[texhax] Curious: TeX and Sustainable Trail Design

[William Adams]

On Oct 28, 2013, at 10:31 PM, ghaverla wrote:

> It was news to me that "sans serif" is defined by the width of an
> uppercase "O" relative to the height of an uppercase "I".  

It's not.

> I always
> thought it was based on the lack of "decorations" on glyphs.

Correct, the note on the width is to discourage the use of condensed fonts.

> I don't know about this spacing requirement in the context of kerning.
> And what happens with ligatures?

They should decompose to their base letterforms.

> I suspect line spacing can easily be adjusted, if it is different.

Correct.

> Sure, a person can probably cut letters out of 10+mm baltic birch to
> produce the trail name and distance.  Are Helvetica and Times Roman the
> two easiest fonts to read by touch?  

I doubt it.

> I always thought Times Roman was a
> bunch of different typefaces that were similar.

It's a bit more complicated than that --- I wrote up a bit here in the past (please check the archives) and the best reference is Walter Tracy's lovely book, _Letters of Credit_ --- unless of course Lisa Benaglia's thesis was ever completed. Never did hear how that went.

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.