Have you seen Andron by Andreas Stöetzner?

Is this for a "manuscript" (intermediate stage) or final, printed version? If for manuscript, Charis is nice, laser prints are nice, it photocopies well, and is free. It needs some work to be ready for book-quality distribution. I have started on that, but at our shop, development comes with the needs of particular books, so I haven't hooked up everything yet. This kind of work isn't too hard, anyone could do it . . . esp. a linguist with some needs.

I've seen Andron on the screen, in this forum. It looks very nice. The only reason I don't recommend it too is I haven't seen it printed, either laser or 2400 dpi offset. I *think* it will be fine, in some ways nicer than Charis. But I believe it is not open source, and does cost. "Open Source" or "permission to modify" is important only if you encounter the need for a character/feature not already in the font.

I understand that it is nice to use a sans serif for headings, titles, and the like, no? So, if anyone has a recommendation for that or if I should just not use a sans serif at all.

Bunk. Cookbook design. Interior design (not covers/jackets) is to address the needs of a text, as it is read, not as it is framed and hung on the wall. Book interiors (and journal articles) usually aren't in need of *graphic design*, and too few graphic designers actually read. Fine for posters, not for books/journal articles.

On the other hand, a journal will have an existing design, so you have to conform to it. Put it this way. Often, there is nothing wrong with a sans for titles or subheads. But only that. If you need characters not in a sans but in the text font, by all means use that for titles and subheads.

A while ago, the jurors at the Association of American University Presses Book Show praised some books for their use of a single type family. Well, jurors differ from year to year, but this does help show cookbook thinking is out of place.

Andron seems very nice. I'm surprised at how large the Mega version's coverage is. It could be used for most if not all phonetic transcription. The only thing that I see I lacking are a few mathematical operators and letter-like symbols that are used in theoretical linguistics. (Charis SIL, of course, doesnt have these either.)

"Manuscript" refers to mostly an intermediate stage form. Any final versions would be typeset by publishers (assuming my work is actually publish-worthy). Although Lincom Europa does publish camera-ready manuscripts that you must prepare, I dont know if I'll ever send anything to them.

I appreciate the note about using sans. Most linguists dont use different fonts for titles and subheads anyway. This is true of most journals I read, too — the exceptions being a few experimental phonetic/psychology/cognitive science journals, which are also distinguished by their use of a two-column layout.

May I ask what the problems with Charis are? (if you have the time...)

Thanks for the replies.

I wrote something last night that was terrible. I've edited it. Hmm. Now edited posts keep their order in these forums.

Not much wrong with Charis for preparing manuscripts. I'm fussy about the fonts we use for the composition of books, and so have modified it to taste and to match our workflow. Tastes vary, our workflow is a bit odd. The latest version of Charis SIL has small caps, and lacks only old style numbers.

I wold love to get in a manuscript where the designer specified Andron, to give it a whirl. I can't really justify the purchase when there is no use. Does anyone know of a printed book set in Andron I could look at? I might then consider buying it for texts other than linguistics.

The same for Ross Mills evolving font Huronia

Andron is ever involving. You can suggest these glyphs as additions, or if you're in a hurry: have them drawn custom by the designer or purchase a license that allows editing.

Kevin, which are the characters you need and are not available in Charis and Andron? I'm developing a font planned to cover all Latin-based languages and also some special areas. Your need may also be addressed if it fits the project.

Recently, a fellow Typophiler pointed some uncommon characters need to Northwest America languages and I included these in the font. You can see the project in Forum's Critique section (here).

The Windows 7 version of Microsoft's Cambria typeface might also be a good candidate. Earlier versions do not support the necessary characters for phonetic transcription, but these were among the major extensions added for Windows 7.

@Freiberger:

The other characters are not strictly phonetic or orthographic symbols for writing languages. They are symbols used in a particular linguistic theory. This may be outside the scope of your font, especially if you are not providing wide coverage for mathematical and logical notation. If you are curious anyway, the symbols I use are the following with the unicode number in parentheses:

Precedes (227A) for "is less harmonic than"
Succeeds (227B) for "is more harmonic than"
Much Greater-Than (226B) for "precedes" in the sense of partially ordered sets
Script Capital F (2131) as a metacharacter for faithfulness constraints
Script Capital M (2133) as a metacharacter for markedness constraints
Script Capital H (210B) as an abbreviation for harmony score

There aren't many fonts that have these characters.

