Typophile - InDesign users to be extinct like "lead" users, CSS coauthor cries! - Comments

Font selection model used by

Etan Wexler — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 17:00:49 -0700

Font selection model used by Windows Presentation Foundation: description and guidelines. (John Hudson’s link doesn’t lead where one would expect, given the text in the starting anchor.)

Using filenames is not a

DanGayle — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 21:24:06 -0800

Using filenames is not a good idea, because they are not necessarily static.
You forgetting that we’re controlling things server-side. We KNOW what the filename is. We don’t have to guess. And if WE update the font, WE can update the link to the file, version or build reference included.

But I think that this requires two different sets of font specifications depending on intention. One for user-side font specification, like we currently have, and the new server-side specifications like has been discussed.

Using filenames is not a

John Hudson — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 20:30:36 -0800

Using filenames is not a good idea, because they are not necessarily static. If a font is something that is fairly frequently updated, e.g. a custom font for a publisher that is expanded with new glyphs to cover the typesetting needs of new books, then it isn’t unusual for the font file name to include some kind of version or build reference.

As I understand the recent comments (thanks Thomas and Miguel for pointing out my misreading), the CSS notion of a font family is slightly larger than that of a Windows (non-WPF*) 4-font family, adding width to Windows’ weight and slope. The OpenType family concept is essentially open-ended.

* On the subject of WPF, it seems to me that many of the issues we’re talking about here with regard to font selection have already been given a lot of thought by Mikhail Leonov and David Brown, and their white paper on the WPF font selection model (PDF download link) might be worth re-reading about now. The WPF concept of family seems to be pretty much identical to that of CSS, including weight, width and slope properties.

If the font community

DanGayle — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 17:29:28 -0800

If the font community (that’s you ;-) want guidance in the CSS spec, you need to agree on how to find the name of a font.

It should be easy if we’re talking about Opentype fonts. Since each font isn’t in a “suitcase” like they are in Truetype or Postscript,(.dfonts excepted), you could just call it by filename (blablabla-regular.otf), couldn’t you?

RE: All of Adobe’s fonts

DanGayle — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 17:21:25 -0800

RE:
All of Adobe’s fonts fit into the CSS model:

@font-face {
src: url(http://www.example.com/thesis-optical-whatever);
font-family: "mythesis" }

h1 { font-family: "mythesis" }

If we are thinking within the context of server side fonts/Prince, I think this setup is ideal. We don’t have to be concerned about whether or not the target font is not on a user’s system, because we’re calling it from our own server.

Obviously it doesn’t work if we’re trying to spec a font that isn’t on the end-user’s system, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here.

«What about fonts on the

howcome — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 17:19:45 -0800

«What about fonts on the user’s system? Do we need to hardcode the path to those as well, in order to get access all the fonts in the family?»

CSS2 describes how to refer to locally installed fonts, e.g.:
src: local("T-26 Typeka Mix"), url("http://site/magda-extra") format("type-1")

So, there’s no need for a path. But the spec doesn’t say how to get the font name. I think it’s fair to ask that the spec gives guidance on this, even if most implementations will go through system APIs to find the font. However, I’m unsure what the spec should say, given that there are several fields with different strings in them. If the font community (that’s you ;-) want guidance in the CSS spec, you need to agree on how to find the name of a font.

So for example, the

Miguel Sousa — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 14:36:22 -0800

So for example, the “Minion Pro” family, which contains a total of 64 fonts, is divided into 24 Windows-families:

