vera Sans Mono and its updated variant with more characters DejaVu Sans Mono. I have also used ProFont and Inconsolata. Raph Levien, the designer of Inconsolata and maintainer of Ghostscript was inspired by Luc(as) de Groot’s Consolas. Consolas is currently my favorite monospace font. And it is a Microsoft product! Must be penance for Comic Sans. It really is a beautiful monospace font but be sure to turn on font smoothing to see it at its best. Curious? Download your copy of Consolas here.

Here is a picture courtesy of Poynter Online: