I would not mix the fonts from two sources because the metrics may not match.

As for originality, I would lean toward the Linotype version even though at one point their version likely went through the old phototype unitizing process. Linotype has a history with fonts, Apple is very late to the game. Linotype's type designers were very much concerned with accuracy and attention to detail.

Yes indeed, interpretation is the name of the game when making digital fonts from metal-era designs such as Palatino. The issue arises because the letter shape on the face of the type changes when it is printed. And the printed shape varies depending on the printer, the paper stock and the condition of the type, among other things. So to which shape should the redesigner/digitizer be faithful?

“The task of renovating or recreating a design from old impressions is the most difficult of all. The effect of impressing upon damp paper, of worn type, and of the spread of ink, have to be reckoned with; and great skill is needed if, while removing blurred outlines, the subtleties of the original engraving are not to be lost.”
—Stanley Morison, A Tally of Types.

I have both installed on my system as well, and from what I can see Palatino Linotype has much more typographic features like old style figures and small caps, whereas the other one has none of these but wider language support.

What George said.

hhp

The difference is that one was made by Adobe for Linotype from data unknown, into PostScript, and the other was made by Font Bureau, for Apple, from Linotype data , with Zapf consulting, into TrueType. (I don't think Linotype made either).

The one made by Adobe/Linotype would also have been from Linotype data.

Thank you everybody. It seems that I can't use either of the fonts alone :) Using the "Palatino Linotype" implementation falls back to "Palatino" for two characters with rarer diacritics, and using "Palatino" falls back to "Arial" for the ff ligature. Mind you, in these fall-back cases, only that particular missing character is rendered using the other font.

Now I could disable ligatures altogether, but somehow I don't really like that. Isn't there a Palatino that has everything and is a decent implementation?

Palatino works rather well without ligatures.
It certainly seems to have been designed that way.

There is a version that we sometimes use, in ttf. It came with some Microsoft software. Actually, we seldom used it, only because designers seldom specify Palatino these days. All ligatures, polytonic Greek, Cyrillic, small caps and os figs, though the combining diacriticals are sparse. What accented character are you missing?

The copyright notice reads:

Copyright 1981-1983, 1989,1993, 1998 Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. All rights reserved. The digitally encoded machine readable outline data for producing the Typefaces licensed are the property of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG and/or its subsidiaries, represented by Linotype Library GmbH, Dupont Strasse 1, 61352 Bad Homburg Germany. Portions © 1996-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

and the Notice/description reads:

Palatino Linotype is the definitive new version of Hermann ZapfÕs [sic] Palatino, which since its design in 1950 has become one of the world's most widely used typefaces. For this new digital version, Professor Zapf has drawn numerous additional characters to include an extensive range of ligatures, numerals, fractions and support for Cyrillic and both monotonic and polytonic Greek. Special care has been taken to enhance the quality of the letterforms when displayed on the computer screen, ensuring that Palatino Linotype is highly legible whether displayed on the screen or in print. This typeface is ideal for use in extended text settings such as books, periodicals and catalogs.

Oh yeah, I remember that one! It was a big deal when it came out.

hhp

Charles: Thank you for the hint; there seems to be another implementation floating around :) The characters I am missing in "Palatino Linotype" are U+1e41 and U+1e47. These are the only two characters where "Palatino" is used as a fall-back, the rest is set ok in "Palatino Linotype".

hrant: Why was that a big deal?

If you'd like to have those two characters added to Palatino Linotype, it's not difficult (if you have the right software) but the EULA probably prohibits any modification. I know people in Linotype and I can try my luck with getting permission if you like. If interested: hpapazian at gmail dot com

The big deal: just that it was supposed to have been the definitive version. And maybe it is. But as Charles hints I guess Palatino is no longer in high demand.

hhp

Unicode 1E41 is a (precomposed) lowercase m with a dotaccent above. U+1E47 is a (precomposed) lowercase n with a dot accent below. Neither is in this Palatino font in precomposed form -- nor, likely, any Palatino you can find. You're in romanized Indic script country.

However, you're in partial luck. The Palatino I'm referring to does have U+0323 (dotbelowcomb) as a combining accent, and it seems to have mark positioning. The font does not have U+0307, the combining dot accent. It does have U+02D9, the spacing modifier dot accent. Of course, there is no mark positioning with spacing modifiers, it isn't their purpose. Still, if the occurrence is infrequent, you could kern it back & rekern to properly space the following letter. The Unicode in the file will be a trifle compromised. Or, you could use a proper combining dot accent (U+0307) from, say, Charis or Gentium -- funny thing about those periods, they look a lot alike. Just get the size & spacing close in the application program.

The license for the font I'm talking about forbids modification, even for personal use.

Modification
You are not allowed to edit or modify this font, even for your own use. Please contact Linotype Library GmbH if you require a customized version of this font.

Again, any dot accent from any Palatino would look the same, if you can find one with the combining accents to preserve syntactic meaning. Sadly, most fonts don't have any.

