Typophile - What happened at Type Con 2006? - Comments

Ahhhh. Vancouver. The

dberlow — Mon, 2 Oct 2006 05:23:42 -0700

Ahhhh. Vancouver. The beginning of the big lie.

“so your that making fonts is hard and spending a lot of money and having a bunch of rocket scientist hinters Microsoft is cheating?”

:) Yes and no. Making fonts is harder than your company has tried, and hinting is dead, though hints are not. Rocket Scientists...no. Type Scientists, neither. You missed it, so I think you deserve a promotion, maybe even a presidential medal of honor.

“You can say that on your blog, you don’t need a afternoon of talks on the subject.”
Oh, I don’t think so, my blog is for clients. There is only one group who would need an entire afternoon of talks to get this, and that is your own.Type designers, and users, understand it right away, (or in less than 35 minutes). Ask Greg, he can both read and understand.

If your team was about to run into a bear mauling, you’d feel bad if I didn’t tell you in advance, wouldn’t you? ;)

>I did, several times,

sii — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 07:08:22 -0700

>I did, several times, beginning in feb.

No you didn’t - no mail came from you to the typetech alias. If you sent mail to JFP and John Hudson, they neglected to pass it on - perhaps they couldn’t follow what you were saying.

> the content you’re interested in was presented four years ago.
>Correct. It was presented at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies by your company.

Er, no. I was talking about the afternoon of sessions on ClearType hinting at ATypI Vancouver.

>requiring Gazzilla-bytes of skilled letter drawing and contextual substitution hounding

so your entire problem is that making fonts is hard and somehow by spending a lot of money and having a bunch of rocket scientist hinters Microsoft is cheating? You can say that on your blog, you don’t need a afternoon of talks on the subject.

Dear Simon, >Perhaps you

dberlow — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 05:45:54 -0700

Dear Simon,
>Perhaps you could have sent an email to the organizers
I did, several times, beginning in feb. Can you read CT?

> the content you’re interested in was presented four years ago.
Correct. It was presented at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies by your company. I called it a rabbit hole out of which the emperor’s new fonts had emerged, and I did so to the developer’s face at the time. It seemed to have no effect.

My response has been to follow that content here and other places, and debunk it, as best an individual can. As I hope you’ve read on the atypi list, ( Re: [ATypI] ClearType Hinting ) the content I was interested in is a refutation of the content your company, Mr. Hudson, and others involved in ATypI, have been presenting since 2000 — Namely, that the “intersection” of optimized screen fonts for any great stretch of the Unicode Marathon, in a multi-biplane environment or 3.... is in a different direction and location from the intersection your company, Mr. Hudson, and others are just beginning to understand the limitations of...now.

>hint at conspiracy theories
I have never said any such thing consciously existed — but if you insist, the conspiracy to make the content understood was made by me at some great risk. The conspiracy to rise above the humdrum of normal typographic content, normal content development “rules”, not to mention schedules, and other nonsense objections — should have been simple. That my “intersection”, (which is really an endless field relative to the MS CT Collection’s rabbit hole), requiring Gazzilla-bytes of skilled letter drawing and contextual substitution hounding, was about to intersect with a conference of letter drawers and substitution hounds, was a coincidence I tried to take advantage of since February.

Are you with me so far? :)

Cheers!

>As W.C. said, “You should

sii — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:55:44 -0700

>As W.C. said, “You should get out more often.”

I realize that you’re a very busy man, with important things to do, but I think if you’d exerted 5% of the effort you’ve exerted in griping about the event, there might have been some content of interest to you.

Perhaps you could have sent an email to the organizers, or picked up the phone and had someone submit a talk idea, hey maybe even put forward a talk idea yourself.

But no, it’s more fun to gripe and moan, hint at conspiracy theories and conveniently ignore the fact that the content you’re interested in was presented four years ago.

Technique is an integral

hrant — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:34:41 -0700

Technique is an integral part of type design - manifest everywhere in the craft, even in something as seemingly simple as setting a sidebearing. If you don’t enjoy technique, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be making fonts, or that you can’t make good fonts*, but it does put you at a disadvantage, and that can’t be blamed on anybody (even if certain people don’t in fact have the best intentions for you otherwise). Personally, if there weren’t so much technique in type design, if it were essentially painting pretty shapes, I would never have started doing it.

* Although I might argue that it does prevent you from making the best fonts, at least in the realm of text.

hhp

focus on the audience being

Nick Shinn — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:10:10 -0700

focus on the audience being people making fonts.

That would be me, I guess, but the last time I went to a type workshop (except once when I was a presenter) I quite literally ended up in hospital, after a muscle in my leg started twitching uncontrollably. I took that as a sign.

