Sorry for the tone of my previous mail. I hope my tone this time is better and what I write below makes sense. On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 12:52:10AM -0500, John A. Boyd Jr. wrote: > > - "Times", "Timmons" - symbolic, not semantic/descriptive > - "Serif", "Sans", "Monospace" - semantic/descriptive How about names like "Baskerville" or "Caslon", etc. which are in the public domain and somewhat cross the boundary between symbolic and semantic? I agree with you that they ultimately are shorthands for lots of descriptive attributes; however, I would say that it should not be entirely dismissed that certain names can legitimately / usefully serve as abstractions themselves. > How about "non-Latin" for starters? Then, say, "Hebrew", > "Greek", ... (These are character set descriptions, I'm > imagining, from my limited knowledge of fonts.) I think fontconfig already knows something about this. What I was trying to say was, e.g., the Kai (CJK) style being classed by default as "sans serif" by stock fontconfig and as "Kai" in Debian. According to limited understanding of how Latin fonts are categorized, both classifications are wrong; it should properly be classed as italic even though it would not match well with Latin italic types (because of different italic angles). (And naturally, the panose data are wrong about the correct classification.) Continuing with this particular case, what do we do with existing classification schemes, and how far do we go in making sure something is correctly classified using existing criteria (in this case the correct definition of "italic"); and how do we handle unexpected cases where two different styles *ought* to be classed identically but are incompatible? Or perhaps let us consider the "Kai" style from a more realistic point of view: In a normal fontconfig installation, when the user asks for a "sans serif" Chinese font, the system is likely to deliver a Kai font because of the simple reason that there is no free Chinese sans serif type in existence. But in this case a typical user -- provided that he/she knows what "sans serif" means -- would be able to tell that this is wrong, if not only for the reason that Kai types have (round, sometimes subtle) serifs. > Let's try another example. Let's say we want to describe > font width - I like that example... How about "condensed, > expanded," and the like. I'll bet you can find these in > existing fonts as well. Yes. But let us pause for a moment and say the same thing about "normal", "medium", and "regular". These certainly sound identical, mean the same thing to most people, and might even mean the same thing for lots of fonts. But there are also lots of commercial fonts where they represent different weights. And there are commercial fonts who describe themselves as "normal" or "regular" (say) even though they are bold (say). We should be aware of such irregularities. > I would suggest, Ambrose, that you're thinking less like a > user than like a system developer. > > In that regsrd, let me just ask: how does (or might) a _user_ > discriminate fonts at the level of panose information? I'd say there are different kinds of users. There are users who don't know what sans serif is (or what a serif is), the same users literally would call all any old sans serif font "Arial" (and not know what "Helvetica" is) and all serif fonts "Times New Roman"; and I personally do know a number of such users. To these users, even serif and sans serif are meaningless descriptions. At the other extreme, there are users who know what "FF Meta" and "Myriad MM" are, and some who can tell the difference between Helvetica and Arial. These users (those who have studied typography and/or do typographic work day to day) would at least have a handle on what the panose data mean. Of course, the two kinds of users would discriminate fonts at the level of panose information differently. The "clueless users" might be able to only distinguish between panose "family" and weight, the "professional users" will be able to distinguish most of the panose attributes, and the "academic" might be able to distinguish all. The "professionals" and the "academics" certainly would discriminate fonts based on more than what the panose data would describe (e.g., by the "feel" of the font, the "historical period", etc.), especially for some of the panose attributes which are not helpfully descriptive (e.g., when Family is Script or Decorative); however, their ability to distinguish might be subconcious. Under normal use, I might speculate that perhaps a quarter to a half of the panose data are useful, and perhaps several additional, non-panose descriptions will be required to sufficiently describe a font. Certainly, to the user, the panose data are not sufficient to meaningfully describe fonts. I would assume that the typical user you have in mind is somewhere between the two extremes. However, at least one extreme cases is not negligible; "clueless users" do exist, and GNU/Linux becomes more and more generally usable as a desktop system it could attract more and more "professional users". We can reasonably ignore the "clueless" ones, but what I call the "professional" users might describe type in a way you would call "like a system developer". If what we are going to do is to improve on the way fontconfig is to do matching, by using more descriptive attributes, I have no objections; this can only benefit typical and professional users alike. > Aliases have the properties of abstractions if they are also > abstractions, but again, they are then only a special case. > But in general, aliases are not also abstractions. In general, > an abstraction can be used wherever an alias can, but the > opposite is not true at all. I would tend to be a bit reserved about this statement. Unicode (at least the CJK unification part) is supposed to be based on the same principle, but in practice it does not deliver even though this principle should be theoretically sound. I might speculate that this property would break down for script and decorative types, esp. the latter. Descriptive attributes may change in time too. Helvetica at one time was perceived as "authoritative"; today perhaps "default" or "plain" might describe it more appropriately. > To your second point - no; there's a legal principle called > the doctrine of fair use that applies to certain classes of > use of intellectual property. Teaching, journalism, and > research are among those uses exempted under the fair use > doctrine, as I understand it. I am not as optimistic. Judging from how the recording, movie, and commercial software industries, and our legal system are acting, I would say that fair use will disappear in the future, perhaps the near future, or perhaps it already disappeared behind our backs. I certainly hope that I am just being overly pessimistic.
