Where do we sign up? I don't see this on the TypeCon site.

I can certainly be there.

There's no formal sign-up Si. It's an informal event piggy-backing on the TypeCon conference. Just indicate here or by email to me if you plan to attend. We just need to get an estimate of the number of people to expect so that the conference organisers can determine how large a room will be needed.

Thank you John H. and John D. for organizing this discussion! I will definitely be there.

>Just indicate here or by email to me if you plan to attend.

Okay, I'm in. Sergey and John Berry too, probably.

Cheers, Si

John(s) - I'll be there, looking forward to this discussion!

Bill

I'll be there.

Anyone who plans to attend - please email or message John Hudson and I so we can work with the conference hotel to add more sleeping rooms to our discounted room block to cover the earlier part of the week. This is urgent - we need to make sure we have rooms available ASAP to accommodate attendees of this briefing.

I would like to attend this session :)

I would like to attend this session.

Please count me in too - thanks.

hhp

Sounds worth attending.

I'd like to attend as well. Thanks!

Gah! Would have loved to attend this, but sadly won't be able to make it out from the UK until Thursday. Will there be a summary posted online anywhere?

Will there be a summary posted online anywhere?

There are no plans for this, but if someone wants to volunteer to take notes....

Unless there is some kind of logistics problem, I plan on being there, and probably around three others from the Google Font API team as well. It certainly sounds like there's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about!

It's just a shame, considering the audience and the time of type, that it sounds like a bunch of disorganized free-for-alls when it could be sweet music for the audience:

What Now?
Reports and conditions from along the trail:

Web Type Tool Maker, Adam Twardoch (FontLab)

Web Graphic Design Tool Maker, Christopher Slye (Adobe)

Web Font Server I, Bryan Mason, (Typekit)

Web Font Server II, Bill Davis (Ascender, WebType)

Web Content Maker, Roger Black (RB Inc.),

Web Browser Maker, Simon Daniels (Microsoft)

4:00 Drover, John Hudson (Tiro Typeworks)

WHAT NEXT?
From the front on the future:

Type designers of tomorrow, Tal & Erik (LetterError & Type Supply),

The web text rex next, Raph Levien (Google)

WG of W3C, Vladimir Levantovsky, et al (Monotype Imaging)

Management tools of tomorrow, Tom Phinney (Extensis)

Fastest moving Browser Maker, John Dagget, (Mozzila)

5:15 Drover, John Hudson (Tiro Typeworks)

Just about all the same people... but with purpose.

Cheers!

@clagnut

Richard - FWIW - my plan is to take notes, photos, and record what is said, too - the last thing happening only if nobody minds.

@davidberlow

A more freewheeling approach than what you describe is hardly "without purpose". However, I think one-day conferences of the kind you describe - focused exclusively on type and typography - will probably be in substantial demand in a few years.

rich

David,

a) John Daggett won't be around for the TypeCon conference; he's coming to LA for the W3C WG meeting on the Tuesday, and leaving on the Thursday;

b) there's an opportunity for people who are interested in providing input on a specific part of the CSS3 standard to meet with him on the Wednesday;

c) its a technical meeting, not a dog and pony show.
___

What TypeCon are organising for the conference itself in terms of web fonts is in preliminary planning stages. The programme on the website suggests that I'm going to give a short presentation on WOFF, which was news to me and, I'm pretty sure, not the case. I suspect Tal and Erik will be giving that presentation, and that Chris Lilley from the W3C, who is not mentioned in the online programme, will be talking about the W3C web font standard. I expect the format of these sessions will become a lot more organised and structured once the various participants have an opportunity to discuss them and make a plan.
___

I think business cards saying ‘Drover’ would be pretty swell.

a) Big deal.
b) Email it.
c) I wouldn't understand.

People are coming a long way and they've waited a long time. Don't blow it again.

Cheers!

David, web fonts are explicitly not germane to the pre-conference CSS3 session that this thread is about.

I'm as concerned as you are about the main conference web font sessions, which so far seem ill-defined and uncoordinated. Hmm. Maybe they need a drover.