IMO you have your military-industrial complex, your legislative-administrative complex, and then your typographic-software complex. The purpose of these organizations is to make life as complex, bureaucratic and technological as possible, thereby ensuring lots of work for bureaucrats and technicians. Not really the indie foundry profile.

Sure, indie folk can handle the paperwork and wouldn’t be in the biz if not technically inclined. We need to keep up to date, so we attend these events and some of us might even enjoy them occasionally, but it’s a necessary evil and not the reason we decided to become the “people making fonts”.

SII “But I have to say, in

dberlow — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:24:52 -0700

SII “But I have to say, in my opinion, it was the best tech-forum ever. ;-)”
As W.C. said, “You should get out more often.”

TF “But not two weeks before the conference! :)”
We aren’t two weeks out even now, are we? July 27th was the first I became aware of, and commented towards any of this. Count much?

“ClearType vs Quartz” don’t know...Screen fonts is the issue, Thomas, does anyone in this audience think Q vs CT? Ever? If anything they might think about CT & Q... But that wouldn’t occur to you ’cause you’re too busy trying to figure out how to slide CoolType in there, which is best kept hidden permanently, Thank you.
“The Ubiquitous EULA” it’s free, it’s documentable and ubiquitous, so what do lawyers from the various IP zones think? We’ll find out, not.
“The “boldness” information in an MM font is used to change the size of glyphs” This is New? Are you friggin asleep?
“What’s next?” “A presentation on something automatic?” “O good, maybe, if we’re really lucky, it’ll crash onstage.”

Fellas, I give you yourselves, and content that mirrors your limited understanding of the critical issues facing the purported audience, one that is perhaps not even you, and I’d hope you could be gracious and classy enough to see so, (though this my third year of commenting “Too late” lol, I’m trying at least). I don’t think people want this stuff, I certainly don’t think you’ll see me ever, on either end, your way, unless, with all due respect, you quit and never do it again.:)

Cheers!

Besides the active call for

Thomas Phinney — Sat, 9 Sep 2006 19:43:52 -0700

Besides the active call for submissions, IIRC, I later posted to the ATypI list specifically asking for suggestions of topics people wanted to go see at TypeTech.

Dave, rather than waiting until the schedule is announced, why not submit suggestions about what you want to see, before the deadline? Heck, even shortly after the deadline. But not two weeks before the conference! :)

Personally, I’d love to see a talk on ClearType vs Quartz (possibly vs CoolType as well). However, it would be a matter of finding somebody to do such a talk. Any volunteers for next year?

I’ll comment that my goals for this year’s TypeTech content were: (1) have as much new material as possible; (2) assume that people have some technical type background and focus on intermediate to advanced topics; (3) focus on the audience being people making fonts. So there’s no more “intro to Unicode” or “intro to OpenType layout” talks in the main track of TypeTech this year. We’ll do a survey of attendees again this year (as last year), and see how this goes over with them.

“So easy a caveman could

dberlow — Sat, 9 Sep 2006 04:38:01 -0700

“So easy a caveman could do it ;-)”
What if cave woman loses the email?

>P.S. You can’t recall

sii — Fri, 8 Sep 2006 10:58:35 -0700

>P.S. You can’t recall seeing a single submission from me or anyone associated with the Font Bureau because…well, what do they look or sound like? so I can check the records.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=atypi+tech+forum+call+for+papers&bt...

Call for Presentations for the TypeTech Forum at ATypI Lisbon 2006
Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) Annual Conference Lisbon, Portugal, 27 Sep - 1 Oct, 2006

March 21, 2006 - Announcing the opening of the Call for Presentation Proposals for the TypeTech Forum of the ATypI Lisbon 2006 conference.

The Board of Directors of ATypI is proud to note that the ATypI Conference is sponsored by many of the leading companies in the graphic arts and computing. Early sponsorship for Lisbon comes from the Microsoft Corporation.

The ATypI 2006 TypeTech Forum committee invites submissions of abstracts for presentations on any theme related to technology in type design and typesetting. Based on previous feedback, there will be no separate introductory section this year; potential presenters should assume that their audience is versed in the basics of type technology, such as Unicode and OpenType.

Appropriate topics include, but are not limited to: new methods in typeface design and production; approaches to testing fonts; issues and solutions for font development; and new technologies in typesetting. Proposals are welcome for practical demonstrations as well as lectures and panel sessions. Preference will be given to talks which have not been done before at TypeTech Forum or ATypI.

Abstracts should include the title of the proposed presentation, the requested time length, the presenter’s name(s) and a short biographical note (50-100 words), and a short summary (100-200 words) suitable for publication in the conference programme. (Note: Biographies and presentation descriptions may be edited for length and/or clarity.) Presentation lengths in the TypeTech Forum are variable, but generally run between 15 and 60 minutes, including questions. Actual time allotted may sometimes be less than requested. Preference may be given to submissions received earlier, but the actual deadline is May 31, 2006.

