Abstract
The paper describes the task of making fonts for a new family of typefaces designed for telephone directory composition on laser imagesetters. A key requirement for the font production method was that the visual relationships between the design variants used for the different components of directory entries should be precisely controllable over a range of character image sizes. The factors leading to the decision to program the character shape specifications explicitly, rather than taking the more normal approach of numerical contour capture, are discussed. Knuth's Metafont, employed in a somewhat unconventional way, was used as the font programming language.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Adobe Systems, Inc. Adobe Type 1 font format. Reading (Mass.): Addison-Wesley, 1990
Carter, H. G. ‘Optical scale in typefounding.’ Typography 4 2–6 (1937)
Gonczarowski, J. ‘A fast approach to auto-tracing (with parametric cubics).’ In Morris, Robert A. & Jacques André (eds.), Raster imaging and digital typography II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991
Knuth, D. E. TEX and Metafont: new directions in typesetting. Bedford (Mass.): Digital, 1979
Knuth, D. E. ‘The concept of a meta-font'. Visible Language 16 (1) 3–27 (1982)
Knuth, D. E. ‘Lessons learned from Metafont'. Visible Language 19 (1) 35–53 (1985)
Knuth, D. E., Computer Modern typefaces. Reading (Mass.): Addison-Wesley, 1986
Knuth, D. E. The METAFONTbook. Reading (Mass.): Addison-Wesley, 1986
Mandel, L ‘Il nuovo carattere Galfra per gli elenchi telefonici italiani.’ Graphicus 9 (1978)
Monotype Corporation. ‘“Monotype” matrices and moulds in the making'. Monotype Recorder 40 (1) (1956)
Seybold, J. W. The world of digital typesetting. Media (Pennsylvania): Seybold Publications, 1984
Southall, R. Designing new typefaces with Metafont (Report STAN-CS-85-1074). Stanford University: Department of Computer Science, 1985
Southall, R. ‘Designing a new typeface with Metafont.’ In Désarménien, J. (ed.), TEX for scientific documentation. Berlin: Springer, 1986
Southall, R. ‘Character description techniques in type manufacture.’ In Morris, Robert A. & Jacques André (eds.), Raster imaging and digital typography II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991
Stone, S. On Stone: the art and use of typography on the personal computer. San Francisco: Bedford Arts, 1991
Tracy, Walter. Letters of credit: a view of type design. London: Gordon Fraser, 1986
Yanai, S. & Berry, D. M. ‘Environment for translating Metafont to PostScript.’ TUGboat 11 (4)525–541 (1990)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Southall, R. (1998). Metafont in the rockies: The Colorado typemaking project. In: Hersch, R.D., André, J., Brown, H. (eds) Electronic Publishing, Artistic Imaging, and Digital Typography. RIDT 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1375. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053270
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053270
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64298-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69718-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive