Lucida Grande. I only wish it had an italic. :^/

Verdana because I read it was optimized as a screen font, or something like that.

Lucida Grande. Under Mac Os X it seems the only decently readable typeface at reasonable small sizes.

The missing Italic, as Tiffany pointed out, is mostly annoying when you use it for writing text as well, not just plain emails, as I do.
I use it at 11pt. size.

Probably under pre-Vista Windows the best choices are still Georgia for the Serifs and Verdana or Arial for the Sans Serifs.

Monaco at 9 pt.

Courier New. not aliased.

Courier New (plain text emails) or Verdana for html emails, since its well hinted (what fontplay said).

hmm one thing I hadn’t thought about until now, is how do people recieving the email view the type face if they don’t have it on their system? Does it get embedded somehow? Or does it just default to their default font?

Jesse, I’m pretty sure it defaults to their default font—html email works like webpages.

Eron

Rodrigo X Cavazos’s Adaptive Mono for outgoing mail, and Fred Smeijers’s Quadraat Sans Mono for incoming. Each is crisp and easy to read on screen; Adaptive in particular was a real discovery.

Amplitude Wide is an ideal screen font — wide, square and well-hinted. It replaced Lucida Grande as my system font for a while, but that can create some issues where the OS expects type of a different width. I still use it for iChat, Mail and other defaults.

“To: Jesse, Re: Fonts” lol thats pretty sweet!

I’m with Alessandro. Aliased 9pt Monaco. Plain text rules. HTML drools.

10pt Verdana - almost 100% guaranteed to display the same - wherever it’s seen.

’LUSTPure’, by Lust.
’Anonymous’, by Mark Simonson / Susan Lesch + David Lamkins.

Dav

* Edited. Sorry, Paul, It wasnt ment to ’sound’ that harsh. ( I just wondered if you actually added the ’keyworded link’ to every single post / reply, to ’improve’ your search engine rankings. )

WTF? I added that as my signature - which happens to appear whenEVER I reply to a thread.
What’s it doing to Search Engine?
I have removed the text which apparently caused you so much grief.

Bah add it back I say. If we can help improve search engine rankings of typophile members... why not?

Only I don’t remember what it looked like but you might want to make it look separate from your actual post with a rule or something to make a clean separation.

indeed. though the limits of this forums become apparent...

This is an example of a signature. You need to be VERY careful what you put here. Some people think it is possible to take over the world with a signature.

Looks identical to other/body text doesn’t it? and <hr> doesn’t work.

Lucida Grande here too.

ChrisL

11px Verdana

Geneva

Lucida Sans Unicode

Verdana or Arial - I think Lucida Grande is nice, but it seems to be only standard on Mac OSX - fine if you only send emails to other Mac users, but Verdana or Arial are pretty much ubiquitous.

Georgia. I’m a serif person and I really like Georgia. I’m glad there’s a system font that’s so good.

Georgia on my mind

Trebuchet - thanks to Vince. I like it except for the splayed M. And everybody has it.

Ha thats funny I was just wondering that no one said trebuchet yet :P

Candara, one of the new MS CT fonts, designed by Gary Munch, on an off-white background. The 17 pixel size in Thunderbird is about 12pt on my screen:

hey Londontype.. I had to make the M splayed because when I was working with Matthew Carter on Tahoma I had to make sure it was different at small sizes than his, So his was straight, mine is splayed.. sorry

View at 110% for optimal comprehension

hi David, each to his own, but that is a seriously bad looking font, why is the lowercase w not hinted symmetrically? and why is the leading so tight? whats with the y shape?, and does the dot on the i need to be so high?

Vince - I had noticed that Tahoma had a very Johnston-like M. That explains it. For sans the splayed M is still much better than one with a “v” that touches the baseline. Trebuchet shows up in lots of print and display advertising, and some signage in my area.

I use Verdana most of the time, it has good proportions, but I recently switched to Trebuchet.