1. “Minion Pro”
— contains: “Minion Pro” (Regular), “Minion Pro Italic”, “Minion Pro Bold” and “Minion Pro Bold Italic”
2. “Minion Pro Capt”
— contains: “Minion Pro Caption”, “Minion Pro Italic Caption”, “Minion Pro Bold Caption” and “Minion Pro Bold Italic Caption”
3. “Minion Pro Subh”
— contains: “Minion Pro Subhead”, “Minion Pro Italic Subhead”, “Minion Pro Bold Subhead” and “Minion Pro Bold Italic Subhead”
4. “Minion Pro Disp”
— contains: “Minion Pro Display”, “Minion Pro Italic Display”, “Minion Pro Bold Display” and “Minion Pro Bold Italic Display”
5. “Minion Pro Med”
— contains: “Minion Pro Medium” and “Minion Pro Medium Italic”
6. “Minion Pro Med Capt”
— contains: “Minion Pro Medium Caption” and “Minion Pro Medium Italic Caption”
7. “Minion Pro Med Subh”
— contains: “Minion Pro Medium Subhead” and “Minion Pro Medium Italic Subhead”
8. “Minion Pro Med Disp”
— contains: “Minion Pro Medium Display” and “Minion Pro Medium Italic Display”
9. “Minion Pro SmBd”
— contains: “Minion Pro Semibold” and “Minion Pro Semibold Italic”
10. “Minion Pro SmBd Capt”
— contains: “Minion Pro Semibold Caption” and “Minion Pro Semibold Italic Caption”
11. “Minion Pro SmBd Subh”
— contains: “Minion Pro Semibold Subhead” and “Minion Pro Semibold Italic Subhead”
12. “Minion Pro SmBd Disp”
— contains: “Minion Pro Semibold Display” and “Minion Pro Semibold Italic Display”

13. “Minion Pro Cond”
— contains: “Minion Pro Cond”, “Minion Pro Cond Italic”, “Minion Pro Bold Cond” and “Minion Pro Bold Cond Italic”
14. “Minion Pro Cond Capt”
— contains: “Minion Pro Cond Caption”, “Minion Pro Cond Italic Caption”, “Minion Pro Bold Cond Caption” and “Minion Pro Bold Cond Italic Caption”
15. “Minion Pro Cond Subh”
— contains: “Minion Pro Cond Subhead”, “Minion Pro Cond Italic Subhead”, “Minion Pro Bold Cond Subhead” and “Minion Pro Bold Cond Italic Subhead”
16. “Minion Pro Cond Disp”
— contains: “Minion Pro Cond Display”, “Minion Pro Cond Italic Display”, “Minion Pro Bold Cond Display” and “Minion Pro Bold Cond Italic Display”
17. “Minion Pro Med Cond”
— contains: “Minion Pro Medium Cond” and “Minion Pro Medium Cond Italic”
18. “Minion Pro Med Cond Capt”
— contains: “Minion Pro Medium Cond Caption” and “Minion Pro Medium Cond Italic Caption”
19. “Minion Pro Med Cond Subh”
— contains: “Minion Pro Medium Cond Subhead” and “Minion Pro Medium Cond Italic Subhead”
20. “Minion Pro Med Cond Disp”
— contains: “Minion Pro Medium Cond Display” and “Minion Pro Medium Cond Italic Display”
21. “Minion Pro SmBd Cond”
— contains: “Minion Pro Semibold Cond” and “Minion Pro Semibold Cond Italic”
22. “Minion Pro SmBd Cond Capt”
— contains: “Minion Pro Semibold Cond Caption” and “Minion Pro Semibold Cond Italic Caption”
23. “Minion Pro SmBd Cond Subh”
— contains: “Minion Pro Semibold Cond Subhead” and “Minion Pro Semibold Cond Italic Subhead”
24. “Minion Pro SmBd Cond Disp”
— contains: “Minion Pro Semibold Cond Display” and “Minion Pro Semibold Cond Italic Display”

> What is the name of a font

Miguel Sousa — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 14:31:52 -0800

> What is the name of a font family? Is it «Minion Pro Cond Capt», «Minon Pro», or both?

It depends whom you ask. If it’s a Windows system, the font family will be «Minion Pro Cond Capt». That’s because a Windows-family can only have up to 4 fonts, so the “Minion Pro” family had to be broken into sub-families of up to 4 elements.
If you ask a Mac system, the font family will always be «Minion Pro», independently of how many elements the family is composed of.