>...web fonts are explicitly not germane to the pre-conference CSS3 session

Lol, you can say that again. I understand there are three sessions John, the point is general; the people who know are all there, from near and far, and there are a LOT of questions unanswered from here and there, recently and from the past.

The history of most of these sessions, CSS or not, is tinted by post-panel depression, as in no one can answer the questions after, in fact most people don't understand much more than when they arrived.

Cheers!

Bryan Mason from TypeKit is apparently going to be moderating the TypeCon web fonts panel. I'm sure he would appreciate receiving from you any questions that you might like asked. That's no guarantee that you'll get an answer, let alone an answer that you like, but as you say the people who know -- or whom we hope know -- will (mostly) be there.

If there are questions you have for John Daggett and other CSS3 session participants, I'll be happy to field them for you.

Do we have a time for this yet? I need to book my flight today, and I don't want to miss this....

T

Arrive Tuesday night - so you don't miss the WOFF party...

http://www.typecon.com/events.php#wtfwoff

Thomas, I've not heard back from John Daggett yet, but I'm 90% certain that this will be in the afternoon on the Wednesday, e.g. 2:00 to 5:00 pm. I'll finalise this with Tamye tomorrow.

David, your concerns are valid. It's helpful that you're explaining them here. Perhaps we can try to focus the panel discussion on topics and information that will make things more clear, not less. (No guarantee, though!)

I hope Bryan is a good moderator. :) It's a critical job.

Thanks Chris.

To Christalize the headline issue as I see it: we now have the TT font format pared down to the capabilities of the T1 format circa 1985, being stuffed into a 2010 wrapper with no improvements on anything helpful to users, (if you don't understand that, just look carefully).

I think we'll need more than bread and circuses to get out of the swamp. It'd be interesting to hear what people think the solutions are.

Cheers!

David: ...the TT font format pared down to the capabilities of the T1 format circa 1985...

Is that the T1 fonts with 16-bit and 32-bit character encoding, up to 65536 glyph per font, smart layout features for non-Latin scripts, and coming up -- the focus of the CSS3 Font Module session -- smart layout features for rich typography? I don't remember those T1 fonts.

If all you care about is the rendering control (and not encoding and layout features), then the big advantage of TrueType was that you could get relatively consistent results in terms of bi-level bitmap patterns regardless of the OS and TrueType rasterizer - whereas Adobe was in the habit of "improving" the output of the PostScript rasterizer. Obviously that changed big time with OS X, Freetype and ClearType.

OSX being the biggest problem in terms of dumbing things down.

hhp

I love it when you guys talk technical. I'm a one-click kinda guy, myself.

@JH
So John, is this a definite for Wed. between 2PM and 5PM?

Regards,

Rich

John:
Three or four of us from Typekit will be there for your session on Wed. Thanks for doing it.

David:
Very helpful. For the panel section, with so many folks on the stage, my hope is to skip a lot of intro/background material and get right to meaty questions/dialogue.

So - do send me the questions you'd like to hear folks answer: bryan@typekit.com

.b

So has the day & time been nailed down?

hhp

I'm just waiting final confirmation from the TypeCon organisers. It will definitely be the Wednesday, 18 August, and in the afternoon. Probably starting at 2:00, but I will confirm that a.s.a.p.

OFFICIAL NOTICE

The CSS3 Font Module pre-conference session will take place on Wednesday 18 August, beginning at 2:00pm. We will officially end at 5:00pm, but if people want to stay longer to keep a discussion going, that should be possible.

The session will take place at the TypeCon conference hotel.
http://www.typecon.com/hotel.php

The room will be posted on the day.

There is no fee to attend this session, and now that the room size is confirmed there is no need to register interest in attending. Drop-ins welcome.
___

Sponsored by Tiro Typeworks. Thanks to SOTA for making this possible.

Much thanks for this. A great idea.

Update:

The session will take place in the ‘Westside’ room on the plaza level of the conference hotel.