M. Duggan Spanketh: “...that is a seriously bad looking font, “

For those of you who might wonder at Mike’s post, he’s pissed at me for telling another forum (a MS one at that), that he called them “all morons” for questioning the wisdom of converting the once nearly standard points-per-inch into a “variable”, (and one MS has not described). But, I apologize, I’m sorry, and I give Mike free reign to start a smear and bad-type witch-hunt. I can handle it, completely. Can you?

On my post the individual pixels of this precious font are exactly where I and the client want(ed) them, sorry. The leading is mine and reflects my reading skills (the client got more). But Mike, those are all “tree” issues only “appreciated” in zoom. Maybe they are even “leaf” issues, but that... depends on the scale factor. ;)

You, Mike-rosoft, have forest issues you are politically and intellectually prevented from facing. Canadra e.g., is a beautiful outline, stunning even, probably the one I’d most likely use in print, if it were made for that. But the x-ht. region (9 p @ 17 a pixel em according to John’s post-it-note, sans-zoom), is so ham-fistedly flattened by your (?) hints, (to the same 2 pixels as my wee font’s 5 pixel x-ht....!?), that I wonder if you’re trying to emulate smeared 1980’s dot matrix printers. Are you?

The outline shows consistent strokes and spaces, the branches of pdbqnmru, e.g., all nice and sweet, but by the time it’s in John’s specimen...they’re just like Robert E. Lee’s brother, Ug. The aerst, a substantial subset of our Latin use, are all poorly rendered from nice outlines, and the dot on the i is so low, (how low; it looks up to a snake) it’s el-ing...

Leaves, I know, but these are all Screen Typography 101. Maybe, Kevin can do a study: does a human see an i with no or distant dot better than an i with-dot-too close (in context only please, no tricks)? And, since leaves are your specially, so while you’re at it, why not tighten up the hyphen so two will look more like an em dash when windows users need one?

Once again David also speaketh, in the usual cryptic language. Dave I am not pissed off, I just thought the font looked bad, hinting is supposed at its simplest level take care of symmetry issues such as the lowercase w and the shape of the y. You can tell me whatever you like in the most cryptic terms, you can tell me you wanted the w that way, ok. but I as an observer can disagree that I think it’s a good font for reading, I don’t like it, and I wouldn’t use it ever, and my criticisms of it still stand. I don’t understand any of your comments on Candara, possibly John might? When I compare Candara in CT to your font I see that the game is finally over. I mean come on, who is finally going to say, hey look the king David has nothing on....
It might be good for us to meet up sometime to discuss, as the forum here doesn’t help us progress methinks.

David, the Candara hinting was done by Tom Rickner. It’s relatively flat in the x-height because so is the outline design. If you compare the screen rendering to the printed type, side-by-side, it is pretty obvious why Tom made the decisions he did, because any other decisions would be distortions of the design. We all know that black and white bitmaps can be highly readable; the goal with ClearType is to not only make type readable but actually make it look like the individual typeface at the same time. Your black and white bitmaps for Concert, regardless of whether one likes them or finds them readable, give me no idea at all about what the actual typeface design looks like.

As I see it, we have:

Black and white aliased bitmaps: good readability, bad typeface differentiation.

Greyscale antialiasing: poor readability, better typeface differentiation.

CLearType rendering: good readability, much better typeface differentiation.

I’m sorry, but I’m with Mike: the Candara example simply looks way better than yours. Is there seriously some deliberate reason for this:

Flying w’s, take this pile of m&m’s and shove it! :)

Like I said, nothing to hide. I’m sure every pixel of Canadra is perfect at 10 pixels per em. So, if you want to make that comparison, fine. I was asked what I read. Someone came along and said “wow, that’s bad type you read there” I answered that bad type is a relative term...e.g. look at this yellow thing. Now, can you fellas show me Canadra at 10 pixels on a Mac or not? ;) 10 pixels at all? or are apples and oranges comparisons, studies, tests and fonts, all you ever do to arrive at the 1 “true” answer?

