Fonts & Encodings: From Unicode to Advanced Typography and Everything in Between

Reviewed by Robert Pritchett

Author: Yannis Haralambous Translated by P. Scott Horne O’Reilly http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102425/index.html $60 USD, $72 CND Released: September, 2007 Pages: 1,307 ISBN: 1-0596-10242-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-596-10242-5 Requirements: A desire to learn about the nuts and bolts of typography.   Strengths: Shows how the magic is made in digitizing print to pages and the Internet.   Weaknesses: One or two typos related to either the editor or translation.

 

Introduction

 

This reference is a fascinating and complete guide to using fonts and typography on the Web and across a variety of operating systems and application software. Fonts & Encodings< shows you how to take full advantage of the incredible number of typographic options available, with advanced material that covers everything from designing glyphs to developing software that creates and processes fonts.

The era of ASCII characters on green screens is long gone, and industry leaders such as Apple, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle have adopted the Unicode Worldwide Character Standard. Yet, many software applications and web sites still use a host of standards, including PostScript, TrueType, TeX/Omega, SVG, Fontlab, FontForge, Metafont, Panose, and OpenType. This book explores each option in depth, and provides background behind the processes that comprise today's "digital space for writing":

 

      Part I introduces Unicode, with a brief history of codes and encodings including ASCII. Learn about the morass of the data that accompanies each Unicode character, and how Unicode deals with normalization, the bidirectional algorithm, and the handling of East Asian characters.

 

      Part II discusses font management, including installation, tools for activation/deactivation, and font choices for three different systems: Windows, the Mac OS, and the X Window System (Unix).

 

      Part III deals with the technical use of fonts in two specific cases: the TeX typesetting system (and its successor, W, which the author co-developed) and web pages.

 

      Part IV describes methods for classifying fonts: Vox, Alessandrini, and Panose-1, which is used by Windows and the CSS standard. Learn about existing tools for creating (or modifying) fonts, including FontLab and FontForge, and become familiar with OpenType properties and AAT fonts.

 

What I Learned

 

I had no idea that getting an image of a letter was so complicated and math-intensive when moving it from the keyboard to the screen, nor did I realize how many different languages still need to be programmed into Unicode. I loved the comment that “ink is the liquid of wisdom”.

 

At first we are introduced to printing history and how fonts developed over the centuries. That information is balanced with modern-day coding and algorithms and visuals of the progress from ancient to modern.

 

My readings brought me to this website - and I discovered that there are no less than 6, 912 living languages, each with their own idiosyncrasies and special glyphs.

 

I also found that the Unicoders have a long, long way to go to capture the various symbols used on planet earth for communications. I don’t think we will get to a universal translator until we have gotten all the languages captured first.

 

The author laments that his ancestral language was not represented entirely (Greek print parts and pieces) and then he shows how the Unicode system has advanced over time to its present condition where improvements have been and can be made. I really did not realize until towards the end of the book that the author originally wrote this book in French and that explains some of the fun sentences and print samples.

 

The author is also obviously very cognizant of how fonts are treated with Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X and dedicated quite a few pages to the topic. He also demonstrated his command of Windows, Linux and other Unix variants and how they each treat “print”. Yannis also points to some excellent font apps and tools for editing and creating fonts before showing how to enrich fonts with advanced typography.

 

The Appendices make up nearly half of the book with font format treatments with the final section discussing Bézier curves. But I have to think that the printing press ran out of paper before he could finish the book, because there is no “conclusion” or any treatment of the future. Perhaps there will be a sequel if this book is accepted and becomes a “best-seller”.

 

Fonts and Encodings looks like a labor of love by someone who really enjoys his work. Since Yannis runs a company that specializes in high-quality typesetting, I think he found an outlet for his frustration and he shows how typographical challenges can be overcome.

 

Conclusion

 

If you have even the most remote interest in typography and want to look at the incredible nuts and bolts behind this fascinating technology, this book really is the reference to come to.

 

Recommendation

 

Yes, this book does indeed put the pieces of the typographical and font puzzle together. Why not grab a copy and see for yourself. After all, a lot of minds spent a lot of time and effort down through the centuries so you could read this legibly and in your own language. Now you can read about how they did it and are still doing it today.