Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
The Font Wars, Part 2. |
| Authors: |
Bigelow, Charles1 |
| Source: |
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Jan/Mar2020, Vol. 42 Issue 1, p25-40. 16p. |
| Subjects: |
Computer fonts, Typographers, Typographic design, Adobe Inc., Pattern recognition systems, Signal processing |
| Abstract: |
In the early 1980s, letters rasterized from outline fonts at low and medium resolutions had irregular shapes. The lower the resolutions, the greater the irregularities, and the more that typographers criticized the type quality. PostScript fonts, launched in 1985, regularized medium resolution type with secret ingredients coyly called "hints" by Adobe. This prompted competing inventions of font regularization using techniques variously called "instructions," "delta exceptions," "procedures," "intelligence," and other terms sounding more like hi-tech snake oil than science. Further research and open publication, however, revealed their connections to traditional aesthetics of letter symmetry as well as to modern signal processing, pattern recognition, and psychophysics, thus expanding our understanding of typography in digital culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
|
Copyright of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing is the property of IEEE and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.) |
| Database: |
Engineering Source |