And, I’m sure Tom did the best job he could with the staggering amount of complexity needed to make and hint these fonts. I tip my glass to him. But the x-ht. region (9 p @ 17 a pixel em according to yellow type), is ham-fistedly flattened by his hints, and still I wonder if you’re trying to emulate smeared 1980’s dot matrix printers. Are you?

“hey look the king David has nothing on….” King? I was never so anointed, but as it only took your co. $30 million (or so), and 17 years to get where you imagine me to be, I’m glad for you. And, I’d take you up on the drink, but I hear no room for progress, and I see less. There is no default for 72 points per inch right, The rendering will only be done based on the assumption that CT outlines have been designed, There will be no variations, There will be no CT with integer spacing. Your operating system is done forever, isn’t it?

Now, can you fellas show me Canadra at 10 pixels on a Mac or not? ;) 10 pixels at all?

On a Mac? No.

I can show you Candara at 10 ppem on Windows, but that makes the x-height smaller than your Concert. In order to match them one would need to go for 12 ppem.

As you can see from the nominal point sizes, these ppem sizes are pretty friggin’ small on my system.

But the x-ht. region (9 p @ 17 a pixel em according to yellow type), is ham-fistedly flattened by his hints

Tom’s hints are actually very light: as I said, the flatness is in the design. If you push the curve connections lower on the stems at that size, it stops looking like Candara.

The difference between the two w’s is that the ’M&M’ colours are not apparent at actual size. That stray black pixel is impossible to miss even when the pixels are as small as they are on my screen.

By the way, I use an off white background in my e-mail client because I happen to like it. I got into the habit when using CRT screens, because the brightness and contrast settings always seemed to force a choice between violently glaring white and dull grey. Off white background colours, like off white paper stock, allowed me to keep up the brightness without the glare.

- And, I’d take you up on the drink, -

I didnt say anything about a drink ;-) David you like black and white bitmaps to read, and you like to have your characters badly shaped onscreen, what can be bad for you about that, you have everything you want. Just so you know the CT font collection was my idea originally. I proposed it because I thought that with the advent of ClearType, we could make the screen an even better place to read, and so we designed some typeface that take advantage of the new technology. I think it worked, in fact I benifit from it every day, as does JH. I use the CT fonts on my system everyday, and we have heard from many other how they also do. The CT font collection are not the only fonts however that benifit from CT. Verdana and Georgia, and Trebuchet for instance all look great in CT. Any font that is well hinted and has a good weight for onscreen rendering will also look great. There is no way forward if we stick to black and white rendering. You just cant make beuatiful pages that way, type needs to look & read like type. You mentioned earlier that I was both intellectually and politically challenged,(is the first part of that an insult? ;-) and that you didnt see any point in meeting afterall as you saw no progress. Its a shame, as there clearly is progress, but you just dont see it yet. The offer still stands, and sure ok I will buy you a drink. :-)

Sorry to take so, and be so, long. Summer came. I went out. It was nice. I’m back. Not for long.

John’s in quotes.
“I can show you Candara at 10 ppem on Windows, but that makes the x-height smaller than your Concert. In order to match them one would need to go for 12 ppem. “

No john, you don’t get a match for Concert 10 at 12ppm, it doesn’t work that way. Ironic... on my Mac, there are five sizes for email type in “Entourage”. Smallest, Smaller, Medium, Larger and Largest, although I think these actually can be represented by numbers that represent points. On Windows, in Entourage, are there names for the sizes? or numbers?

“If you push the curve connections lower on the stems at that size, it stops looking like Candara.”

Unless it’s about the outline, and not the typeface, it stops looking like Canadra with a 2:1 ratio of stem to hairline i.e. From 12 to 25, (reading range!), should’a made a Gothic. The point (at this late stage in the game), of your kind of sub pixel rendering in an inflated density-of-points-per-inch universe, I’d think... is to jump to a reading range where more or less than two pixel stems exist, as fast as possible...In fact, if you were cramming points and l.c. body building with that goal in mind...I’ll tell Mike in a minute...*

“That stray black pixel is impossible to miss even when the pixels are as small as they are on my screen.”