@John Hudson:

I wasn't aware that Cambria was so extensive.
Thanks.

Thanks Kevin.

Actually, I have doubts about which mathematical and logical glyphs must be added. I plan to have a wider support than one finds in most text fonts. But also don't want to put the whole Unicode blocks without criteria. The same applies to phonetic characters. Anyway, if I include IPA/phonetic support, I will also add the glyphs you pointed.

Just out of curiosity, is there any reason I have never seen mentioned as a possible choice ITC Stone Serif Std and ITC Stone Serif Std Phonetic? There is also a sans version of both (I have never tried those fonts).

Precedes (227A) for "is less harmonic than"
Succeeds (227B) for "is more harmonic than"
Much Greater-Than (226B) for "precedes" in the sense of partially ordered sets
Script Capital F (2131) as a metacharacter for faithfulness constraints
Script Capital M (2133) as a metacharacter for markedness constraints
Script Capital H (210B) as an abbreviation for harmony score

@Kevin, I score these additions for the next upgrade of Andron Mega to come. I always welcome suggestions such as this, Andron has grown over the years by the help of such proposals, to a considerable extent.

Here some references of books printed in Andron:

Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 2004, 2005
Nordische Philologie, Haugen ed., dt. Ausgabe
Bibliotheca Nordica book series
Collegium Medievale journal, from Nº22/2009
Publications of the Norwegian Riksarchivet, Oslo
Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde
SIGNA magazin
–› further references

Andron is ever involving. You can suggest these glyphs as additions, or if you're in a hurry: have them drawn custom by the designer or purchase a license that allows editing.

Frode, it looks like all the available licenses for Andron prohibit editing the fonts.

… available licenses for Andron prohibit editing the fonts.

You’re right. I do generally not allow others to lay hands on Andron glyphs. I’m a font designer …
On the other hand, I am all the time open for suggested additions; if someone does make a case for it I can deliver upgrades (or even custom fonts) within a few days/weeks.

You’re right. I do generally not allow others to lay hands on Andron glyphs. I’m a font designer …
On the other hand, I am all the time open for suggested additions; if someone does make a case for it I can deliver upgrades (or even custom fonts) within a few days/weeks.

I do understand. I, on the other hand, am a type user. A completely different perspective. Some type designers -- Matthew Carter comes to mind -- are sensitive to this. Others are not. The distinction between "user" and "designer" has blurred a lot with the advent of OpnType and the attendant OT features, so when the EULA says "not a jot or title can be changed," I try to avoid the fonts; or really, try to talk our customers out of using them.

Just an example, of which there are tens to hundreds -- for URLs in the text, if the author/editor has left in the less and greater characters, we switch them to angle brackets. So, (1) you need angle brackets in the font, (2) you need to kern them with alpha characters, and (3) you need a stylistic set to switch them on. Etc.

Kerning, character substitutions etc. can be done using the layout program only. In passing, let me say that I can screw up a typeface using a layout program only. Bet I can turn your stomach. So, you're not protecting your font from the grubby workman's hands, s/he can still mess it up. But you are costing us money. If I fix the issues (I won't say "problems") in the font, we can set the book several hours faster than if we have to do the work in the layout program. We are, in the final analysis, selling time. Viewed that way, those several hours are pure profit, and important to us.

A few days or weeks is the same as never. Rarely do designers check to see if the all the characters needed for a job are actually in the font they've chosen. A compositor discovers this the hard way -- a little pink box if the character was in the file to start with, or any number of ways if the publisher's editor still uses "codes," or somebody scribbled something on the paper MS in an unreadable hand . . . Proof is due in a few days, not a few weeks.

From how it looks on the screen, I think you probably have a very nice font. I'd like to see a book printed 2400 dpi, offset press, direct to plate before recommending it. But I sure as shooting won't recommend it if I have to do a font change, maybe with size adjustment, baseline position, scaling, whatever, for each instance of a mathematical operator not in the font. Etc.

Maybe all this is moot. Presuming it prints well (& I think it will) I think your fonts are worth the money, well worth it. But most designers and publishers won't pay over Adobe prices these days. Cheap fonts are to font designers what Asia is to U.S. based compositors. Ah, commerce.

Charles, I think we need to differentiate between large foundries and personal design work. Giants like Adobe would never address a single ask from a single user. Even if the font has a bug, this may take some months before a fix is available. Not to mention updates.

Just an example: I purchased Minion in the old Multiple Master times and later purchased it again in OT. Adobe never let me know there are updates in Minion. And when I made a claim about the terrible kerning in numeral 1, it never received any answer.

But individual type designers –or even very small foundries– are a completely different matter. Andreas do a wonderful job and his offer to quickly update and address users ask cannot be compared to user support from big foundries. I'm sure you may find similar support from other type designers as those who use to be here in Typophile.

So, if you have this kind of answer, why to be allowed to edit the font? I will release my first font family in 2011 and hope to follow Andreas good example. This is not only good for the user who does a specific ask. This also benefits the font itself as it can evolve and become better.

There are two situations where a change may not be addressed by the type designer. First: if you demand a change which is coherent with the font, but takes so much time to be made. In this case, I'd simply let the user do the change through a direct, specific and limited permission. Second: if user asks for a change which does not fits overall font design. In this case, is up to the designer to refuse the change in order to preserve font characteristics.

Finally, I think your statement A few days or weeks is the same as never is not fair with designers who actually answer users demands. And nowadays there are many resources that let users verify if some glyphs are available before purchase. I myself got excellent answers from Typotheque, TypeTogether, StormType and OurType prior to purchase fonts.

Anyway, I agree with you that some font prices are very high.

I'm just curious what font designers then think about the following use case: I use the TeX based engine LuaTeX which has a built-in font loading library derived from FontForge which can, among others apply feature files to the loaded fonts. I use this to implement custom OpenType features not present in the font, like ligatures for old fonts with no OpenType features. Now does this count as modification, does it violate EULAs that prohibit modification (I'm not asking about legal aspect, but from font developer's point of view). Note we are not touching the actual font but its in memory representation.

In Bringhurst's chapter 10 about grooming the font one reads (version 3.1, page 199, second paragraph): "If your license forbids improving the font itself, the only legal way to tune it is through a software override".

My bad. Andreas is an amazing type designer, btw. Check out his Lapidaria if you still need a sans!

Charles: … you're not protecting your font from the grubby workman's hands, s/he can still mess it up.

Of course, everyone can turn on a font editor and screw it up. For that very reason I say to my customers: please don’t. It is a matter of ethics in order to keep the design sound, it’s a matter of responsibility towards the *reader*. This is a crucial aspect for a complex multiscriptive typeface like Andron. And my customers do respect this, because they realize what my design is worthy for them.
If I would allow anyone to plumb on my glyphs (which took me *years* to get them proper) then probably quirky type bits would appear in print volumes and in the imprint one reads “this is Andron”. Would be bad reference.

It is a different thing, however, about technical and implementation issues you’re pointing at. I do not allow those in the EULA so far but anyone who buys from me knows: he is listening to suggestions. I’m not sure about the one or another Andron user eventually screwed it up in order to make any modest technical adjustment. I’m not hysteric about that. But for serious issues I think it is all the way better to communicate – and find a solution. Maybe the EULA could get modified in that sense. But a font provider simply can’t outgess any users peculiar requirements in advance and implement them.
In the case of adjustments needed you have the choice to scream at Adobe or any big elephant and *nothing happens* as Freiberger notices – or to talk to a small font business willing to listen. That’s it what the money I cost you is for, too.

Of course, everyone can turn on a font editor and screw it up.

You guys aren't listening to me. What I said was I could screw up a font in a layout program, such as InDesign.

You also misunderstood what I said about time and money. Perhaps I wasn't clear, shame on me, but it also shows you don't understand the people who use your fonts, so shame on you.

Frode: We get a manuscript in. No one told us it was coming. It may arrive in paper form, but more likely we get an email telling us it is on our FTP site. That's day one. First proof is due back to the publisher in 21 calendar days -- AKA 15 working days. Take 2-3 days off the front and the back of the schedule for general "processing." Essentially, we have a two week span to set the book.

