There was some news from TypeCon regarding this.
During a panel presentation, Jim Lyles announced
that Bitstream would now pay royalties to Linotype.

The announcement was met with applause from John Downer,
who was sitting across from Lyles.

However, I don't know whether any details were released.

Drat, I don't have my copy of Bringhurst with me here at work (why do I leave home without it?), so I'll go from pure recall.

To paraphrase big time, Bringhurst says that as the transition from metal and photo to digital type got underway, most manufacturers of digital type simply retained the names of fonts that existed in previous forms. But Bitstream avoided the fiction that these new digital types were the equivalents of their predecessors, and so they provided new, and perhaps more systematic, names for them.

Interestingly, then, the spin Bringhurst puts on this is that Bitstream renamed their fonts for reasons of scholarship and integrity, rather than out of any other motivation.

Corrections/clarifications most welcome!

Jon

Bitstream renamed their fonts for reasons of scholarship and integrity

Rubbish! The Bitstream founders (Matthew Carter, Cherie Cone, MIke Parker) were ex-Linotype. And while rumours were never substantiated that maybe some data had found its way onto some hard drives in Cambridge, they had to rename their versions of Helvetica, Univers, Times et al because Linotype (and Monotype, Berthold etc) wouldn't license the names to the new competitor. As it happens, some of the Bitstream versions of those classics were better than the original foundries' who turned out some pretty horrific stuff during the first digital phase. I'm talking late 70s here, pre PostScript and LaserWriters.

erik spiekermann said

>Rubbish! ...


Quite so. There was no 'scholarship and integrity' involved, so far as I could ever tell.

I don't know about data use, per se, but otherwise, how does a library of several hundred fonts appear seemingly overnight? Or, within several months, with 1980-82 technology. (Remember how slow, even at the minicomputer and mainframe level? Because the chip makers apparently just couldn't make enough Fritos fast enough to get the boards cheaper and faster?)

And actually, as one goes back in time and really studies a lot of typefaces from the early 1900s through phototypesetting, with some exception, the actual form of a lot of what was available was truly horrific.

(Early phototypesetting and early digital fonts were even supplied with no kerning. And were at least $185. each. Per weight. If a mediocre kerning data add-on was available at all, one paid extra.)

It's a long-extant bitter irony that it took a sudden collection of unlicensed digital clones to start to get the industry to get its act together, so far as digitized font quality. (Of course, it could have been coincidence.)

But is that galvanizing effect a reason to buy and use unlicensed clones?

I've always believed it subverted the entire industry. And institutionalized cloning, making it seem, to the new generation of giddy desktop designers and those who sold to them, that it was ok to both clone fonts, sell them, and use them.

Granted, they weren't the first. But the industry, mostly through the work of aTypI, really was trying to clean up its act in the late '70s.

The sale of unlicensed fonts to an unwitting public, combined with bundling and discounting, slowed down development and release of otherwise worthy new, licensed typefaces, I believe, at a rate that would have served the electronic publishing community from the mid-'80s and throughout the '90s, much more effectively.

(Yes, it has always been entirely possible to be a well-read progessional in the graphic arts, and still unwitting about knockoffs. Even today. Which is why it's possible for clone companies to make inroads, brandishing cost savings.)

Rhetorically: When one talks about faceless, giant, megalithic, uncaring type foundries that only look at profiteering at any cost, which one do you think really fits that description best?

While practically every other commercial foundry, large or small, has subsequently had to endure that characterization at one time or another in the digital world (mostly by people who had no idea what they were babbling about), the characterization is misplaced and unfair, I think.

The crowned prince needs to accept the crown.

Joe

To be fair to all, but especially to Robert Bringhurst, here is the passage I paraphrased earlier (The Elements of Typographic Style, version 2.5, pp 202-203):

Jon Coltz said

>If so, I'd certainly like to hear their
>side of the story. This sort of thing could
>leave one quite disillusioned; but then
>perhaps I am simply too naive.


Well, I for one, would like to hear the real origin story, too. Unfortunately, all I can do is generally surmise, following it at the time, and since. And looking at the number of fonts and chronology.

