🚀 go-pugleaf

drraymond@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Darrell Raymond) writes:
[discussion of definitions for family, face, font]

>   I see in this month's Byte that Jerry Pournelle (not the world's
> leading expert in typesetting terminology)
!!!
>...uses the word "typeface"
> where I use the word "family", but keeps the other two terms the same
> (he also gives the impression that there is such a thing as "Times
> Roman Italic", which seems oxymoronic).

That section of Pournelle's current column is a mess.  (I don't know about
the rest; I rarely read Pournelle's columns because I need to keep my blood
pressure down.:-)  However, his stumbling about with "family", "face", and
"font" (plus a marginal handling of "case"), and the "Roman Italic"
blunder, is the least of his sins.

He tries to explain the situation on font copyrights (which don't exist in
the US) vs font-name trademarks (which do) as somehow related to the fact
that the fonts themselves are too old to protect!

You'd think that a writer (and a contentious one, at that) would have at
least a passing grasp of copyright issues, and might take a few moments'
care to understand how they relate to fonts.  I wonder how Pournelle would
feel if he couldn't copyright his books, but only trademark the titles...
and if anyone could republish one of his books, in its entirety, unaltered
except for the title!

Overall, there are probably more wrong statements than correct ones about
type...but what the heck, that's how you get a good letters column, right?
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind.