Announcing the Typophile Channel for Sherlock

Jared Benson12 December 2001 · 14:49

* Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! *

We're proud to announce the release of the Typophile Channel for Sherlock.

The channel is a free download for Macintosh typophiles at http://www.typophile.com/sherlock and currently searches 15 typography sites including the following:

Creative Pro
Fontzone
Letterror
Lines & Splines
Luc Devroye's On Snot and Fonts
Myfonts.com
Oak Knoll Books & Oak Knoll Press
Text matters
The Hoefler Type Foundry
Typeright.org
Typophile Forums
Yahoo Design Arts

For those of you who are still using your Mac SE30s, Sherlock is Apple's new "Find file" tool, which supports the creation of channels for a more focused internet search. No more finding fish gills mixed in with "Essay on Typography."

The Typophile Channel is an ongoing project and we expect to add new sites as often as possible.

http://www.typophile.com/sherlock

Happy downloads!

Jared & Joe, Typophile

Stephen Coles12 December 2001 · 21:51

The following is cross-posted from another
forum, because I'm naughty like that...

On 12/12/01 5:00 PM, Michel Bujardet wrote:

> This will be extremely useful, and will conduce Mac users to sites a bit
> less dreary than the seen-everywhere so called free PC fonts...

This comment is right on. The plugin would be even
more effective in this regard if released to a wide
audience, including those who would normally turn to
google.com or free font archives. Any plans for that
Jared? It would extend the "preaching" beyond the choir.

On 12/12/01 6:14 PM, Jared Benson wrote:

> Are you suggesting a type-only google? Please elaborate.

Oh, no, although the thought of that makes me shiver
with excitement.

I meant only that it would be great to see this Sherlock
plug-in publicized widely. There are many who may not
be aware know of these sites but are hungry for type news
and knowledge. These are the people who commonly rely
on general search engines or free font archives for help
and fonts, and they are often led to inadequate or false
information.

I frequently see one of the more serious examples of
this: a user looking for the "Harry Potter font" types just
that into a google.com search. This will inevitably lead
them to one of many knockoffs of Marcus Burlile's design,
Able, which is the actual font used for the "Potter" books.
I'm sure listers are aware that the public's perception that
fonts are free is becoming more and more common. The
proliferation of free knockoffs is a huge reason why.

(see http://www.myfonts.com/FontForums/read.php?f=5&i=1040&t=1040)

With a broad range of visitors, MyFonts.com has become
a good bridge between the more informed and the less
informed. It would be ideal to see the plugin promoted there.
Perhaps they could be encouraged to provide a blurb and
link for download on their front page. And better: how tough
would it be to develop the plug-in to search the MyFonts
forums as well? (It seems to be missing in this release.)

Cheers, Jared. I think this can be a powerful thing on many
levels, especially if it's widely promoted. By the way, it's
good to see your bitmap font in use on the download page.
Benson Caps, everyone. Benson Caps. Mini 7 is old hat.

Stephen