I do not think that we can. We do not share standard encoding files, or in some cases, even agree on what glyphs constitute support for languages. And trying to create standards will no doubt attract advocates for constructed and fantasy languages like Esperanto and Klingon, which are of questionable use at best, and do not necessarily have orthographies that have been agreed upon by users. Then there will be the nationalist arguments over the names of certain languages claimed by bordering nations. I expect that the hassle would mean only a few designers would even see the process through, and plenty more will just ignore it.
I like the annex ‘Plus’, or even ‘+’. Maybe a bit of nostalgia on my part — I was sooo happy when FontFont updated to Meta-family to MetaPlus; best thing that happened to me that year (what year? can’t remember…).
As In recall, the term "Pro" came about years ago in the early opentype era when Adobe was retro-fitting their legacy fonts with the old "Expert sets". The name was pulled out of the thinking that the only people who ever used the Expert Sets were design or publishing professionals. It was also only 3 letters long.
Several years ago, I was asked by SoTA to write an article for their supposedly annual "Interrobang" publication on OpenType. They never published it for some mysterious reason which I have ever been privy to. Part of it addressed the "Pro" question. I will try to dig up the old file and post the "pro" related part of it here if anyone is interested.
Some mistook that for meaning a font had rich typographic OT features, others took it to mean non-latin support. Perhaps there can be no agreed upon term.
Then we should probably educate our customers better about these terms. Often such information are missing on foundry websites or buried deep with the support section.
To me, "Light", "Basic"/"Standard", "Pro"/"Premium" are pretty universal terms for separating different versions of software products or bundles. Coming up with even more new abbreviations would only make things worse.
>As I understand the original Adobe use of Pro, it was a font with some CE latin support. Some mistook that for meaning a font had rich typographic OT features, others took it to mean non-latin support.
As I remember, 'Pro' was used to imply that the OT font had 'some' additional OT features incorporated into it to distinguish from other standard fonts. The only way a user could find out 'what those features' where, was to use the font and poke around to see what OT features where available from within an application.
The 'Pro' at the end of font name meant nothing. Some understood it to mean 'Professional', whatever that means.
Anyway, that's the whole problem with the way we all name stuff. Myself included. We are all guilty of this practice.
I was hoping that at least within the 'typophile' group, we could all discuss the entire 'font naming' structure and come up with guidelines that we can all follow. At least, come to some sort of general consensus, and try to clarify what all these terms should mean.
If we don't, who will?
Here is previous link with some of my other concerns. Thank you.
Okay... I built it! This is the system I plan to use going forward.
Everyone is welcome to use, in-part, or as a whole. I think it's elegant and all-inclusive. Easy to understand and expand on.
'Font names' remain as short in length as possible, and offer a lot of information about what is contained in font.
I personally, do not think that adding a brief description of weight or 'body proportion' is needed, but others may want to add this as well. I think that the 'user' will quickly get the idea, by the numbers alone, if font is 'regular weight', or 'condensed', or 'expanded' by the numbers alone. Maybe, down-the-road, we can start to drop this reference in order to minimize the font names still further. Anyway, a good start. General consensus, please?
——————————————
TypeFaceName 53 Cd Rm
TypeFaceName 54 Cd It
TypeFaceName 55 Rm
TypeFaceName 56 It
TypeFaceName 57 Exp Rm
TypeFaceName 58 Exp It
——————————————
All the other weights (in the family) can be numbered as indicated above.
25 Ult Thin
26 Ult Thin It
35 Thin
36 Thin It
45 Lgt
46 Lgt It
65 Med
66 Med It
75 Bld
76 Bld It
85 Blk
85 Blk It
95 Ult Blk
96 Ult Blk It
—————————————
These other 'useful' acronyms can be concatenated to end of 'font names':
Small Caps= 'Sc'
Old Style Figures= 'OsF'
Sm Caps & OsFigues= 'ScOsF
Display= 'Dsp'
Caption= 'Cpt''
Swash= 'Swh'
Ornamental Caps= 'OrC'
Outline= 'Out'
Inline= 'Inl'
Stencil= 'Stn'
Graffiti= 'Grf'
Optical Axis (Large x-height)= 'Lxh'
If anyone can think of any others, we can add to this list.
I'm not sure about adding acronyms for 'extended language' support.
But, that can easily be done... example...
Central European= 'CE'
Greek= 'Grk'
Cyrillic= 'Cry'
etc...
Looking forward to everyones opinion on the subject. Thank you all.
Original thread title:
"
Looking for a better term than "Pro"
"
Original initial post:
"
As the subject line says. Can we come up with different terms to describe the glyph content of a font?
As I understand the original Adobe use of Pro, it was a font with some CE latin support. Some mistook that for meaning a font had rich typographic OT features, others took it to mean non-latin support. Perhaps there can be no agreed upon term.
