Maintaining A Thick Firewall

[jesse_the_k]

between me & the news.

Luckily it's a lovely fall day -- 66° so we're going to a lakeside picnic at Burrows Park with tasty falafel from Banzo.

In the meantime, a very deep dive into the many issues presented by not-English typesetting with Latin characters.

https://www.type-together.com/latin-based-languages-typesetting

I loved setting type when I was younger (with a photomechanical purpose-built machine and then with the very first desktop publishing tools). Getting lost in the subtle distinctions between type faces was a very happy place. And that's another reason I love fandom.

What area of interest do you enjoy getting lost in?

Comments

[luzula]

Mmm, falafel.

I plan to learn some basic bookbinding so I can have my longfics in my bookcase, and at present I am working on making a nice pdf for printing (in LaTeX). Have not settled on the font though; do you have a favorite one? In general I like serif fonts that are not too pressed together, that is, the letters should be fairly wide...no, obviously I don't know how to talk about fonts.

Of course I have opinions!

[jesse_the_k]

You’re looking for a font that sets wide. While I’m sure it's possible to use any font with TEX, here are four possibilities which look like simple default resource from the fonts listed at TUG.org.

Caslon was used to set British books in the 1700s. So the most historically accurate pick would be
https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/librecaslon

Further details for historical accuracy: don't use bold fonts! At that time, chapter titles and other display elements were shown with larger sizes, and sometimes with "display" sizes, which shifted the balance between the thin and thick bits of each letter. I'm blissfully ignorant of TEX, so there may well be a toggle to switch between text weight (sometimes called book weight) and display. Of course back then type came in fixed sizes of metal on wooden bodies.

Baskerville came later, and sets a lot wider. Two possibilities:

https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/baskervaldx/
https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/librebaskerville/

Finally, a more modern version:
https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/inriaserifregular/

Happy to answer any questions.

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[sonia]

Yay, font geekery!

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[jesse_the_k]

I believe this ties with SF short stories for "my oldest fandom"!

I remember receiving a child's anthology of poetry in 3rd grade that was set in Palatino, at that time a relatively rare font just 14 years old. I noticed! I learned how to read colophons!

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[sonia]

That is so cool! I "felt" the texture and rhythm of fonts as a kid, but I didn't investigate them until much later. I got very serious about choosing fonts for my first self-published book! I don't tend to read colophons unless a font is actively annoying and I want to know, "What *is* that?!"

Ooh, that article is fascinating. *Hugs list of diacriticals!* I make music scores for various of those languages, and it's a royal pain in the arse to get the diacriticals right. I actually have a standing email draft for some of the ones I use the most, but this article's table is better. They even have the Turkish undotted i (okay, less squeeing, I couldn't copy-paste from it! :-( ). Still cool though.

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[jesse_the_k]

Damn -- those wonderful tables are images? That's not fair!

Maybe poking around the SIL site could be helpful?

https://software.sil.org

What software do you use for setting music? That's an area I've never explored, and I bet it's deep and wide.

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[sonia]

I use MuseScore. I posted an intro a while back. I bought a book about learning how to transcribe better, but I haven't done anything with it yet. If we're stuck at home indefinitely, I have so many things I want to study!

Thanks for the SIL link. I didn't see anything immediately and don't have the focus to dig through it now, but maybe I'll come back to it. On Mac, holding down a key sometimes gives you diacritical options for that letter, and sometimes repeats the letter. Of course MuseScore repeats... so I have to copy paste the characters in from a different document.

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[jesse_the_k]

Lovely! Checking that link I see I was already impressed--and I'd completely forgotten. Thank heavens for the written record.

Several times a week I go sliding down history on DW. Memory problems means I can enjoy everything multiple times!

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[luzula]

Your geekery is awesome. ♥ I'm going to bed now, but will look more at this tomorrow.

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[luzula]

Okay, proper response now. Thank you! : ) I'd already been considering Baskerville, but looking at Caslon, that's definitely also a possibility! And the historical connection is fun, too. Hmm, neither of them have small caps implemented as standard, though it looks like there are ways of getting around. If you look at this, it begins each paragraph with a larger capital letter, and has the rest of the following word in small caps. I don't want to do that for each paragraph, obviously, but it would be nice at the beginning of chapters.

Also, I am charm'd by the Conventions of 18th Century Spelling, thro' which Letters are skipp'd from the Past Tense of the Verbs, and Nouns capitalized. I attempt to imitate it in Letters, tho' no doubt 'twould grow tedious if used in the entire Text.

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[jesse_the_k]

Microsoft Word spits and other word processors fake C&SC by using a larger font size for the capital letters. It looks terrible because the stroke widths don’t match. Another approach is to use a completely different font for the initial letter: the dramatic contrast can’t be mistaken for a kludge.*

Your sample is using two complementary metal fonts made for this purpose, and as you’ve already realized, it’s a little trickier to do it with digital fonts.

I sipped at the fount of open source type familiers: Fontsquirrel. Their Latin Modern Roman has true C&SC and sets wide. Can’t tell you anything about using a non-installed font in LaTeX.

The lettrine macro in LaTeX is all about making chapter and paragraph openings look spiffy.

Those 17th century orthographic conventions make my eyes cross — probably the same reaction your Scots would have to decoding text messages with emoji.

---

* Does Swedish have an equivalent word?

Re: Of course I have opinions!

[luzula]

Sigh, apparently I reply to comments verrrry slowwwly. Anyway, I'd already discovered the lovely lettrine package! Not settled on a font yet, though--I don't know if I have the fortitude to figure out how to use a non-installed one. Actually my favorite font when I use LibreOffice is Constantia, but that one doesn't seem easily available in LaTeX, either.

Hee, I've grown quite fond of the 18th century orthographic conventions. : )

No, I can't think of an equivalent word to "kludge" in Swedish!

[jesse_the_k]

Not finding it right now but I recall hearing about fannish book-binding on a fandom podcast -- maybe it's Fansplaining?

Did find this wow-very-emo-such-bands talking about their learning process.

https://wow-very-emo-such-bands.tumblr.com/tagged/bookbinding