We do look over the MS before beginning the "computer part" of setting the book. If special characters are needed, the publisher may have told us that (still 21 calender days for a solution -- but really only about 10, because the book has to be set, proofed, corrected, laid out, etc.) Or, nobody at the pulisher may have noticed any special characters. If the author's files, which the editor works on, used Unicode & the author & press use, say, Gentium or Charis to do their editing work, the character will be there. Who'll notice? Editors aren't real sharp on the standard glyph complement of fonts. So. We may discover the need for a character while setting the book. We need it today, tomorrow at the latest. Honorable they may be, but type designers aren't going to respond that fast. By the way, if the need pops up in second proof, you have seven calendar days -- 5 working days.

This is for scholarly publishing. For commercial publishing, take some time off the schedule.

When the manuscript arrives, it will have a set of specifications. The designer has already chosen the fonts. If you think they have looked through the MS and the selected fonts & made sure every needed character is included in the font, I have some nice ocean-front property in Arizona I'll give you a good deal on.

On the cost of fonts: You guys as type designers may not have heard of Richard Eckersley; he was a graphic designer. But good enough to be selected as a Royal Designer to Industry. Other RDIs include Matthew Carter. He had that sort of status in the book design world.

Would you be shocked to hear that other designers tried to emulate him? Including the fonts he used? (Actually, he used very few fonts. Galliard with the Linotron photocomp machines. Minion (customized MM format) with PostScript. And finally Trinite, which is the point. Now Trinite was abut 900 Euros at the time, for about 9 fonts. No one, not one University press / press designer bought the fonts. Way too much money, they said. Richard bought them out of his own pocket, the press wouldn't pay. I bought them out of my pocket to set his books. All the young designers who wanted to emulate Richard couldn't/wouldn't come up with the money.

It is probably different in advertising. I see people just out of design school sneering at salaries that are higher than I make now. But Andron isn't aimed at advertising. Maybe there is a market un Europe, there isn't one in the States. It doesn't matter how I feel (I bought Trinite, remember), I don't specify the fonts.

* * *

OK, such books do get set, and by shops that don't do what we do. How? Simple. They go and find a font with the needed character(s) and set the missing characters with that font -- A few Arial characters mixed in with the text never hurt anything, right? Not out of our shop.

* * *

I've only touched on workflow realities in scholarly book publishing. If you want to sell to that market, I'd think you need to understand it. Maybe simpler to skip that market, but it's the only one I know of that deals with linguistics, this thread's topic.

We need it today, tomorrow at the latest.

Sorry, but if you discover a character lacking in your body text font one day before printing, that smacks of VERY bad management. It’s NO fonting issue AT ALL.

… type designers aren't going to respond that fast.

Hey hey, have you already tried that hard?
Just ring him, order and pay a decent express delivery charge, like you do in every other sort of business.
You’ll always get what you pay for.

And stop complaining now to font providers about what’s going wrong with your workflow.

Andreas, You want to blame me, my customers, and their workflow, fine. I'll ignore you. Done it my whole life, no need to change now. Hang your stuff in a museum & us tradesmen will get on with things. When I visit the museum, I'll take a look.

Charles,

I did not understood you were talking about a workaround with ID. I don't see any problem with this (or with the scenario Khaled described), although it's always prefereable not to need any workaround.

You described a specific workflow plenty of difficulties. Which special characters are missing? Maybe this would be interesting to know in order to type designers address this kind of issue before they happen – as after the problem is set you will have to rely on a workaround or spend money with a professional solution.

I'd like to have my fonts usable for scholarship publications, but probably I'm not aware of some very special issues related to specific publishing areas.

Like Charles, I frequently need odd glyphs that type designers have no reason to include normally - whether a full Latin alphabet with dots under, obsolete symbols like denarius and sestertius signs, nonstandard punctuation marks like four-pellet interpuncts, or odd monograms made by compounding two or three Greek letters into a single monstrosity. I often don't know in advance what exactly will be required until the deadline is near. Some of this exists in some fonts - probably Andron Mega, for example - but I can't know in advance that everything I need will be there. So, like Charles, for jobs of this kind I avoid typefaces whose license doesn't allow modification for internal use.