"
Well, if you don't fall for that "update"* and actually
bother to read (which is generally quite a bit less bad
than watching TV for example) you would learn that
James once tried to sweep this thread under the rug,
and is now trying to prevent people from noticing that.
Once you learn that, you might be able to put certain
posts in context in terms of why some people take part
in Typophile at all. You can then properly filter (but
never ignore) everything they say. http://typophile.com/node/90115 http://typophile.com/node/90174#comment-495634
* Which was basically to reinstate the title and
entire original post (which had been completely
deleted) and add a sleight-of-hand at the end, and
was tellingly carried out immediately after this: http://typophile.com/node/90174#comment-495635
BTW it's quite selfish to try to demote the efforts
of people like Alex simply to look less bad in public.
> No alternative to the term Pro has been agreed upon
Typophile is littered with threads that have
been resolved many years later. And you know it.
--
As far as I'm concerned this is the fate of anybody
who wants to benefit from something while giving
back as little as possible.
22 Sep 2011 — 3:42pm
I do not think that we can. We do not share standard encoding files, or in some cases, even agree on what glyphs constitute support for languages. And trying to create standards will no doubt attract advocates for constructed and fantasy languages like Esperanto and Klingon, which are of questionable use at best, and do not necessarily have orthographies that have been agreed upon by users. Then there will be the nationalist arguments over the names of certain languages claimed by bordering nations. I expect that the hassle would mean only a few designers would even see the process through, and plenty more will just ignore it.
23 Sep 2011 — 6:10am
I like the annex ‘Plus’, or even ‘+’. Maybe a bit of nostalgia on my part — I was sooo happy when FontFont updated to Meta-family to MetaPlus; best thing that happened to me that year (what year? can’t remember…).
24 Sep 2011 — 8:15am
You could nick terms from the car makers; not like they'll miss them or anything...
GT (Great Typography), GTi (Great Typography, indeed), DL (De Luxe), GL (Grand Luxe)
24 Sep 2011 — 4:24pm
I've used it to differentiate upgrades that include OpenType features from the originals in "legacy" format.
I don't consider "professional" to have anything to do with language support.
It's more about what used to be termed "Expert" fonts.
25 Sep 2011 — 4:16pm
A lot of typefaces that are updated with additional language support use a CE suffix (Central European). Helvetica CE for example.
1 Jul 2012 — 7:56pm
fk it
28 Sep 2011 — 12:54pm
Well... you could suffix it with LGC (Latin/Greek/Cyrillic).
28 Sep 2011 — 1:08pm
As In recall, the term "Pro" came about years ago in the early opentype era when Adobe was retro-fitting their legacy fonts with the old "Expert sets". The name was pulled out of the thinking that the only people who ever used the Expert Sets were design or publishing professionals. It was also only 3 letters long.
Several years ago, I was asked by SoTA to write an article for their supposedly annual "Interrobang" publication on OpenType. They never published it for some mysterious reason which I have ever been privy to. Part of it addressed the "Pro" question. I will try to dig up the old file and post the "pro" related part of it here if anyone is interested.
29 Sep 2011 — 8:27am
Some mistook that for meaning a font had rich typographic OT features, others took it to mean non-latin support. Perhaps there can be no agreed upon term.
Then we should probably educate our customers better about these terms. Often such information are missing on foundry websites or buried deep with the support section.
To me, "Light", "Basic"/"Standard", "Pro"/"Premium" are pretty universal terms for separating different versions of software products or bundles. Coming up with even more new abbreviations would only make things worse.
16 Dec 2011 — 9:48pm
I posted a question recently about standardizing 'font naming' conventions.
I got little or no response.
Apparently, everyone is happy to go about doing their own thing.
Good luck getting anyone to agree on the 'Pro' debate!
17 Dec 2011 — 8:25am
How about using an acronym like "ML" - Multi, or Multiple Language?
17 Dec 2011 — 8:59am
>As I understand the original Adobe use of Pro, it was a font with some CE latin support. Some mistook that for meaning a font had rich typographic OT features, others took it to mean non-latin support.
As I remember, 'Pro' was used to imply that the OT font had 'some' additional OT features incorporated into it to distinguish from other standard fonts. The only way a user could find out 'what those features' where, was to use the font and poke around to see what OT features where available from within an application.
The 'Pro' at the end of font name meant nothing. Some understood it to mean 'Professional', whatever that means.
Anyway, that's the whole problem with the way we all name stuff. Myself included. We are all guilty of this practice.
I was hoping that at least within the 'typophile' group, we could all discuss the entire 'font naming' structure and come up with guidelines that we can all follow. At least, come to some sort of general consensus, and try to clarify what all these terms should mean.
If we don't, who will?
Here is previous link with some of my other concerns. Thank you.
http://typophile.com/node/88327
17 Dec 2011 — 9:10am
I just scanned this thread again... and I see good suggestions like... using 'plus', or '+' or even '++'.