My little diagram (at “100%” ;) (Which I can’t attach because this crappy forum’s like that), shows how Verdana performs on the Mac (it doesn’t). If this were my product, I’d reject it before it got out the door. So, I adopted Concert, because ***it was the only face I know, or have seen anywhere... that matches Verdana as Verdana appears on a Windows machine***, which I like. Pause, look, and consider the qualities I had to reject. Y and y, (Verdana), look pretty good in the outline, but (at 9, 10 and 11 ppm), turn into a radiation symbol, and a u oganek (for the world)... And you’re worried about my wee pixels (just for me)? John, your typographic judgment, which I summarize below as “get used to it”, when looking at the broad needs of users or email users, is in a believe system I do not understand.

“Off white background colours, like off white paper stock, allowed me to keep up the brightness without the glare.”

Back up dude, or get a better monitor. Mine adjusts minutely and by switching users as darkness grows, or when lightness comes, you have “options” that don’t involve experiments on your rods and cones. By options, I mean that type and user become more fluid than one hack after another to land in some spot...the screen is not just a book/note book — its a TV, a jukebox, a weather station, a telephone, a vending machine, a million different vending machines, a comic book and a house of worship. You gonna carry around little yellow tissues to stand on in all those places where CT goes?

Then (and it’s a good thing I have a secret twin) Mike:
“David you like black and white bitmaps to read, and you like to have your characters badly shaped onscreen, what can be bad for you about that, you have everything you want.”

I know, slam the man’s wart after giving him leprosy, I axed for it. See Verdana. See Verdana poop on the Mac? :)

Mike, you could have done the same magnificent job on these and the CT fonts if you/MS had allowed you/ATR to do it without tricks. These fonts greatness begin where 2 pixel stems (of any color) begin, and lasts to where the xht. has become too big on the body. See, users prefer Verdana and Georgia! (that early study), ((((until they prefer Arial and Times at...14? 16? pt.)))) (what ever “pt.” means). That says a lot ya’ know — here are print fonts, beating screen fonts on the screen! So, scaling the body has great effect, but as you know, or maybe not, you can’t tug on one end of This rug without moving the other. So, Verdana functions best in print as a small point size, not as a match of the use on screen, (or do you scale printed points too ˜˜#01(!*?). Arial and Times (and their genuine italics) are superior in print for their compactness in composition, for their better proportioned heights, and more favorably chosen contrasts. So, scaling the body (and other optical tricks for screen fonts), leads to a diminishment of the functional range. Adding the fact that CT does not deal in B&W, you have a range of positive effect from 10 ppm till, who knows, but it’s finite beyond your wildest claims.

Density is the second trick. (I don’t have a typographic term for it, because no one else has decided on cramming more “points” into an inch, what do you call this?). By adding significantly to the usual 72 points per inch, you almost insist on scaling the body larger to be successful at screen text sizes, you shift the location of the 1-2 pixel barrier down the point-size range, though not quite far enough*, and as screen resolution climbs the 1-2 barrier shifts even farther... then pffft what happens?)†. Good Job. Now we can make text OR display faces for the screen. Or, we can cop an attitude like John’s, (which I highly disrespect), that users will “get used to” huge bodies, like they’ll “get used to” his mismatched companion italics in print? NOT my clients, sorry.

There are lots of possible ways forward. But let me tell you “the one”, because I’ve seen it from MS before —Nothing will be said outside of the official party channels. I.E. There was no public help whatsoever when MS decided to change the name of Helvetica to Arial, with all the kluge work that represented. There was no guide-to, definition of, or disclaimer when MS redefined the point, with all the kluge work that represented... And now...CT fonts, will be endlessly distributed for free, and no one will ever know outside of “this room” where the rug went, and what “those nasty little designers did this time”, unless...

My ideas (of general progress for all screen font users) are: variation technology, higher resolution and bigger screens, 2 kinds of distant users, and bigger fonts, based upon a 72 point per inch system that allows integer and non-integer spacing, color and b & w rendering, and a tuner that covers the needs of all users. Personally, I’d also like 7 kinds of font encryption, one of which would be reserved for companies in the type industry.

