On Aug 22, 2023, 2:06 AM -0600, Hans Hagen via ntg-context , wrote:
On 8/22/2023 6:31 AM, Hamid,Idris wrote:
Design sizes for typefaces -- aka "optical sizes" -- are no longer directly implemented in typescripts. From the manual Fonts out of ConTeXt by Hans Hagen, p. 109:
You can still do it but for all these years only cm has design sizes so
one can wonder.
Hm.. There are a few others, Minion perhaps being the most popular and extensive. More below:
"at some point the decision was made to kick out these definitions and move the burden of figuring out the right size to Lua."
They were moved to the goodie file (there are every few design size
setups in goodie files, minion has one, but i don't have these fonts nor
use them.
Have just completed a minion-pro-opticals typescript collection with a minion-opticalsizes.lfg.
Somehow I didn't even see yours and Mathias' minion.lfg (and associated type-imp-minion) until just now, had to figure it all out from scratch from demo.lfg and lm.lfg templates -)
(OTOH, had previously seen yours and Mikael's sophisticated minion-math.lfg)
I think that my version is/will be more complete - except for mathematics. Once some fine-tuning and additional testing is done, will donate the results to ConTeXt.
(Thus some large typescript collections painstakingly built over the years are now obsolete and have to be rewritten. Oh well..)
Well, i suppose one can still setup/use the typescripts but it's less
fun. The old definefont mechanism is still there.
Unfortunately it doesn't work anymore - or at least not the way it used to. My mkiv minion typescript collection, for example, still compiles in lmtx, but the design sizes do not show up in the output anymore, only the default size.
As a side note: we have design sizes (very few fonts) and weights (more
and more fonts) .. weights are imo an even bigger mess, as it looks like
some designers can't make up their mind and come with plenty weights
independent of the fact that some look bad; variable fonts only add to
this: the easier to use the creater tools become the easier it becomes
to make ugly fonts (I tend to ignore fonts that show off too many
possible choices; not much different from excessive kerning, ligatures
and other incomplete features).
You make an important point, especially about the proliferation of bad fonts via more accessible tools. On a related front, there are more and more Arabic-script fonts, but hardly anything really good or useable, even from reputable foundries like Adobe. At some point, presumably, designers quit early (or the company does not care to invest the needed time and funds).
Presumably, designing good optical sizes requires more care and subtlety than designing weights.
OTOH the more professional/high-end foundries sometimes recommend certain weights for optical-sizes. For example, your neighbors at Enschede:
http://www.teff.nl/fonts/geronimo/
"While Geronimo was mainly conceived as a typeface for (small) text, it also performs well at bigger sizes most notably the lighter weights.”"
There are 12 weights total (six regular + six italic), but the lighter weights are designed to work well at larger sizes. So from 12 fonts one can create a reasonable, combined optical-size and weight space.
(Speaking of Enschede, their Lexicon typeface use an interesting/unique optical-size concept.)
One thing about the explosion of weights is that the distinction between \tf and \bf (or \it and \bi) vanishes and becomes a spectrum. In that case, presumably one would
i) forget about \bf and \bi
ii) multiply bodyfont-typefaces and switch directly between them as needed.
Etc.
If this appearance of a loss reflects the reality of the situation, would like to kindly request that the original functionality be restored to the higher-level user interface, presumably within the lfg file. So perhaps something like a keyval
fallbacks = {
["MyRomanRegular"] = {
"file:MyFont-Small" = "fallbacks=<fallback2>",
"file:MyFont-Regular", = "fallbacks=<fallback1>",
"file:MyFont-Bigger", = "fallbacks=<fallback3>",
"file:MyFont-Biggest", = "fallbacks=<fallback4>",
},
On the other hand, if access to the former functionality is still there somewhere in the user interface, would like to humbly request that someone share where it is and how to use it!
Thank you kindly for consideration of this request.
I'm not going to look into this until there is a complete test case for
this which means:
- free fonts (so that others can also test and use)
- design sizes
- fallback design sizes
As for free fonts. MinionPro Opticals should be considered an exception to the free-fonts rubric. After all,
i) its multiple-master design base was inspired by MetaFont/Knuth, and hence
ii) it's very popular with TeXies.
Put another way, Minion Pro should be considered an honorary TeX typeface -)
(There is also an update, Minion 3; could imagine a perfectionist user wanting to keep the option of falling back between the two for special cases.)
There are other fonts with display sizes, such as Williams Caslon (an excellent Caslon that really has that classic Oxford University Press feel), Lexicon (mentioned above), Requiem, etc.
The reason there are so few free optical-size typefaces is that they take a lot of work to get right. Indeed, really high-quality, fine-tuned free typefaces are hard to find even at single size.
So hopefully we will not punish the users of commercial fonts -)
But for free fonts with design sizes, the best example is perhaps EBGaramond, acclaimed by German typedesigner Erik Spiekermann as "one of the best Open Source fonts around."
Now EBGaramond has forked into two branches, one by the original designer Georg Duffner, the other by Octavio Pardo. Neither fork is complete, and each may have some advantage over the other. But for a serious Garamond project, an ambitious ConTeXt user may, for special purposes, wish to use some glyphs or glyph combinations from one, some from the other. For example, some glyph-set from one weight or optical size may look better than the default that comes with the main \selectbodyfont.
So in these two branches we have high quality, free, design sizes, and fallbacks. There is also a mathematics package available.
OTOH, have no need for Garamond at the moment, and need to stay focused on the main projects right now. But at least it's freely available, there are LaTeX packages already, other users can enjoy it, etc..
My own situation is more niche, but the abstract case will find creative application in numerous niche cases for other ConTeXt users as well. Every now and them a problem arises where this functionality will at least provide a convenient workaround. Such cases cannot always be foreseen..
Of course one can have some abstract fallback defined using the
"MyFont-Small" namespace where the files used get remapped too as one
goes. A bit like we do with the gyre fonts where we share definitions.
Interesting, but not sure that I fully follow. Could you kindly give some working example that illustrates what you mean? Thank you in advance.
Best wishes
Idris
--
Idris Samawi Hamid, Professor
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
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