On Oct 23, 2006, at 5:45 AM, David W. Fenton wrote:
The computer "innovation" was having nothing *but* fixed-width
numbers, whereas older fonts had both for use in different contexts.
Thanks for the clarification, David.
I did read your first post carefully and was confused by it. Your
statement that numeral descenders and fixed-width numerals are "an
aberration in the history of typesetting" sounded to me like a claim
that they hadn't existed before, which was hard to square with your
statement later in the same paragraph that you didn't know what was
done before.
My suspicion is that most fonts (in the original sense of the word) had
either fixed-width numerals or variable-width, depending on the
intended use of the font, with fonts having the choice of both the
rarity. I'm trying to research that, and if I learn anything
definitive I'll let you know. It seems to me that, on the 19th century
mechanical typesetters (linotype, etc), even if you had either kind of
numerals to choose from, you'd still have to choose one or the other to
load, just like we did with phototypesetters in the 1980s.
mdl
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