MS has ruled variation technology out, created its own definition of resolution outside of broad standards, defined the distance users should be from the screen (literally, once-and-for-all), opposes distant links of fonts to users on de web, shrinks fonts then grows fonts, uses integer metrics vertically - not horizontally, and has the b&w rendering just about right but believes only in color rendering.

I am obligated, as small as I am, to stick to an infinitely more hopeful definition of progress than your dark and typographically twisted scenario. The fonts scale. They do, really, you don’t have to do it for them. The users, they know how to change point sizes too, really, they do, you don’t have to do it for them. Your way, I’ll try progress (just right now!)* See if you can slam a few more points into an inch, i.e. get that friggin x-ht. up to 17 pixels at 12 pt 144 dpi, because when I hear “...and square shapes work better than round ones” and I see no Old Style in your CT Collection, I know we have not gotten to “solving the screen font problem on windows.” Also, as resolution climbs further, tell me when your redefinition of the points per inch is no longer a good thing (wasn’t that just ‘cause early windoze monitors were < 72?)†. I know 72 points per inch is an option buried somewhere in the user’s choice, and I’ll need to figure out how to manipulate that if I want to play.

In the mean time, I’ll use a Mac. And I hope if your products of your quality definition arrive here again, and as you can see, they suck, maybe they’ll get better. But I’m mostly interested in sizing, instructing, and pressure testing my email fonts to work on the Mac. Second, my print clients use the Mac, and we only gaze into your typographic Tartarus as files fly through in PS production, above your OS we miss your kluges. Third, since you guys got into the fonts online business, print readability fonts have become all the rage, keep it up. Finally, I must stand clear of your progress because someone’s gonna have clean this mess up, and I bet you will not be there. If you are, then start cleaning up now: publish a specification for “CT on Windows” from the beginning of the “em” to the rasterizer’s decision string per pixel, x and y if they are different. If you can do that, honestly, then “it” wasn’t an insult,honestly, if you can’t then “it” also wasn’t an insult, honestly.

All the best.

P.S. Mr. or Ms. Typophile, when you accept .pdf files, Email me, and I’ll be back. Until then, I’m out of here.

No john, you don’t get a match for Concert 10 at 12ppm, it doesn’t work that way.

I meant that is the size at which the x-height in pixels is matched, which seems to me the best way of comparing lettershapes and rendering. But I showed you the 10ppm size too.

On Windows, in Entourage, are there names for the sizes? or numbers?

I’ve no idea. I use Thunderbird for email, and font size is spec’d in pixels.

PS. The ending of your post seems to be truncated, David.

I think the greater-than symbol makes it seem to the software that there is an html tag to follow and it hides the rest of David’s post.

ChrisL

Chris was correct. I edited David’s post to read “more or less than two pixels” in the fifth paragraph so it wouldn’t be truncated by the forum software.

David, you can attach files of any type to the first post of a thread, but the feature is missing in “comments” or subsequent posts. I hope the guys at Punchcut will fix that soon.

Or, we can cop an attitude like John’s, (which I highly disrespect), that users will “get used to” huge bodies, like they’ll “get used to” his mismatched companion italics in print?

I think this is very unfair. I don’t think I have said anything, in this thread or elsewhere, to suggest that is my view. I certainly don’t recall using the phrase ’get used to’ about any of these things, so I’m not sure why you are putting it in quotes. You’ve decided that this is my attitude, and you are wrong, and in the process of being wrong you seem to be ignoring the areas in which I agree with you and the more substantial areas in which I can’t disagree with you because I haven’t got a clue what you are talking about.

Worried that I might actually have said something to lead you to this erroneous and unfair characterisation of my opinion, I did a search to see if I had ever, in fact, used the phrase ’get used to’ in any Typophile thread. I found one from the discussion on type and national identity back in April:

It takes less than one generation for readers to get used to a particular or limited set of type styles, or to the output of particular typesetting technologies which may have significant technical limitations, and then to mistakenly cling to these as being ‘correct’, in the process abandoning huge swathes of the history, evolution and variety of their writing system.