David, maybe some of these glyphs could be included in a greater range of fonts. Surely, no font would include everything. But it would be useful if people with specialized needs –like you and Charles– make known about these symbols (at least the recurring ones).

Igor (if I may) you can't include everything one will encounter in scholarly publishing. You would spend too much money developing the font. Better to trust that compositors and type designers are on the same side. Matthew Carter lets me modify his fonts, as does Sumner Stone. They would no doubt let David or Theunis or any good comp modify a font too. Anyway, If it is something simple, like putting a dot under h,d,s,t,z for transliterated Arabic, no need to even get up with them. If it is something complicated, I show them what I've done. Usually, no reply, which I take to mean OK. If a designer ever said "hell no," we'd keep working on it.

Setting type has gone on for quite a while now. With metal, you'd take a saw to it. With photocomp negatives, opaque, or, depending on the system, replace the glyph. Etc. Times past, the type was purchased and belonged to the user. Now, it has a license to use, and the designer gets their knickers in a knot & says "no modification." A pox upon them. If it is art, hang it in a museum. If it is type, let those of us who know how to use type do so.

But to give you a hint: suppose, as Kevin Mullin stated, you need some mathematical operators to complete the linguistic set. OK, find a font that has them. Within InDesign, change the font call, size, baseline position, horizontal/vertical scale. Heavier? set two, overlapping, but with a one or two-tenths point offset. Etc. Can be done, takes time for each one, costs more money for the lost time. Now, from the printed book, can anyone tell this was done using InDesign, (lawful) or by modifying the font (unlawful)? No, how could you.

Another wrinkle. I'd want to direct-format these calls to another font rather than use a character style. Why? Because someone is going to extract xhtml from the InDesign files for an EPUB book, and on export, I want to include character styles as hooks for further clean up -- footnote calls come to mind. During xhtml cleanup, I don't want to have to make another pass to decide which characters style hooks to strip, which to leave -- or at least, add another to the list.

Or suppose you need dots under h,d,s,t,z. No combining diacriticals in the font. Take a period. Kern it back, lower it, make it smaller. Kern the following character to regain character spacing. Can you tell I did it with the layout program rather than in the font? No, it will print fine (but cost me $100 or so in lost time if there were a bunch of them). BUT. That xhtml file mentioned above will now have the wrong Unicode character (period instead of dotbelow), and that's my fault. It's Kindle/Apple/Barns & Nobels fault if their damn readers can't render valid Unicode. It's my fault if it isn't proper Unicode.

Just for the meanness of it, take your beautiful font & use it in InDesign. Find/Change all lower case a's to have a width 200 percent normal. All u's to have a width 50% normal. Lower the baseline of all e's and o's. You get the point. I can keep going, and the font designer has no recourse. S/he is dependent on my good intentions.

Less mean but still ugly, you have to save a line to avoid a widow. No problem, condense the type in a paragraph until all the letters in the last line come up. Gee. You had to use 90%. Oh well, line saved. Use excessively small word space minimums. Less hyphenation for the customer to complain about. Change the ideal spaceband percentage. Etc.

As long type is to be used for a further product, the type designer and compositor are partners. Soon as one says "I'm more important," things suffer.

Charles, thanks for share some issues regarding scholarly publishing. I understand your point –and also Andreas'. Yours would be one of these cases where I think a special EULA is the logical solution. I even consider this easy to solve through direct contact between user and designer.

Of course, some would prefer not to let any user to edit anything, while others would permit anyone to do many things. I'm a newbie type designer and after reading arguments posted here think a good solution is a general restrict EULA with the possibility to adopt a permissive EULA to some customers.

About the issues you pointed, I'm well aware there is no way to include all solutions in a single font. But I'd like to add at least some of them, as I said to David. Actually, some are already in my project (like d-h-s-t-z with dot bellow). Some may be considered, as obsolete Roman signs which are relevant to Historians. And some I even don't know they exist.

If you and David would point other useful recurring "obscure" glyphs, I'll be glad.