John Daggett will begin the session with an approx. 45 minute presentation on the CSS3 Font Module, covering

• CSS3 Font spec overview
• basic font properties (family name, style matching, size)
• @font-face mechanism
• layout feature support
• testing and conformance
• font security issues
• ideas beyond CSS3 Fonts

Following this, there will be open discussion on these and related topics. If you already have a question you would like to ask or a topic you want to discuss, you can post it here so that John will have some idea what to expect. I've already told him that I want to discuss possible CSS mechanisms for ppem-specific outline selection.

And for people wanting some reading on the plane, to get up to speed and/or find all the tricky problems,

CSS Fonts Module Level 3
Editor's Draft 10 August 2010
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-fonts/

Thank you. It's now on my Kindle.
(Yes, I just wanted to say that... :-) I love that little thing.)

hhp

Hrant, at the risk of topic drift....

How did you go about capturing and repurposing that for the Kindle? I have not yet found a simple way to do it while keeping the graphics intact (emailing to my Kindle gets the file converted without the graphics). Maybe it's just because I haven't figured out the MobiPocket Creator software yet.

Cheers,

T

You guys are too advanced for me. I printed a double-sided booklet at Kinkos!

Thomas, I tried a few things, and only one worked: SelectAll, Copy-Paste into Word, then send them the Word file* to convert. Except for the header/footer garbage which you have to ignore it works quite well. The page above is an easy one, but even something like this
http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/030901.html
looks great after a page or two of garbage.

* I use .doc, haven't tried .docx yet.

Of course if all else fails one can "print" a PDF from the browser and just use that, but you know the Kindle limitations with PDFs (although it's still the best reader for PDFs).

hhp

Thanks, Hrant. That was on my list of things to try, but it was just one of a large array of options.

(Side note: I was honestly astonished at the quality of Kindle text rendering of OpenType CFF (PostScript outlines) in PDF. It is the best greyscale text rendering I've ever seen. I'm curious whose rasterizer they're using, whether it's one I've seen before.)

Cheers,

T

It's FreeType. But the quality comes from the paper-like display.
And you should see the new iteration - already out in the DX, and
coming out in 11 days in the smaller one, which they announced
2 days after I bought mine... although I got a good deal on it, plus
I get to use it during TypeCon! Also, I don't like the new keyboard.

BTW, this is a great place to be:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150

hhp

Hrant -- It's FreeType. But the quality comes from the paper-like display.

This does not make sense. According to this article, the resolution is 150ppi, with 16 shades of grey, which is not so terribly much. And the FreeType samples provided over here look pretty impressive. So at best it is a combination of both.

I didn't mean to denigrate FreeType. But without the eInk (way beyond mere resolution) it's just another good renderer. If you're coming to TypeCon (or ATypI) I'll gladly show you (and of course anybody else).

BTW, since that article:
- The DX's price has gone down to $379.
- The new firmware (2.5) does PDFs much better.

Oh wait, this is not a Kindle thread... (Sorry, I'll stop now.)

hhp

I've got both a Kindle DX and a Kindle 2, actually. Also happy to compare rendering and such with folks at the coming conferences. It would be interesting to compare the same PDF on a Sony Reader or a Nook.

Though honestly I don't expect to read a lot of PDFs on my Kindle....

T

http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Reading-Display-Graphite-Globally/dp/B002...

"New Proprietary Screen Technology - Faster Page Turns, New and Improved Fonts
Kindle’s new, high-contrast display is further optimized with Amazon’s proprietary waveform and font technology to make pages turn faster and fonts sharper. Waveform is a series of electronic pulses that move black and white electronic ink particles to achieve a final gray level for an image or text. We have tuned Kindle's waveform and controller mechanism to make page turning 20% faster. This waveform tuning, combined with new hand-built, custom fonts and font-hinting, make words and letters more crisp, clear, and natural-looking. Font hints are instructions, written as code, that control points on a font character's line and improve legibility at small font sizes where few pixels are available. Hinting is a mix of aesthetic judgments and complicated technical strategies. We've designed our proprietary font-hinting to optimize specifically for the special characteristics of electronic ink."

> hand-built, custom fonts and font-hinting

Damn - missed the boat.

BTW, did they do this in-house?!
If not, who did it for them?

hhp