Now you might pause to consider that someone who made such a statement might share many of your concerns about limitations in type technologies and the narrowing of options. I have already said, in one of our other discussions, that I don’t think Microsoft’s readability research has been substantive enough to be the basis making ClearType the only rendering option in an operating system, and that such a decision is more likely to be driven by engineering criteria. I happen to think that ClearType rendering is on the whole better than other stuff I look at, but I’m also concerned about what might be compared to a loss of biodiversity.

On the subject of ’density’, I’m still not sure what you are talking about. Sorry to be slow, but can you explain?

Garamond and sometimes Trebuchet MS
_____________________________________________________________________
Claude Garamond ♥ Aldus Manutius ♥ Francesco Griffo ♥ Eric Gill ♥ Hermann Zapf ♥ William Caslon ♥ Nicholas Kis ♥ Otl Aicher

Sorry... I used symbols that should never be used for anything but Mat, but some pinhead figured’d be “okay” to make in to typesetting commands in the midst of text.

...your (windows) redefinition of the points per inch is no longer a good thing (wasn’t that just ‘cause early windoze monitors were !@#$#% less than 72?). I know 72 points per inch is an option buried somewhere in the vista user’s choices, and I’ll need to figure out how to manipulate that if I want to play according to “my own” rules ;)

In the mean time, I’ll use a Mac. And I hope if your (Mike’srosoft), products of your quality definition arrive here again, and as you can see, they suck, maybe they’ll get better. But I’m mostly interested in sizing, instructing, and pressure testing my email fonts to work on the Mac. Second, my print clients use the Mac, and we only gaze into your typographic Tartarus as files fly through in PS production, above your OS we miss your kluges. Third, since you guys got into the fonts online business, print readability fonts have become all the rage. Finally, I must stand clear of your progress because someone’s gonna have clean this mess up, and I bet you will not be there. If you are, then start cleaning up now: publish a specification for “CT on Windows” from the beginning of the “em” to the rasterizer’s decision per pixel, x and y if they are different. If you can do that, honestly, then “it” wasn’t an insult, honestly. If you can’t then “it” also wasn’t an insult, honestly.

All the best.

P.S. Mr. or Ms. Typophile, when you accept .pdf files, Email me, and I’ll be back. Until then, I’m out of here.

John: I’ve no idea. I use Thunderbird for email, and font size is spec’d in pixels.
Then I guess I wasn’t asking you. :)

John: I certainly don’t recall using the phrase ‘get used to’ about any of these things,
No, you said something like “a new aeshetic” has been forced, same thing.

John: On the subject of ‘density’, I’m still not sure what you are talking about Sorry to be slow, but can you explain?

That’s not slow john, it’s a....stationary. “(I don’t have a typographic term for it, because no one else has decided on cramming more “points” into an inch, what do you call this?)”

Is that not clear?

No, you said something like “a new aeshetic” has been forced, same thing.

Nope. I don’t think I said that either. What I do remember saying, and what one can find me saying if one bothers to search, is that the MS ClearType Font Collection represents the approaches of several different type designers to the briefing to design fonts specifically to work with ClearType. I also said that I didn’t consider any of them to be the last word on the subject.

(I don’t have a typographic term for it, because no one else has decided on cramming more “points” into an inch, what do you call this?

Yes, I got that, I’m just wondering to what specific action of Microsoft’s you are referring, i.e. what did they do and when?

You wrote above that you know your 10pt Concert on the Mac is within half a pixel of actual 10pt size, but I’m not sure how important that is. But maybe that’s just because I’ve spent almost my whole computing life on Windows machines. I tend to think of point size as a specification for size of type on paper, and I have long since ceased to expect text on screen to be 1:1 size with type on paper when both are e.g. nominally 10pt. A half pixel rounding difference at 10pt is also a variation between screen and print.

I was pleased to see my email app specifying screen text sizes in pixels and allowing me to set my display resolution, i.e. to see an application from which I am almost never going to print anything treat type as a screen medium and not make any reference to point size. This is much preferable to the many applications that force an integer point size choice that skips the ppem size I actually want to use. But lack of support for fractional point sizes is another issue...