It is expected that the speakers will provide the text of their presentations, and images if possible, for inclusion in a publication or on the web site after the conference.

Presentation proposals should be sent to the programme planning committee by e-mail to mailto:typetech@atypi.org.

Please note that all other correspondence should be addressed to the ATypI Secretariat and Conference Office (see below).

Lisbon TypeTech Forum Committee

Thomas Phinney, Adobe Systems; Simon Daniels, Microsoft Corporation; Tiffany Wardle

ATypI Executive Director: Shelley Gruendler

About ATypI: Association Typographique Internationale is the only worldwide organisation dedicated to type and typography. Founded in 1957, ATypI provides the structure for communication, information and action within the international type community. ATypI annual conferences are attended by delegates from more than 40 countries. Recent Conferences have been held in Helsinki (2005), Prague (2004), Vancouver (2003), Rome (2002) and Copenhagen (2001). The ATypI Board of Directors: Jean-François Porchez, President; John Hudson, Vice President; Mark Barratt, John D. Berry, Henrik Birkvig, Ted Harrison, Gerry Leonidas, Thomas Phinney, Fiona Ross, Erik Spiekermann, Sumner Stone, Adam Twardoch, Pavel Zelenka, and Maxim Zhukov.

And here’s a sample proposal (sure Ted won’t mind me posting it)

——-Original Message——-
From: Adam Twardoch [mailto:adam@twardoch.com]
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 6:40 PM
To: typetech@atypi.org
Subject: Submissions for ATypI TypeTech 2006

3. Ted Harrison
“The Ubiquitous EULA. Practical application of the Electronic EULA Abstract.”
30 minutes

Ted will demonstrate the use of the EEULAA in protecting your fonts from casual
piracy and in improving your font sales. The EEULAA is now being incorporated
into Fontlab tools and will be available to all font foundries by the time the
next generation of tools appears. With a EEULAA in your fonts you can track
licenses, solicit font upgrade sales, and make your customers easily and
painlessly aware of their rights and obligations under the EULA.

So easy a caveman could do it ;-)

It seems as if the content of the forum isn’t of interest to you, I’d suggest a strategy I took for Helsinki. First volunteer to organize the whole thing yourself, you could even have some of your peeps do the leg work.

Here’s what I did. I started by going to the people I wanted to hear speak, about subjects I was interested in, that’s why we had Brian Kraimer talking about font certification, Michael Jansson talking about font embedding, Dave Opstad demoing some tools, Carl talking about Segoe Script, Tiffany talking about the EULA. I also posted a call for submissions on several lists and was able to find spaces for everyone who submited an idea - Victor Gaultney for example.

Sadly a few people I asked couldn’t make it - Joe Clark, the ClearType team and Peter Lofting (Apple sent an engineer, who actively participated and answered questions but didn’t give a talk). But I have to say, in my opinion, it was the best tech-forum ever. ;-)

Cheers, Si

>there should have been,

sii — Fri, 8 Sep 2006 07:23:23 -0700

>there should have been, e.g. detailed CT sessions at this “forum”

http://www.atypi.org/30_past_conferences/09_Vancouver/30_other_events/in...

Day 1 - Wednesday September 24
Morning
Introduction (MS Typography & Adobe)
Strategies in defining glyph and OT feature repertoires (MS Typography & Adobe)
Making clean outlines (MS Typography & Adobe)
Afternoon
Making OpenType tables using VOLT (MS Typography)
Making OpenType fonts using the FDK/FontLab (Adobe)

Day 2 - Thursday September 25
Morning
Testing and proofing OpenType fonts (MS Typography & Adobe)
Afternoon
Hinting theory (MS ClearType)
Hinting strategies (MS ClearType)
Hinting and ClearType (MS ClearType)

When I ran the forum last year I invited the CT team to participate, but didn’t get any takers. I’m hopeful that we’ll get some CT related stuff going at TC2007.

Siiiiii “…this is []

dberlow — Fri, 8 Sep 2006 07:11:18 -0700

Siiiiii “...this is [] insulting to the volunteers who’ve put in many hours... I don’t recall seeing a single submission from you or anyone associated with the Font Bureau.”

Insult? No, an insult is when a company tells A Continent that it’s new OS will be delayed for “Regulatory Reasons” ;) A criticism is something else: It says, in our case, there should have been, e.g. detailed CT sessions at this “forum” 5, 4, 2, 3 and 1 year(s) ago, not to mention zero years ago, and into the future..along with 3, 4 or 5 other critically important topics besides CT, “web font specs 07” e.g., should have been replacing some of the....other stuff that is, if not, repeating, just plain dumb content. That is mismanagement.

P.S. You can’t recall seeing a single submission from me or anyone associated with the Font Bureau because...well, what do they look or sound like? so I can check the records.