BTW, here is how my d-h-s-t-z with dot bellow look like (just UC, lc and small caps by now, petite caps are under final development):

dhstz with underdots are needed for transliterated Arabic -- these days, it happens a lot. BTW, I think your underdots need to be a touch lower, but am not sure. How do they look (read) in a 10-point setting? Easy to see the are underdots? How do they fit next to letters that have a descender? With other diacriticals that set below a character?

Also transliterated "Indic Scripts" I forget all needed characters, l,m,n,r with dots above and below, some with macrons above/below, some with both. Not a lot of characters, and transliterated Indic Scripts are not as common as Arabic just now. But it happens.

I'd pick languages you want to support. European, African, Latin transliterations, whatever. You can do a search for just what is needed. Have your fonts make sense -- I can't remember how many times I've seen the liga feature written to drop out the fi ligature for Turkish when the other characters needed to set Turkish are not in the font. What's the point?

Then there are the technical character sets, like linguistics, which started this thread. There may be requirements for these character sets you're unaware of. Several long threads on this subject (linguistics) in the typophile archives.

Sometimes there are just a few special characters needed for a book, less often, a lot. How to decide which ones? Whatever you choose will be both too many, and too few.

You sound like you want to develop one or two font to do everything. I set type far more often than I design, but when designing (I pick the font), I look at the type of book I'm designing (history, literary criticism, social science, etc.), the time period, audience, and so on. As a designer (who can make a few needed characters), these things have as much weight in the choice as the character set.

I do not think it wise to spend too much time, at least early in your new career, to try to cover too many special characters unless you see an audience for your work.

Finally, it is very hard to say "this comp can modify my font, that one can't." Many designers (who pick the fonts) set their own books. And usually, if the designer is to use an outside typesetter, they pick them. Sometimes a production manager or art director picks. None of these people are going to call you, write you, to see just which comp can modify your font. And if I decide to modify your font, as I posted above, how will you know? Maybe I kerned macrons, maybe I drew up the characters.

If your type design is quite successful, it will eventually get used by a "less than skilled" typesetter -- it will look poor, even if they don't modify the font. Far as that goes, it will be selected by a "less than skilled designer," who will use poor size, leading, or margin choices. This will affect how your type looks, but is outside your control.

Whatever you EULA says, you should think the old way: you provide a tool, someone else uses it, sometimes well, sometimes not. If it is used poorly, there is nothing you can do about it, so don't loose sleep over it.

Well, a lot of opinions.

Thanks again, Charles. Your opinions are useful and plenty of information. Actually, this font is designed to technical, legal and academic texts. It will cover all Latin-based languages (I did extensive search about many alphabets). Transliterations from Cyrillic, Arabic, Indic and Chinese are also included. At this point, all uppercase, lowercase and small caps are ready. Petite caps are on the way (I think this would become off topic so you may find more info here.).

Andreas, You want to blame me, my customers, and their workflow, fine. I'll ignore you. Done it my whole life, no need to change now. Hang your stuff in a museum & us tradesmen will get on with things. When I visit the museum, I'll take a look.

Charles, why so sarcastic?

Ok, ‘wrong with your workflow’ may have been too harsh a word. I just wondered about the appearently spontaneous approach to dealing with some type issues, which I find rather strange in professional scientific publishing. And why should the fontist be the bad guy because he has his own mind, when you are in a hurry with your job? I think I have made it quite clear that I *AM* cooperative, there are people around who would testify this.

I started the Andron project 10 years ago on grounds of the intention to provide a font which offers a possibly most comprehensive character coverage for relevant subjects. And for that very reason my customers buy Andron licences. Because they simply know a coverage gap spoted at tea time is extremely unlikely with Andron. It saves them trouble, time and money. – That’s a kind of workflow too.

I took the time to look at a few drafts and papers from people of the Grant Group on Optimality Theory to which Kevin belongs at Umass. Here is a sample of what I saw (that I reproduced with XeLaTeX without suitable mathematical symbols; I used the + from Charis and made do with the MnSymbol universal quantifier).

In my opinion, it is not just a fully functional font with plenty of characters that is needed, but also a corresponding mathematical font that can be used with the XeTeX unicode-math package or an equation editor.

Michel

PS Khaled, I know that you have been working on two such math fonts.

Igor, I added some comments on glyph support to your Palimpsest thread, so as not to take this one any further off topic than it already is.