Ouch! I have to remember not to check this thread again.

lol ditto. my poor thread :(

Sans: Tahoma 10pt.
Serif: Georgia 9pt.

AppleGothic, 11pt.

I actually learned a lot from the “interaction” about ClearType and screen rendering cross-platform (once I learned to overlook the vitriolic nature of the discussion).

ChrisL

We’d better care about screen rendering. I find immersive/continuous screen reading nearly impossible. I prefer to copy text, change the font and size, then print on a laser. Display technology will surely improve but it’s a moving target. What works well today may not work so well in a couple of years.

I agree with Chris about the value of the discussion.

I don’t understand that much of it, but David Berlow (Font Bureau), Mike Duggan (Microsoft) and John Hudson (Tiro) are some of the most knowledgeable people in the world on these issues, so I’m very happy they are discussing them on Typophile, and giving the rest of us a peak into these issues.

Something about e-mail just brings out irritation—not that I would know anything about that :)

David, you can post PDFs now at the beginning of a thread that you start. And once you start the thread you can later in the discussion also add new PDFs in your first post. (This is now done over in the critique section.) You can also post to your own site and provide a link.

The difficulty of posting PDFs is an annoying limitation of the current edition of Typophile, but starting your own thread or posting a PDF via a link are both ways around it.

I don’t understand that much of it...

I’m not surprised. As far as I can tell, David and Mike are conducting an argument in several different places at the same time, so what you’ve seen here is just a fragment. I wasn’t expecting to get dumped on for saying what font I like to use for my email.

“Yes, I got that, I’m just wondering to what specific action of Microsoft’s you are referring, i.e. what did they do and when?”

John, You a lawyer now too?

Junderscorepolonine, (j_polo9), I’m Sorry.

“I used to use Arial (default) and then Helvetica Neue but since it’s bad for copy I’m wondering what everyone else uses [...], is that font significant to you for some special reason, etc.) Discuss!”

We came out of our bottles and “discuss”-ed on command.
The good news is, you still have 2ishes left. ;)

David, no that wasn’t a legal question; not even a legalistic question. You raised the very specific subject of Microsoft changing the definition of the number of points in an inch, and I’m being perfectly honest in saying that this is news to me. It shouldn’t be, I’ll readily admit, but sometimes things slip by. So I’m asking what they did, specifically, and when.

Feel free to poke fun of me for not knowing this — it is embarassing, believe me —, but please also enlighten me.

lol all i know is that “For some very old reasons, PCs still only count 54 points to an inch, whereas the MAC has 72 points.”
-Stop Stealing Sheep

Prescript. This is a long post. If you get your type kicks from Jelly bean sized nuggets, this might be too much, so it’s rated L.

John, MS changed the definition of pts. per inch , according to Mr. Greg Hitchcock, in 1986. This did not have practical effect ’till MS went to outlines in the ’89 TT adoption. It began to surface as a global issue in 1992, with the advent of the Internet, where the world-wide requirement for scaleable digital outlines became central to its rapid spread. It’s effect on MS typography, and the Windows font spec for developers, began with Verdana, (2000?) where MS demonstrated the wisdom of piecewise non-linear scaling (what we call optical scaling), which helped greatly with MS’ “other scaling” issue. The rest, (and I suggest you reread everything I’ve written in this, the CT Spec thread and MS CT collection release thread), is history-in-the-making. But, when one says, “I have to set it differently from the Mac to be the same size on the PC”, you’re lookin’ at its most expensive chapter. When you look at the CT fonts, with their 6-8 pt mastering for 10-12 pt use, you’re looking at a 100 million dollar(?) solution to a problem of MS’s own cause. Once you’re through recalibrating maybe you’ll see that identical CT results, (just outlines of a slightly different philosophy, and users ***using actual points (1/2 pts. too) to select the size They like, usually from 10 or 12 pt masters made for the purpose***, and that this is all possible in a 72 pt. per inch Windows environment, no tricks...

