From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
Date: Tue May 08 2007 - 14:37:53 CDT
Michael Everson wrote:
>> You've taken a romantic type with a strong vertical axis and an
>> expansion based stroke pattern and introduced a letter with a very
>> dominant translation based stroke.
> "Translation"-based stroke?
In which the stroke contrast pattern is determined by the direction of the stroke, i.e.
typical of a broadnib writing instrument, in this case differentiated from an expansion
pattern based upon pressure, i.e. typical of a splitnib writing instrument. See Noordzij
_The Stroke_.
> OK, see a new image at
> http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/sharp-s2.png
> The first of the capitals here is the flung-together one. The second and
> third follow your Trajan example, and are made of capital U and S, the
> first of which with a J-finial. The fourth is the same as the same as
> the third except that the distance between the vertical and the S is the
> same as in the sequence IS. The last derives from F and S.
I found in the Trajan experiment that the S-curve portion has to be narrower than the
actual S, and getting the balance right is very tricky. The top transition probably needs
less curve in it.
> My goal is to make something "vanilla" in Times which will guide less
> erudite font designers than you to make something that doesn't suck.
> That is something that the code charts do.
In that case, I would use the Times example shown in this example:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Eszett-Timo.png
This form is succeeding much more in both looking like an uppercase letter and providing a
systematic model from which a wide range of different typefaces can benefit. The kind of
forms you and I are experimenting with probably need a lot more careful fiddling and
refinement to make work well. The arch+yogh approach is going to cause fewer problems for
most type designers looking to quickly add support for this character to multiple fonts.
[During the euro symbol update, Akira Kobayashi at Linotype developed a 'norm' for
creating the euro glyph: a set of rules that would produce an acceptable form in almost
every style of typeface in their extensive library. Something similar would be of value
for the uppercase eszett. There will, of course, be typefaces that inspire different
approaches, but having a system that can be applied in most cases will be very handy.]
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Gulf Islands, BC tiro@tiro.com We say our understanding measures how things are, and likewise our perception, since that is how we find our way around, but in fact these do not measure. They are measured. -- Aristotle, Metaphysics
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