Get the new one by JFP - it bypasses all the legacy mistakes.

hhp

Yes, Sabon Next is great, and you won't have to see the Sabon italic h. But let me ask you this:

1. What's your budget?
2. What purpose will you use Sabon for? To make a shopping list, personal correspondence, or to set a book?
3. What software will you use? Will you use InDesign or something similar? If it's Word, don't bother - stick with what you have installed. (Someone here recently suggested Georgia, and I think it's quite usable at 10.5 pt).
4. Why Sabon? It's one of my favourite faces to read, but there are other good text fonts.

As for your question, the cuts of Sabon are the same.There may be differences in Kerning etc.

Budget – Low. ~£50. I was thinking one weight and an italic.
Purpose – Nothing exciting. I don't really have any good reason for buying a font, I just thought it would be nice. Just so that when I produce "things that people will read" it'll look nicer. Possibility of self-publishing a book
Software – Well...at the moment, Word... I was considering getting hold of some (more) proper GPL typesetting stuff but again I don't know anything about what's good and what's not.
Why Sabon? Because that's what the Faber & Faber poetry collections are set in. I think it looks nice.

I guess the answer is to Just Not Bother, then.

Sounds to me like you appreciate good type. If your budget is such that you cannot afford Sabon Next you can always start with Linotype Sabon. You can buy single styles which does fit within your budget.

> I just thought it would be nice.

Cool!
Go for it.
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/sabon/

hhp

... And allow me to recommend Lyx, a good interface for the LaTex typesetting engine, for an additional cost of zero quid.

http://www.lyx.org
http://wiki.lyx.org/Windows/LyXWinInstaller

Never thought I'd defend Word, but while you can't use it for high quality typography, it can certainly be twisted into producing something infinitely better than the default, and plenty good enough to justify considering an appropriate choice of typeface. Admittedly, you do have to fight against the program to get there...

'myownprivatedisco', if you're not stuck to professional workflow requirements and have a technical mindset, you might find (La)TeX a very satisfying tool to work with. Plus its free.

The trick with Word is to turn on kerning.

Can LyX use TT/PS/OTF?

TeX can use TrueType, PostScript, and OpenType fonts with the minor complication of remapping the encoding, which can be done using automated tools. Type1 outlines either from PFB or OTF work just fine with most current DVI drivers, TrueType outline support used to be limited to PDF creation, not sure how much the situation has improved.

I doubt LyX does the re-encoding automatically, but I could be wrong. I'm not that enthusiastic on LyX myself.

At least Word doesn't futz with a font's spacing by default like Quark does.

hhp

Lyx supports any font supported by LaTex, including opentype, truetype and postscript. Tools available allow easy use of Adobe standard fonts (e.g., from linotype, adobe, and monotype), but something like Quadraat might be trickier (because osf is built into the vanilla roman -- not the "extended".)

A dear, dear man by the name of Walter Schmidt already provided packages for using Aldus, Minion, Optima/Nova, Syntax, Sabon, Adobe and Stempel Garamond, Dolly, Frutiger and more. All the user needs to do is to license the font. http://home.vr-web.de/~was/fonts.html

Lyx is an excellent way to get into typography, because it allows a Word user to enjoy the benefits of a typesetting engine out of the box and without paying. With time, a user must learn some LaTex to obtain specific results, but simple documents -- letters, articles, books -- can be produced simply by instructing the program what to set (e.g., a letter), and choosing the font and size. Latex takes care of the rest.

InDesign will also 'do things" to the default spacing in a typeface. If you allow it to use "optical" kerning/spacing, it ignores built-in kerning and uses its own algorithm. This is a good option to have if the font you're using is spaced badly or has no kerning. Not so sure I like it as default behavior.

ID also has a preference hidden in the Type panel "Adjust text attributes when scaling", which I suppose is there to support Adobe's sizes, but which (I think) will add space between glyphs (globally) at small sizes, and reduce the letterspacing at large sizes. If you're used to a typeface performing a certain way at small sizes, you could get a surprise when you use it at small or large sizes. Mr. Phinney, care to elaborate?

For a good all-purpose text family, try MvB Verdigris. Or, get Roman and Italic of Whitman from FontBureau, which is close to your budget.

> TeX can use TrueType, PostScript, and OpenType fonts
> with the minor complication of remapping the encoding

Or, you can use XeTeX -- a free TeX system that supports Unicode and OpenType Layout features without the "minor complication of remapping the encoding" (http://scripts.sil.org/xetex/ )

A.

If some are interested?

http://www.porchez.com/article/352/sabon-next-opentype

Eventually, yes, XeTeX will hopefully do away with the complications, but at the present it still has issues with mathematical typesetting and microtypography, and the fact that virtual fonts are not supported breaks many things and makes others more complicated. And it's not really portable.

XeTeX is a wonderful program, and saved the day of a friend of mine who had to typeset mixed English/Greek/Armenian for her thesis, but I'd not recommend it to new users at the present stage.

> mixed English/Greek/Armenian

Interesting. Could you possibly put me in touch
with your friend? Since that's exactly the sort
of thing I get involved in, and would be highly
interested in finding out what her solution was.

If so, my email: hpapazian_thatsymbol_gmail_dot_com

hhp

Carl Crossgrove wrote:
InDesign will also ‘do things” to the default spacing in a typeface. If you allow it to use “optical” kerning/spacing, it ignores built-in kerning and uses its own algorithm. This is a good option to have if the font you’re using is spaced badly or has no kerning. Not so sure I like it as default behavior.

I wouldn't either, but it isn't the default (using the font's built in kerning is). So InDesign will only 'do things' to the default spacing/kerning if you ask it to.

ID also has a preference hidden in the Type panel “Adjust text attributes when scaling”, which I suppose is there to support Adobe’s sizes, but which (I think) will add space between glyphs (globally) at small sizes, and reduce the letterspacing at large sizes.

No, that is not at all what it does. Basically the question is this: Do you want the text size to scale when you scale a frame? In other words, if you scale a frame that contains 12-point text to 75%, do you want it to then contain 9-point text? Or would you rather the text stayed at 12 point (possibly overflowing the frame)?

Regards,

T

Thanks for clarifying that preference, Tom. I have played with ID and there is some behavior that happens to text, which reminds me of the h-z program or some similar algorithm. I've set a paragraph of text in a single-master design like Bembo or one of my own designs, at about 7 point, then copied the text, without changing any atributes except changing point size to about 96 point, and then zoomed the 2 samples to the same large size onscreen, and discovered that the smaller sample was set looser and horizontally scaled. Same with the large sample; tighter spacing, slightly narrow. What is that? I thought that turning off the "text attributes while scaling" preference stopped that behavior. It's a real bother when I'm testing and proofing fonts in development.

It is nice to have Thomas here to clarify things. Does anyone from MS ever pop in here? I heard they have a type dept. You'd think they'd be interested in what input they could get from a forum such as this.

Simon Daniels, from the Microsoft Typography group, is a regular typophile contributor. His handle on the site is sii.

Thanks Dan, I've seen that username. Well that is good to know that any brilliant observations at least have a chance of being considered.

Knowing how things are at my small office I can imagine how things go at his. Recently our interim manager gave me authority to use his "said-so" to get someone to do something and the response I got was "That name doesn't carry much weight around here". (I didn't let him know there was an impotent stigma to his authority)
: )

Note that Apple has no presence here.

hhp