On the other hand, an Adobe font does allow modification, if purchased before 2011, even if for one of the Monotype conglomerate companies' fonts (of which Linotype is now one). Otherwise, no time constraint.

Tell your program to default to *that* Palatino font for the one character.

Ain't EULAs fun? Isn't the new Monotype great? If you see one of Monotype exec's crossing the street, remember what the accelerator and brake pedals are for. Careful, don't get confused...

Isn't the new Monotype great?

It isn't just Monotype, the no-mod clause has sadly become the norm, with very few exceptions (such as Adobe and Monokrom). Now, if we could figure out who started this trend, I for one might have trouble hitting the right pedal at the right time...

hhp

Looks to me that TeX Gyre Pagella does have U+1E47 though not U+1E41. As far as I can see, the applicable licence (the GUST Font License and (by extension) the LaTeX Project Public License v1.3c) does not limit commercial exploitation.

Shinntype allows mods.

Ah yes, thanks for the reminder! And even more thanks for allowing.

hhp

Lots of the smaller foundries allow modification. Christóbal Henestrosa is another (though you're suppose to tell him), some of the fonts marketed by Village, etc.

Sometimes it is automatic (in the EULA), sometimes you have to ask. The ones that turn you down are more often, but not always, involved in the advertising side of type use.

I've researched this some, though I have not gathered hard data. What fits the questions posed & answers I've gotten is the "no modifications" clauses began as an effort to limit/stop piracy. The small foundry (publisher) tells the lawyer what they are trying to stop, he/she words it a certain way. When that is all the publisher is after, they will usually allow modification, as long as it is well done and does not affect their product negatively.

However, some publishers look at modifications as an extra revenue opportunity. This would include FontFont and the Monotype conglomeration. Even so, they are quite different companies. FontFont at least, is quite generous with both their backup and embedding policies. The new Monotype is not; I find them similar to some of the more aggressive pharmaceutical companies. You know the line about drug prices -- due to "research costs" -- esp. researching what gets you higher sales with your print & TV advertisements...

There is a funny story about FontFont, maybe even true. They had screwed up the encoding on a font, and a somewhat miffed customer finally agreed to pay to have it straightened out. Only at that point did FontFont asked "well, what's wrong?" That's asking a bit much of your customer, what? (Believe this was posted on Typophile many years ago.) But "modifications" aside, their EULA is still one of the better ones for many type users.

Charles, if you ever do compile some hard data on this that would be great.

hhp

If you mean hard data on why people made certain decisions, I'll never do it. An academic paper, that one.

If you mean hard data on what the individual licenses are, I use the compilation already made up by FontFont, to be found here

http://www.fontshop.com/licenses/

Not everyone covered, to be sure, but a lot of information on the site.

I meant about which EULAs [don't] contain the no-mod clause. That FontShop list is probably the best single place to start compiling such data.

hhp

Again, this won't be me.

Whether or not a typeface has a no-mod clause can be important in my business, but making a list of all fonts that have such is not. There are only a small set of fonts I care about. Put another way, I'm not interested in identifying fonts I can repackage & sell. If people that design the interiors of books for scholarly book publishers aren't interested in a typeface, it's of no value to me, regardless of the EULA.

I think what could be useful about preparing and publishing a list of which foundries [dis]allow modification is that it would lead to more business for the lenient ones, putting pressure on the strict ones. This would lead to a future with more good options.

hhp

> using "Palatino" falls back to "Arial" for the ff ligature

You are using hardcoded ligatures instead of OpenType features? Why?

Thomas: I use OpenType features in my stylesheet. It seems that PrinceXML (the PDF generator) falls back to Arial; perhaps I should contact those guys and ask why it's doing that. I would have expected that, if that ligature doesn't exist in the font file, it wouldn't be emitted...

Yes, sounds like a bug in PrinceXML to me! Although I guess I can see an argument the other way. :/

Thomas: After some digging around in the generated PDF document it turned out that there was indeed a single hardcoded ligature in the text! Removed it, and everything works just fine now, no finger-pointing at PrinceXML this time :-)

Nick is right with asking: "So to which shape should the redesigner/digitizer be faithful?"

Palatino was originally a hot metal typeface. When it was adopted for photo typesetting, the typeface was considerably modified. While hot metal Palatino comes in distinct, specially designed versions for each size, photo Palatino comes only in one design, which is used for all sizes. Additionally, some of Palatino's personality was ironed out; it seems Linotype wanted the new phototype Palatino to be more neutral and less lively.

The digital versions of Palatino available today from Linotype and Adobe are based on the phototype variant. Berthold has prepared a digital version based on the old hot metal typeface, but it is no longer available, as Berthold ceased to exist.

Here you can see a comparison of the digital Palatino from Linotype, which is based on the phototype variant, (top), and the digital Palatino from Berthold, which is based on the hot metal typeface, (bottom):

I much prefer Bethold's digitization, and I think it is a pity that it is no longer available.