Didn't URW use something like that URW++ ???
>Chris Keegan— You say to use "ML" for 'multi languages. Not a bad idea. But, what 'multi languages' are we talking about.
I know what 'greek' or 'cyrillic' means after the font name. But what does 'ML' imply? It's not clear.
If we do this, and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but then we have to supply a guide to all users to decode this stuff.
I like the idea of using 'acronyms', but they need to be chosen carefully.
And, they should mean something very specific. No ambiguity.
17 Dec 2011 — 10:49am
Okay... I built it! This is the system I plan to use going forward.
Everyone is welcome to use, in-part, or as a whole. I think it's elegant and all-inclusive. Easy to understand and expand on.
'Font names' remain as short in length as possible, and offer a lot of information about what is contained in font.
I personally, do not think that adding a brief description of weight or 'body proportion' is needed, but others may want to add this as well. I think that the 'user' will quickly get the idea, by the numbers alone, if font is 'regular weight', or 'condensed', or 'expanded' by the numbers alone. Maybe, down-the-road, we can start to drop this reference in order to minimize the font names still further. Anyway, a good start. General consensus, please?
——————————————
TypeFaceName 53 Cd Rm
TypeFaceName 54 Cd It
TypeFaceName 55 Rm
TypeFaceName 56 It
TypeFaceName 57 Exp Rm
TypeFaceName 58 Exp It
——————————————
All the other weights (in the family) can be numbered as indicated above.
25 Ult Thin
26 Ult Thin It
35 Thin
36 Thin It
45 Lgt
46 Lgt It
65 Med
66 Med It
75 Bld
76 Bld It
85 Blk
85 Blk It
95 Ult Blk
96 Ult Blk It
—————————————
These other 'useful' acronyms can be concatenated to end of 'font names':
Small Caps= 'Sc'
Old Style Figures= 'OsF'
Sm Caps & OsFigues= 'ScOsF
Display= 'Dsp'
Caption= 'Cpt''
Swash= 'Swh'
Ornamental Caps= 'OrC'
Outline= 'Out'
Inline= 'Inl'
Stencil= 'Stn'
Graffiti= 'Grf'
Optical Axis (Large x-height)= 'Lxh'
If anyone can think of any others, we can add to this list.
I'm not sure about adding acronyms for 'extended language' support.
But, that can easily be done... example...
Central European= 'CE'
Greek= 'Grk'
Cyrillic= 'Cry'
etc...
Looking forward to everyones opinion on the subject. Thank you all.
17 Dec 2011 — 6:39pm
Hmmm, hit & run, James? A netiquette felony.
(Is the initial post in a cache somewhere that somebody could retrieve?)
hhp
17 Dec 2011 — 7:44pm
hrant:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6l7n5pzllJEJ:typoph...
17 Dec 2011 — 8:02pm
Thank you my man.
--
Original thread title:
"
Looking for a better term than "Pro"
"
Original initial post:
"
As the subject line says. Can we come up with different terms to describe the glyph content of a font?
As I understand the original Adobe use of Pro, it was a font with some CE latin support. Some mistook that for meaning a font had rich typographic OT features, others took it to mean non-latin support. Perhaps there can be no agreed upon term.
"
On Typophile, Typophile comes first.
hhp
1 Jul 2012 — 7:57pm
fk it
18 Dec 2011 — 12:26pm
There are users, and then there are users.
hhp
1 Jul 2012 — 7:56pm
fk it
18 Dec 2011 — 12:46pm
I avoid YouTube like the plague - sorry not to click.
hhp
18 Dec 2011 — 1:09pm
Good to know. You can stay here and I'll spend the time I would have wasted here on YouTube.
Glad we cleared that up.
19 Feb 2012 — 7:06am
> Don't waste your time reading this thread.
Well, if you don't fall for that "update"* and actually
bother to read (which is generally quite a bit less bad
than watching TV for example) you would learn that
James once tried to sweep this thread under the rug,
and is now trying to prevent people from noticing that.
Once you learn that, you might be able to put certain
posts in context in terms of why some people take part
in Typophile at all. You can then properly filter (but
never ignore) everything they say.
http://typophile.com/node/90115
http://typophile.com/node/90174#comment-495634
* Which was basically to reinstate the title and
entire original post (which had been completely
deleted) and add a sleight-of-hand at the end, and
was tellingly carried out immediately after this:
http://typophile.com/node/90174#comment-495635
BTW it's quite selfish to try to demote the efforts
of people like Alex simply to look less bad in public.
> No alternative to the term Pro has been agreed upon
Typophile is littered with threads that have
been resolved many years later. And you know it.
--
As far as I'm concerned this is the fate of anybody
who wants to benefit from something while giving
back as little as possible.
hhp
1 Jul 2012 — 7:56pm
fk it