I've been living with the disillusionment of what it caused the market, since 1982-84. Not that I dwell on it; I'm just aware of the impact.

I don't at all mind saying that Bringhurst, in the quotation you cite and for whatever reason, is being too kind. Or, perhaps, reporting from press releases accurately, but leaving an impression that can be mightily misconstrued by the uninformed reader.

For example: Is it a positive service to the market to both clone and create more cross-lookup work and the anxiety that goes with it, for the average type specifier?

Hrant added

>On the ATypI list Jan Middendorp
>recently wrote: "Ca. 1860, the
>'gentleman' of the respected typefoundry
>Enschede stopped paying for new typefaces
>to be cut, because it was cheaper to copy
>other firms' designs by means of electrotyping."


Yes, that's well documented and numerous others afterward followed a similar path.

But as I said, from sitting in on some of the aTypI meetings, by the 1970s, the offenders were either trying themselves to change.

Or, aTypI was nudging them not so gently toward cleaning up their act, for the benefit of all involved on both sides of the sale equation.

Joe

Hrant said

>So Joe, you stopped following ATypI
>when you started designing type?


Nope.


Joe

By the way, several other things that seems worth adding:

I have a tremendous amount of respect for the creative principals at the company, for the technological achievements that they made, in association with the computer company Camex.

And of course, even though I'm professionally curious about why those tremendously creative people made the decisions they did after leaving Linotype, it's quite literally none of my business.

Also:

Looking up something else, I stumbled back into pictures inside Bitstream, and a discussion about it and the development of their typefaces, by the writer/consultant (and very nice person) Wendy Richmond.

It appeared in Communication Arts, May/June 1984, Issue #168, pp. 78, 80-81.

The author states that they find that with the Camex equipment (by Camex, Inc.), production gets up to a "rapid average production rate of 20 minutes per character", with "120 characters" per font being created for commercial sale.

There are full color photo close-ups of the workstation screens, and most fascinating, a fairly large full color photo with the some you might recognize, examining proofs. There appear to be four Camex workstations in the background.

(Copyright 1984, Coyne & Blanchard, Inc.)

This was fascinating when the story first broke, and still is.

Joe

erik spiekermann said

>Yes, Wendy Richmond was and is a very nice
>(and knowledgable) person: She was with
>Camex at the time, one of Bitstream's first
>(if not the first) licensees.


You're quite right. Knowledgable, indeed.

I wasn't aware that she was with Camex itself. Thanks for that tidbit, Erik.

I think by the time I first talked with her (probably 1988-89), she was an independent industry observer/writer. And talented at that.)

(I seem to recall reading that Camex mostly made medical imaging equipment. I could be entirely wrong about that. I went to Camex.com just now, but I see some speculator now has camex.com for sale!)



>That's why ITC fonts looked very different,
>depending who had made the font, analog or
>early (ie pre-PostScript) digital.


Meaning, the manufacturer's actual conversion of it to their system. The artwork had to vary, depending upon what their imaging system could literally handle, eh?

In a worst-case scenario (unfortunately, typical):

Can you say 'over-sharpened crotch'? I'll bet that you can....

(Picture a nice, soft 'n fluffy ITC Souvenir Bold 'A' with that treatment on the inside of the apex. Like the treatment inside the Linotype design 'Bell Centennial-Bold Listing'. Except that you're not supposed to notice it. Except that...you do! Now, all around the crossbar. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Picture Eastern Souvenir with it. Aiiieeee! At that point, if such a specimen were an instrument of torture - which, of course, it was, visually - I'd be confessing to anything just to get it to stop.)

It's a curious thing, though, all the very different shapings of certain characters in ITC Garamond Condensed. Like 'e', in Light Cond.

Different art for one display size master, and one text size master, right? As well as then each foundry's creative staff tweaking it if they saw fit to?


> In the early 90s, Linotype's lawyer
>made us remove the Bitstream cross-referencing
>to the "industry names" as they called it...


I recall that, now that you mention it. Ouch, expensive ouch.

Joe

Hrant said

>And the people who matter
>(readers, not "artiste" type designers) don't.


