What do I think of the article? I think that those readers who enjoy recreational drugs should ask him to share, since obviously he's got some pretty powerful stuff.

Many of the assertions in this article are simply factually false, and many others are misleading at best. Plus he's got some axes to grind. The combination makes it pretty absurd. There are a couple of other folks out there who operate in a similar alternate universe, but luckily none of them are all that prominent.

I seem to recall that there are some perfectly good points as well in there, but it's hard to distinguish them from the rubbish. I suppose I could go through it again... (shudder).

Regards,

T

LOL, I was hoping you would enlighten me, Thom, on which points were valid! The part that intrigued me, I guess, was the artist vs. the programer notion, just simply because i'm not much of either! I realize that Mr. Nader's philosophy & practices run contrary to the majority, but i was hoping for some level headed discussion about some of the issues he addresses, i realize that this article is written as a propaganda (just check out that closing line!) but can i just have some commentary on this to help sort out the facts sans the drama. (I hate drama, unless it's a good classic tragedy) So no name calling! I just want the facts and some good solid opinions. Or is that too much to ask?

Oh, fine, I'll dissect the article.

First off, it's certainly true that with the *current* state of OpenType development tools, it takes a moderately technical mindset to develop feature-ful OpenType fonts with lots of goodies.

That being said, one of the beauties of OpenType is that it frees the type designer from the arbitrary character set and encoding constraints of Type 1 and TrueType (though at least TrueType had more flexibility on the language support side). Speaking as a designer, if I want to throw in just one extra ligature or a couple of alternate characters or whatever into my font, I can.

The new technology doesn't remove the critical role of the type designer any more than any other type technology has done. To be sure there is a new kind of technical type development role, for people who know how to make OpenType features work, but the general category of technical type development roles as distinct from type designers has existed for at least a century, perhaps more.

On to other stuff, from the top....


I disagree with Nader's opinion of how "the user" is the lowest common denominator and is responsible for the degradation of technologies and typography. If this were true, each technology would go downhill from the time of its introduction (created by engineers and designers) until being replaced by something else. In fact, each technology has generally improved steadily, being ever refined, until replaced by something else that offers some significant advantages, even though the new tech has some rough edges. Those rough edges are generally fixed over time. The first DTP was pretty bad in some ways, mostly due to resolution limitations. But it improved.

Nader claims that OpenType makes it possible to do "things like report usage statistics to the manufacturer through online connections, keep logs of certain things, conduct machine surveys, enforce usage parameters, and all kinds of actions that some people might consider malicious, intrusive, or reckless."

This is almost entirely untrue. The only "usage parameter" existent in OpenType that I can think of is the fsType embedding bit, which specifies the type developers' desires as far as how the fonts can be embedded. This is present in TrueType as well, so is not new to OpenType. The rest as far as I know is pure fantasy, but to whatever extent it is true it would be true only of TrueType flavored OpenType, and only to the exact same extent it's true of TrueType.

"Open Type technology itself is in fact so open that it is certainly possible to place a viral element inside a font, or make the font activate or deactivate system modules or, as has already been proven, even cause a machine to restart itself no matter what tasks are running or which work has been saved."

Again, this is largely nonsense. Until recently, it was possible to make a font in any major format (Type 1, TrueType, OpenType with either kind of outlines) that would cause Windows to blue screen or reboot. These security problems have been solved. However, there was nothing "viral" about it, it was simply bad fonts that could cause crashes. No self-replication or infection of any sort. Also nothing particularly unique to OpenType.

However, I do think that Nader is largely right that if user's expectations go way up, it will be hard on type designers who have to produce a lot more glyphs. Today's better tools will reduce the time to add more glyphs, but it's still a noticeable extra amount of work. It is not clear to me that this change will happen, as there are an awful lot of existing typefaces that do not have tons of extra goodies, and many of those don't particularly need to be extended to a bigger glyph complement.



I mostly disagree about the comments about IP. These are at most extensions to existing works, not clones or knockoffs. The comparisons made here are inappropriate.

Nader's claims about Lithos are misleading at best, as Carol was personally involved in the extensions to her design. The "figure variations" are not oldstyle figures, but simply smaller versions of the full-size figures, to go with the small caps. Adobe does generally credit the people who do major extensions to typefaces, which is why Myriad Pro now lists Fred Brady and Christopher Slye, who did the Myriad Pro Cyrillic and Greek coverage (respectively) with Robert Slimbach as art director.