And... the link between the Continental issue and this, is Brad Smith, who recently complained that all these challenges in Europe “should have been done before, not after the product is released.” Well, if “I’ve been involved in three or four of these” is as true a Simon says, then you should talk to yourself, and see if you can “open up” the discussion before it’s too late, and someone rare, like me, who can partially rewrite their job discription, has to do so.

Cheers!

Joshua, the early-bird

twardoch — Fri, 8 Sep 2006 01:46:54 -0700

Joshua,

the early-bird ATypI Lisbon conference registration for students and for citizens from low-income countries is US$175, and I don’t remember it being higher than US$250 in the past. While the TypeCon registration fee is lower, the last TypeCon events have taken places in cities where food and accomodation is not necessarily cheap (esp. when compared to Leipzig, Prague or Lisbon). I believe the overall cost is comparable.

Of course, it’s usually more expensive to fly overseas, so it’s not surprising that the Europeans tend to visit the conferences that happen in Europe (which usually is ATypI) and the Americans tend to visit the conferences that happen in the U.S. (which usually is TypeCon). But the prices for overseas flights aren’t what they used to be, they are cheaper than they were 5 years ago, I think.

In fact, it is more difficult for a foreigner to attend TypeCon than any ATypI conference (for example, the U.S. requires visas from citizebs of more countries than the E.U. does, if ATypI happens to be in the E.U.) — remember that in 2004, I could not attend TypeCon San Francisco since I was not given a U.S. visa on time?

I’ve been to all ATypI conferences since 1998, except the 1999 Boston event. Until I started working for Fontlab Ltd. in 2004, I always financed the trips all by myself, and I did live on a “student budget” for quite a long time. As for the typographic “folk” who attends the conference, I never felt much difference in “elitism and exclusivity” between ATypI and TypeCon — I actually felt they kind of are the same. However, at ATypI, it is actually true that people speak in more languages (English is still predominant but not to the same extent), and sometimes it is a bit difficult to communicate with everybody.

The profiles of the conferences certainly are different. I believe the ATypI conferences have a more international flair, simply because each year, they happen in a country where a different language is spoken. Even just visiting cities like Lyon, Leipzig, Copenhagen, Rome, Vancouver, Prague, Helsinki or Lisbon, noticing the different typographic styles in signage, observing how the alphabet works in different languages — this is all absolutely fascinating, and always has, for a typophile like myself. Also, you always have the unique chance to see some local speakers and attendees who never actually go to any foreign conferences whatsoever.

I’ve been a member of the ATypI Board since 2000, and I simply cannot agree with the remarks about “for-profit management”. Both SoTA and ATypI have paid postitions of an Executive Director, who has also been organizing the conference, while all the other positions are unpaid and based entirely on volunteers’ work. In fact, after having some conversations with SoTA Board members this year, I found out that both the structure and the actual problems that we’re facing, are really quite the same.

I’m trying to attend both ATypI and TypeCon because I would feel that missing one would always deprive me of something interesting. Luckily, the conferences are quite complementary, and I don’t think there is much redundancy.

Joshua, ATypI is a

John Hudson — Thu, 7 Sep 2006 17:51:13 -0700

Joshua, ATypI is a non-profit association and the organisation usually just scrapes by financially each year. It’s management is not a ’for profit’endeavour, but the association does employ professional conference organisation and administration because of bad experiences relying solely on well-meaning amateurs and volunteers. ATypI has done so since 1997; what year did you attend, and what do you think was different in subsequent years? Regarding accomodating student volunteers, we have large numbers of them at every conference (there is a roster of 30 of them for Lisbon), but they are local students from design schools who are partnering with the association. Obviously, giving such opportunities for involvement and attendance to local students is one of the things ATypI is able to offer to the local design and education community.

BTW, a room at the Grand

hrant — Thu, 7 Sep 2006 11:24:37 -0700

BTW, a room at the Grand Hotel should end up being less than US$100 (like they have a weekend special right now for $90, and that includes a quite impressive buffet breakfast for two). More money left over for the auction! And the San Diego connection might work out superbly, with a rented “typoholic bus” (remember the ill-fated Bouma Bus? :-) across the border a stratagem to consider.

hhp

What happened at Type Con 2006?

scruggsdesign — Fri, 1 Sep 2006 09:58:35 -0700

I wasn’t able to go to TypeCon this year so when I saw all the features on the TypeCon website (TypeCon Talk, Type Gallery, TypeCon TV!) I was excited that I wouldn’t be totally missing out. Well, it’s been a few weeks now and theres still nothing up. I was hoping to see video or audio of speekers, blog posts... It looks like TypeRadio didn’t do anything special either. So... what happened? Those that went, what was the highlight for you. Best presentation, workshop, best thing you learned...

Josh