I don’t know where you’ve been, actually, Mr. Tom Rickner and I have had conversations for, 15 years (?), trying to improve screen fonts on Windows (though we didn’t much use Windows, we’re conscientious to a degree... that, well it’s an unexplainable Wisconsin thing). Those conversations all end with, “oh dang, you can’t do that ’cause windows doesn’t know point size from...ppppft”. Ask ’im, he’ll tell you, it goes just like that... So, the only two options I’ve “seen” are to get variations adopted, (and I know now, even though such an axis-of-e-swell’s already been created once, if points are a problem to understand, a variation axis with values along it where.... “what this font Should look like @ a particular point size and resolution” are occurring, as maybe way beyond discussing.

The other solution, cajolery, I stopped trying after Prague atypi when the aforementioned Mr. Hitchcock, in the presence of Mr. Rickner, told me MS WAS using 72 points per inch in Longhorn. Maybe he meant it like a 6’2” person standing on a 12” box saying “I’m 7’2”, I swear!”, maybe HE doesn’t understand that scaling the reported device resolution IS scaling points per inch. Maybe, he thought I said points per jinx, or lynx or prawns per finch. Who knows, but when “the white knight is talking backwards”, well, Drastic methods, yawn, are called for...Slow Motion Public Discussion. IT matters, because — although the EM can be scaled linearly, because type does not fundamentally scale linearly, if you require it to do so for optimization of a Particular Thing in a particular range, you do so at the peril of other functionality — And, I told him so.

So, while I would be thrilled to see Constantia being used for both the print and electronic versions of a publication, I would not recommend it. And, until recently, it has not been possible to use the same typefaces in print and electronic media without compromising either the readability or the attractiveness of one or the other, and I think, aside from the kind of clients mentioned above, that still goes. I’ve been through servicing the whole spectrum of this issue, from fonts that are smaller than those on windows, to fonts bigger than those that windows can host, and I’m not saying that the CT font collection is not great! It is! And, I’m not saying to make optimized text fonts for Windows is a bad idea. And, I’m not saying that if you want to make optimized text fonts for Windows screens you should “have to” make optimized Display fonts for Windows screens too, or that you should be forced to make fonts optimized for print text, or print display. I’m asking — you guys have dug yourselves into this rabbit hole and you don’t even know it?

We Latin folk, we don’t even have the smallest x-ht-like-thingy, (or the most complex demand for optical scaling!). And, the way things are now, you can’t make an optimized Latin screen font for Mac & Windows without a huge amount of BS, (if it is even possible?). You can’t make a single master for web site text and print text on a single platform unless one or the other 1/2 of your client is a typopottiehead, and it goes on from there ad infinitum typonautica sans progresso until scaleable outlines are allowed to do what they were designed to do in the very first place, “know thyne own point size at all times.” Then there is my fall fall fall fall fall fall back position, my Dunkirk, if you will as you may now understand things, which is to get MS to make one truly comprehensive mother-of-all type tuners for Windows users, ideally, without a variable for Points Per Inch, anywhere, but...

*I do not wander around some infinitely complex typographic universe thinking this s__t up. I am building a screen font family (1997-pres.), along the lines of people’s uses (formal, casual, harried, etc.), as opposed to along the lines for print text, (e.g. Ro. It. Bo. and B.I.), and it came time to sizing the whole thing to the em. When I was finished doing exactly what I wanted, the font was too small to compete on the Mac, (don’t ask why I thought I’d put in swashes). So I made it Bigger. What this means in greater detail, is that I raised the caps on the em, giving less room for ascenders and other stuff above that I did really want, and I boosted the l.c. up essentially to my font Concert’s height. Then, I looked around and found it WAS STILL TINY, compared to Verdana...Enter Concert.

David, thank you so, so much for taking the time to write that. It helps a heck of a lot to have things spelled out in so straight forward a way.

Let me ponder on it.

Are you coming to Lisbon?

“Are you coming to Lisbon?”

An interesting question I wish I knew the answer to myself...