fonts and typescripts

fonts and typescripts

[Charles P. Schaum]

Thanks, Wolfgang. Now it's all good. Typescripts are a little opaque to
me. I need to learn a lot more, to be sure. 

I want to thank the ConTeXt team for the great work on the product and
the docs. I do respect that TeX has a culture and one cannot design a
product that is alien to that. I have some thoughts where a few spots in
the docs could be friendlier for someone coming from a standpoint of
general design and typography. Sort of like "here's how you think with
DTP" and "here's how it's done in ConTeXt." I might also suggest a
couple of features; I was, however, able to Google for much that I
needed (e.g., with character spacing). Yet I'm not one to just butt into
people's workflow, given their time and investment.

In general I find ConTeXt to be superior in many regards for my needs.
Unfortunately, I am not a scientist. I have a bachelor's degree in
computer science with a minor in Germanistik, and I have two master's
degrees in theology, having studied in Germany and the US. So I want to
edit books that celebrate the history of thought and typography. ConTeXt
is the best positioned to make beautiful, modern books, surpassing many
generally available commercial products.

Here's an interesting point: InDesign creates ligatures, but
irrespective of what is going on in the actual font. So, unless you use
Unicode Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, or whatever, the older style
fonts that still inhabit the commercial multilingual industry get
mangled. TeX and friends are smart and don't do that. They can handle
some complicated typography more robustly than many others.

InDesign and InCopy use a version control system where one can "check
out," "check in," and track changes in a parallel workflow. Grep
searching has also been integrated. It seems to me that if something
like Scribus had a means to interlink with ConTeXt, cvs / svn or the
like, and had a means of automatically generating code and previews, you
would have a typesetting system that could compete feature for feature
with InDesign and InCopy, and surpass it in some cases.

Charles

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Re: fonts and typescripts

[Hans Hagen]

Charles P. Schaum wrote:

> Here's an interesting point: InDesign creates ligatures, but
> irrespective of what is going on in the actual font. So, unless you use
> Unicode Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, or whatever, the older style
> fonts that still inhabit the commercial multilingual industry get
> mangled. TeX and friends are smart and don't do that. They can handle
> some complicated typography more robustly than many others.

i'm currently reading a books with is typeset quite ok (in optima) but 
occasionally uses smallcaps with intercharacter spacing which looks ok 
apart form the occasional ligature and indeed fi a b c d liiks kin dof 
strange; it always puzzles me why professional dtp programs don't deal 
with it

anyhow, in context mkiv (luatex version) we will have way more control 
than we have now

> InDesign and InCopy use a version control system where one can "check
> out," "check in," and track changes in a parallel workflow. Grep

how do they deal with non compatible new features; for instance, at 
bachotek i learned that some otf features that are not supported in 
older versions are supported in new ones (or are supported differently); 
is there some compatibility mode (i.e. is the old behavior still present 
and the ID/IC version number stored in the document?)

> searching has also been integrated. It seems to me that if something
> like Scribus had a means to interlink with ConTeXt, cvs / svn or the
> like, and had a means of automatically generating code and previews, you
> would have a typesetting system that could compete feature for feature
> with InDesign and InCopy, and surpass it in some cases.

well, that's the idea -)

Hans

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