In Ulrich Stiehl's Palatino Berthold 1992 BQ pdf document, we can see two versions of the italic, BQ Italic and BQ Werk Italic; do you know the origin of these two italics?

"Palatino was originally a hot metal typeface."

Not in my opinion. The typeface design is based on carved and written forms, originally drawn, and then massively modified in the making of the last generation of metal fonts, by the last sputtering generation of metal font makers.

Oh Berthold's is very pretty! :) These guys seem to have a version to render it but I couldn't find a link to purchase or download the files.

For digitizations of the 1950 Palatino, the typophile link http://typophile.com/node/65198 provides interesting information.

is there a tool that helps me compare two types?

You can use FontForge. You open the two fonts and then select "Element > Compare Fonts..."; you get a report on various differences as well as glyphs put in the background for comparison. I tried with Palatino Linotype (from Microsoft Office 2011) and the Palatino from Apple. For letters used in English, the differences are hardly perceptible. As soon as there are diacritics, the differences become more obvious. Here are odieresis and udieresis (Linotpype is filled in green, Apple is only the contours).

Michael: Thank you so much for the last two posts, that was really interesting! I followed your link and then another to the PDF document set in Berthold Palatino (Palatino BQ). From that PDF and the postscript documents I could extract the Berthold Palatino and... jolly gee does that implementation look warm! :-)

Unfortunately, the font files extracted from the PDF seem somewhat incomplete wrt diacritics and other glyphs.

Unfortunately, the font files extracted from the PDF seem somewhat incomplete wrt diacritics and other glyphs.

Those fonts date back from a period where the number of glyphs per font was rather limited. I have a FontLab demo version and here is a trace of execution in the folder '/library/Application Support/FontLab/Encoding/T1 Roman-Western' of my Macintosh (where one character per line is listed and commented lines start with a %):

% for i in *.enc
> do echo -n $i ; grep -v '^%' $i | wc -l
> done
adobe_default.enc     230
adobe_std.enc     149
iso_latin1.enc     197
mac_roman.enc     256
win_1252.enc     224
%

Even if the maximum number of characters in Type 1 fonts was 256 (including .notdef), as you can see many encodings were far from providing so many characters. I count 202 glyphs in PalatinoBQ-Roman.pfa, you add the "text figures" and smallcaps that are in the Expert font and you get a non negligible number of glyphs for that period in time. Those fonts are from 1992. The first Truetype fonts were released in May 1991 on Mac OS 7.

And, according http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21654, the Truetype version of the new Palatino appeared on Mac OS 7.1 which, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7, would be August 1992.

Good stuff, thank you Michael :-)

"Palatino was originally a hot metal typeface."

Nope, Hermann Zapf originally designed Palatino for the Stempel typefoundry as a handsetting typeface. An that’s just ‘metal’ ;–) ‘Hot’ metal refers to the line casters by Linotype and Intertype as well as to the Monotype machines. These machines produce set type by producing it directly from matrices in the desired type size. With hand setting, metal type is pre-produced and definitely ‘cold’ when the type setter picks them from the type case. The first Linotype-version of Palatino was called Aldus, a slightly modified version of Palatino, taking the technical restrictions of the Linotype line casting machine in account. Main problem to be tackled: duplex matrices which caused the regular, the italic and the bold weight to be designed at the same widths. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pietschreuders/8389641634/

The Berthold version as mentioned above, is based on the metal / hand setting version by Stempel, not on some ‘hot’ metal / line caster version.

A follow-up on the Palatino conversation. I really like the Berthold digitization that Michael pointed out above, and I could extract some almost usable font files from the PDF.

I've contacted Berthold and they said that "Palatino BQ was discontinued in 1997." Bummer. I've then asked about the legalities of using versions of that font which float around in public (like in that PDF file), and about modifying these font files to fix and improve them. Sadly, there was no answer.

Two questions: One: is there a recent approximation for Berthold's Palatino available somewhere? And if not, then two: can I work with the font I extracted from the PDF?

Be warned: not getting an answer might be a trap.

hhp

Apparently "_savage" is having trouble posting to Typophile, so he asked me to post the below on his behalf:

"
I am looking for a Palatino font that is close to the original design.

Looking at the http://luc.devroye.org/palatino2.html article, "The original Palatino," I do like its liveliness and warmth. It seems to have been captured best by http://www.bertholdtypes.com/ 's digitization (see http://www.sanskritweb.net/fontdocs/pala92.pdf which has the font embedded) but that digitization is no longer available. There is the http://www.linotype.com/57056/palatinolinotype-family.html version, and the http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tex-gyre/pagella version, and https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/urw/palladio/ . Which else?
"

hhp

So "_savage" made a new account, and he continues here:
http://typophile.com/node/124642

hhp

"Hermann Zapf originally designed Palatino for the Stempel typefoundry as a handsetting typeface."

Of course you are right! I meant just metal! Yawn on!