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The perplexing upper case of the Monotype 'Porson' Greek
Posted by Hyperboreus in
22 Sep 2008 — 12:53pm
22 Sep 2008 — 12:53pm
Dear Friends,
It has become clear to me that the great disparity of height
between the upper and lower case of the Monotype ‘Porson’
makes it difficult to find an utterly pleasing latin companion
for this distinct cursive.
At long last I took a bunch of old books on my desk and
measured up some ratios between the upper and lower case
letters used in the course of time by the Oxford University
Press. And it seems indeed that the upper case glyphs have
increased as follows:
1882 (a metal type for hand composition)
Cap Height = 1,62 units
x-height = 1,00 units
1955 (a metal type for machine composition)
Cap Height = 1,86
x-height = 1,00
1978 (a type for photosetting)
Cap Height = 1,91
x-height = 1,00
1993 (a digital type)
Cap Height = 1,91
x-height = 1,00
* * *
I have been examinig thus if the existing uppercase of the
Monotype ‘Porson’ could be successfully replaced by capitals
loaned from an entirely another font. The ‘Arno’ for example
can be seen on the left column (and the ratio 1,62/1 was used):
What say You?
P. L.
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22 Sep 2008 — 2:36pm
I don't much like the match of Arno caps & Porson lowercase.
But you are right, the caps in Porson are too big for comfort in most text settings with the PostScript version. I resized (& therefore had to reweight) our version long ago. But that was a couple of sales of Monotype Corporation ago, & I had permission. I doubt you could get it today.
The Greek Font Society has an Open Source version of Porson Greek
http://www.greekfontsociety.gr/pages/en_typefaces19th.html
It isn't quite as good as the Monotype, but if you're going to fiddle, it IS open source & there wouldn't be any license issues.
GFS has some other nice Greek fonts, look at Olga on the 20th century page.
And I've always liked Wilson Greek, Matthew Carter's digitization of Alexander Wilson's fonts. Not sure it is available now, though.
23 Sep 2008 — 3:31am
Dear Charles,
It is true of course that ‘Arno’ and ‘Porson’ do not match remarkably well,
but astonishingly well with such incompatible pedigrees.
In the ‘Agamemnon’ of Aeschylus, printed by John Clay at the Cambridge
University Press in 1910 the upright capital letters are used:
Might I ask, how much You decided to diminish the cap-height of the digital
version? (My very own skills are not sufficient when it comes to altering any
existing designs and that is the reason for my searching.)
Mr. Carter granted me his kind permission to use ‘Wilson’ in my recent
‘Compositor’s Epilogue’ to a fresh Classical Greek Textbook for Finnish
readers, it is a masterpiece, but I wonder if it could survive moderate point
sizes occasionally required in the forthcoming Greek Grammar?
On the other hand ‘Wilson’ might be a perfect companion to ‘TEFF Lexicon’...
P. L.
23 Sep 2008 — 7:18am
Second things first:
I think Wilson Greek works very well with Quadraat, see
http://books.google.com/books?id=YenwwRfce9YC&dq=%22household+and+city+o...
Page 306 shows Wilson run into the text at a note-size setting; page 1 shows a text-size setting.
Of course, this from an American (European-American if we use the current politically correct practice of appending the continent of our ancestors), who doesn't see Greek in everyday life. Someone who reads Greek newspapers, magazines, books, etc. on a daily basis may have a different feeling.
* * *
My discomfort with the Arno caps & Porson lowercase doesn't stem from the fact that the caps are upright & lowercase is inclined. As I remember, that was also the case with the old metal Porson. It is more the weight & contrast of the Arno; the heavy strokes are not as heavy, and I believe the fine lines are not quite as fine. Too, the Arno is broader for it's height; too broad for Porson.
This isn't a matter of numbers, but of feel.
You asked how much I reduced the ratio of the caps in Porson -- "about" 1.7 times the x-height. Depends on where you measure. This is the ratio of the top of the cap Epsilon, at 605 units (1,000 unit em) and the flat part of the serif on a lowercase nu, at 349 units. But the rounded part of the nu is 364, the same as a lowercase omicron.
I didn't do the scaling by aiming for a particular raito. I scaled them according to what I thought I could get away with. It was also a non-linear scaling, and I re-worked the weighting of the caps (& some of the lowercase letters also, from my notes).
The GFS Porson has a cap height of 703 (Epsilon, as above), and the nu is 396 and 404 (as above). That works out close to 1.75. The GFS Porson also has upright caps & inclined lowercase.
If you set a lot of Greek and are wedded to Porson, it may be worth your while to have the font redrawn to your taste. I peeked at your user information; it says "graphic designer." I make my living mainly setting type, and can justify the cost of custom fonts, either by paying for a redrawing or doing the work myself. When I work over fonts, I get no return, since I do not sell type. So for me and you, custom fonts would just be another business decision. Well, that's the argument available to us -- I suspect it's really about good type, but our motives are private business.
25 Sep 2008 — 3:26am
Dear Charles,
Thank You for all the invaluable insight!
Actually I considered using ‘FF Quadraat’ with ‘Porson’, but rejected it
because of its overelaborate ‘§’. (There are no less than 168 §§ in the
grammar.) It would be stimulating though to see the book recommended.
* * *
By the way I think the numbers and ratios are often much gentler tyrants
than the pure feelings...
* * *
Unfortunately the custom fonts are far out of my reach... And the current
commission is most probably my last opportunity to work with the Greek
alphabet. (I am afraid that no more than a dozen books containing Greek
settings have been published in the whole Finnish printing history.)
* * *
Furthermore, do You happen to know if ‘DTL Albertina Greek’ supports
polytonic Greek. (It is obvious that DTL does not answer to any inquiries.)
The ‘DTL Albertina Polytonic’ mentioned here might be, well, customized:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/news.aspx?NID=2533
P. L.
25 Sep 2008 — 1:52pm
As to the Albertina Greek, the site you reference says
The typefaces she used for this book are DTL Haarlemmer, DTL Albertina Greek Monotonic and Polytonic.
I doubt it was customized.
* * *
You might get up with Yannis Haralambous. He knows far more about what is available in polytonic Greek than most of us.
http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/
& on the off chance that you rejected Quadraat only because of the section symbol, remember it would be easier to switch that character than all the uppercase Greek letters . . .
25 Sep 2008 — 2:42pm
If you have Arno Pro, who not use that for the Greek?
26 Sep 2008 — 10:32am
Charles
Well, ‘DTL Albertina Greek’ might not look as good as it sounds.
It is just that I have not seen any text settings composed in ‘Albertina
Greek’—the individual letters certainly bear some resemblance to
Mr. van Krimpen’s ‘Antigone’, which does seem a virtue to me
(I am well aware of the criticisms towards ‘Antigone’, but I consider
it exceptional when composed in 16-points with ‘Lutetia’.)
John
I am not very keen on Mr. Slimbach’s Greek types. ‘Arno’ actually
reminds me of Willy Wiegand’s ‘Homer’ which was used in archaistic
editions of Sappho (1921) and Homer (1923–1924) by the Bremer
Presse. It is as if the types aforementioned were too conscious of
their fine calligraphic ancestry... Having said that, I do notice that
something similar could be said of the ‘Antigone’.