I agree that as type tech advances there have been tradeoffs and we've had to give up things to gain other things. But what almost always happens is that some of those things that have been sacrificed are able to come back as the next generation of technology improves.

The speculation that the "underground" might somehow as a group tend to outdo the above-ground developers in typographic innovation is pretty laughable to me. After all, the average shareware font has significantly less than a full Win-ANSI or MacRoman character set. Probably a few people will do some very cool stuff, but the existence of cool technology won't change the average state of shareware. How many superhinted TrueType fonts have you seen as shareware?

The last section ("what are we sacrificing?") is pretty fantastical to my mind, and hardly worth commenting on.

So, those are my thoughts.

Regards,

T

hey thom, thnx for humoring me. it's nice to be able to sepaprate the fact from the fantasy. i guess i shoulda picked up better on the whole "sci-fi" vibe of that "article."
I for one am excitied about the capabilites of OpenType, but am on the steep end of a learning curve (as you can well atest to my ignorance in naming proceedures!) but i think with some help from you guys on the boards i might be able to figger it out someday!

Oh, just further on the Lithos Pro nonsense: I double-checked, and Carol did the Greek herself, and oversaw the small caps development.

Cheers,

T

I can't get myself to think about this too much but I'll add that
OT development is not hard. It just takes some patience and
willingness to part with the FOG dinosaur.

I'm often miffed by this. It's the old model if you ask me.
Other desingers (web, interactive etc.) change all the time.
Often weekly.

I knew I shouldn't have looked at the Nader thing...

> Carol did the Greek herself

Does it look too white as well?

hhp

Frederick Nader seems to have buried some good point. Certainly within his passion is elements of truth.

> adding idiotic symbols

Like ornaments?

> Or Greek, I know nothing of Greek. What, I am going to design them a typeface?

Certainly, there are no Greek type designers out there. Greek doesn't need fonts anyway.

> At least in English we don't use accents as a crutch.

Instead the pronounced mismatch between the spelling and the pronunciation is a permanent crutch for many users of English. I don't like accents either, but they would certainly make English writing less idiotic.

hhp

Gerald, I disagree.

Opentype has made so-called "fine typography" accessible for the people, and not only those that speak English. (I think the trend for making fonts for the world and not just the few that speak English is a positive trend in the world of typography.) I see nothing wrong with that.

It has also made some of the minutiae of typography a little easier. I also see nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, even with opentype fonts, the designer/typographer still has to futz with the spacing, decide smallcaps or italic, choose a weight ... and on and on and on ...

Even though the font software might be cross-platform, I doubt the licenses allow for twice the installs. Each install counts as an install. I personally don't think that is one of the greatest features. It doesn't benefit me, as I don't use PC computers. (Not that there is anything wrong with PC computers).

Another thing about accents ... Accents are part of the cultures of other languages, aren't they? It would be boring and sad and safe and bland to castrate those languages which depend upon accents and make them conform to a so-called preferred (more bland) looking page.

I wish I did speak another language. (I only speak enough Italian to get myself into trouble.) If I did speak another language it would be to embrace the differences, not to find the similarities.

Gerald -

I'm not with you my man.

Accents are as important as ever, especially with the opening
up of Europe etc. OpenType, Fontlab and Python make this
easy stuff. Again, patience.

As for boating, I like to canoe.

Tiffany

Another thing about accents ... Accents are part of the cultures of other languages, aren't they?

I am extremely sensitive to accents. That is why I am not arrogant. I was teasing. Most fonts do not have well made accents. When they do, it is often for "one language only". You must live, read and speak the language of a country to determine what is right for the language. You must know the people, their history.

Not to mention that some countries have their own political aspects about language, such as the Estonians. History has been unkind to languages, book burnings and keyboards forced upon them. What I was indicating is that if we try to make all things for all people why not we all have our head shaved at the same time? Why not have only one model of car, one type face? Where do you stop. Where is Barbie, where is Ken?

Open Type's inclusions is defined by its exclusions. Making culture the orphan of economy. And they ask for consent?

I believe designers from different countries should speak more strongly at the protection of their mother tongue alphabets. And for god sakes folk, this donuts on top of the

Gerald, I'm glad you were teasing. It kinda took me by surprise.

I understand your points, and I do agree with there being "no global 'one size fits all'." I don't hope that all type becomes open type, but, I'm happy with the type that has become OT.

Admittedly, I know very little about the engine. I shop by exterior shape and color. And if it happens to come with a Turbo, I'm not going to complain.

Doesn't it make some things easier, OT I mean, in the production for all languages?

> Open Type leads away from these