That’s why MSNameID1 ≠ MacNameID1, for font families with more than 4 elements*. In these cases, two more Microsoft platform name strings are added to the fonts, MSNameID16 and MSNameID17, so that you get,
MacNameID1 = MSNameID16
MacNameID2 = MSNameID17

* MacNameID1 = MSNameID1 in one of the Windows sub-families

> All of Adobe’s fonts fit

Miguel Sousa — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 13:31:59 -0800

> All of Adobe’s fonts fit into the CSS model:

@font-face {
src: url(http://www.example.com/thesis-optical-whatever);
font-family: “mythesis” }

h1 { font-family: “mythesis” }

What about fonts on the user’s system? Do we need to hardcode the path to those as well, in order to get access all the fonts in the family?

Is referencing fonts by their file name really a solution? How is that data used for font-fallback?

«So, the main challenge is

howcome — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 11:47:54 -0800

«So, the main challenge is probably deciding where one of the operations ends and the other starts, i.e. when should browsers stop trying to find the font that equals the specified properties, and start guessing which font would be the better match.»

Font matching is described in some detail in CSS:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-CSS21-20070719/fonts.html#algorithm

As I see it, the problem is not in the algorithm itself, but in the input to the algorithm. What is the name of a font family? Is it «Minion Pro Cond Capt», «Minon Pro», or both?

«However, one of the

howcome — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 10:38:20 -0800

«However, one of the virtues of CSS is that it can produce dynamically scaleable layouts, so rather than having authors spec a particular optical size, I would much rather see browseres interpreting the CSS and then delivering an appropriate optical size of font»

I agree.

«Sure, the proportion of

howcome — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 10:28:09 -0800

«Sure, the proportion of the world’s fonts that can’t be handed by adding optical size to weight, width and slope is less than 10%. But even 5% is a fair bit. And the omission of optical size makes it close to 10% of the fonts in Adobe’s type library that don’t fit the CSS model.»

All of Adobe’s fonts fit into the CSS model:
@font-face { src: url(http://www.example.com/thesis-optical-whatever); font-family: "mythesis" }

h1 { font-family: "mythesis" }

> So a CSS ’family’ = a

Miguel Sousa — Tue, 5 Feb 2008 22:28:55 -0800

> So a CSS ’family’ = a Windows ’family’.

That’s only true on Vista, I think. On other Windows versions, ’families’ are only differentiated by weight and width. Otherwise “Arial Narrow” would be part of the “Arial” family. Or am I missing something?

The CSS model is that within

John Hudson — Tue, 5 Feb 2008 11:59:27 -0800

The CSS model is that within a “family” fonts should differ only on weight, width and slope.

So a CSS ’family’ = a Windows ’family’.

That’s not so bad then, because it is a situation we’ve handled as long as TrueType has been around. Use

font-family: = name table ID 1
font-style: = name table ID 2

just as you would in a Windows font menu.

Just to follow up on

Thomas Phinney — Tue, 5 Feb 2008 03:01:10 -0800

Just to follow up on Miguel’s comments:

The CSS model is that within a “family” fonts should differ only on weight, width and slope.

The typographic reality is that within a “family” fonts differ on these metrics, on optical size, and additionally on arbitrary other variables indicated by arbitrary text strings in the name of the font style.

Sure, the proportion of the world’s fonts that can’t be handed by adding optical size to weight, width and slope is less than 10%. But even 5% is a fair bit. And the omission of optical size makes it close to 10% of the fonts in Adobe’s type library that don’t fit the CSS model.

Cheers,

InDesign users to be extinct like "lead" users, CSS coauthor cries!

joeclark — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:11:08 -0800

A YouTube video of a presentation at Google by Håkon Lie and Michael Day has Lie declaring that InDesign users, particularly at newspapers, will soon be so passé they will be more comparable to the old guys who moved “lead” type.

The context is the ability of Prince, a software application, to output a “typeset” PDF from HTML+CSS. (Lie was coauthor of the original CSS spec.) While that claimed capacity was covered in an article I read, then and now my response is “I’ll be the judge of that.” The presenters’ insistence that HTML-CSS-Prince handles “most” requirements (more than 80%) will, I suspect, be antithetical to the real typographers who read this forum. I think we spend rather a lot of time on that other 20%.