If you're comfortable believing that, well, good for you, then.

Thankfully, that oversharpening technique was able to die quietly once imaging technology got better.

The '"artiste" type designers' no longer needed to be dictated to by the technicians. Who were, of course, primarily concerned with just getting their systems to image successfully at all at the extremes (towards lighter hairlines, towards joins of fairly thick stems), not overall esthetics.




>But it doesn't take much to just include
>some links:
>http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/30/12286.html

I don't try to fashion a living out of posting to listservs, so I hadn't seen the thread earlier.

Now here's a curiosity:

On Monday, June 23, 2003 - 11:08 pm, I see from one of those links, that you posted:

>The true capitalists don't post to Typophile.

>hhp


Thank goodness that frees me from the noose of raving capitalist that I found myself being forced into modeling, earlier on. Thanks for the link. (Whew! Now, I can go back to simply raving.)




And it seems to me that Mr Giampa's post regarding
>http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/Pascal60.jpg
on Wednesday, June 25, 2003 - 12:53 am was exactly correct.

The oversharpening I happened to be referring to, done in the early phototypesetting mastering days (read: late 1970s, not circa 1960s metal), was much more pronounced. Much uglier, so as to actually trump whatever other ugliness some might read into (what is actually a lovely construction) in something like ITC's resurrection of ATF Souvenir from the early 20th century.

Besides, in the case of 'Pascal', Mr Mendoza y Almeida did a tremendous, very sensitive job of acknowledging - in the case of his drawing's (and, in the cutting's) apparently anticipating Tetterode's imaging capabilities, and their customers' reproduction limits - the need to hold open those areas slightly, while trying to incorporate the subtle sharpening as a welcome design trait.

On the other hand, its Q, 3, 8 and eszett are kind of unfortunate, in my opinion. Otherwise, Stella, stellar!

Don't you be dissin' my Mendoza y Almeida. ;-)



Moreover, thank goodness for '"artiste" type designers', whoever they are, and whatever parts of visual communications they work in. Without them, there's be no one to annoy the number crunchers.

We couldn't abide that now, could we?



PS - I also noted, farther down in that thread you mentioned:
>Long live Agfa. It's a damn shame they
>don't make scanners any more. I just wish
>I'd gotten one of their higher-end ones
>(1200 dpi) before they stopped.


You can have mine; the Arcus II. It had terrific software, FotoLook. Really great.

One day, the scanner just abruptly stopped looking. They wanted (literally) US$700. just to look at it.

I was lost, because I really had enjoyed using it.

Then, I decided to go to CompUSA and see what else was out there. Bought a Umax 1220S. I was pleasantly surprised to find that both software and hardware were/are actually much better!

Let's hear it for power supply failures! Hooray!

Joe

> that oversharpening technique was able to die quietly

I'm sorry to be the one to update you on current reality again, but you should know that trapping has been making a strong comeback in the last few years. The reason it was ignored at the beginning of digital technology is simply that people had some basic new problems to tackle, but now that they have, they can start refining their designs once again.

And the quantity of trapping is not the issue, obviously.

>> The true capitalists don't post to Typophile.

That was indeed a bit off: I had failed to account for those who use public spaces to advertise their wares.

> Tetterode's imaging capabilities

Metal type?!

Anyway, I suggest you post any messages dealing with that stuff to the appropriate threads.

--

Demographic: middle-aged white American male. It must've been something in the air while they were growing up, but they generally: salivate over obese disco fonts; refuse to admit the relevance -sometimes even the existence- of trapping; can't stand me.

hhp

Joe,

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? So is everybody else!

Gerald Giampa

Typophiles,


Discrimination is endemic with this member! In Canada there is a law against age discrimination.

Note: "middle-aged".

I trust you will do the right thing.

Once again,

Gerald Giampa

Gerald,

Read Jo Treacy's post.

And it seems to me that Mr Giampa's post regarding
>http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/Pascal60.jpg
on Wednesday, June 25, 2003 - 12:53 am was exactly correct.

Who's the crazy one?

Gerald Giampa