On 23 Oct 2006 at 16:09, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > On 23 Oct 2006 at 15:26, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: > > > > [just a request: can you *please* put a blank line after the quote > > and before your reply? When you don't, my email client can't > > properly tell where the quotes end and the new text begins, and I > > end up having to completely rewrap everything; it's also harder to > > read!] > > > > I put em in (sometimes double or triple), and the email client stripe > em out. I haven't figured out just how to stop it yet.
Well, how annoying! Looks like you're using Thunderbird, which I'd expect to be better than that. I guess if either one of our email clients were better designed we wouldn't have this problem. In any event, the extra line seems to have done the trick on my end -- thanks for that! > > Well, it's not relevant with typewriters until the 1970s, because > > before that point all typewriters were fixed-pitch, so there was not > > any possibility of proportionally-spaced numbers. > > but except for the possible case of "1", digits in fonts of typefaces > were the same width, and I'm not at all sure of the case with the "1". Well, it seems to me that except for the 1 it's not distorting the natural shapes to much to make them the same width. Most of them fit into the same oval as a zero. The exceptions are 2, 4 and 5, and the latter two of those are the ones usually given descenders (along with 7 and 9). One thing about descenders is that those would have been just replicating what handwritten numbers do. If you look at 6 and 9 in music manuscripts, the circle was always placed on the same level with the tail of the 6 going up (and almost horizontal in many cases) and the tail of the 9 below. The 3 and 5 had their bottom hooks below the baseline, and the 4 had its horizontal bar on the baseline. And 0 was usually half the size of the full line. These all represent in type the way that the numerals were taught in handwriting. We don't do any of that any longer. > My main points are that, based upon an examination of reference > materials, > > 1) that text fonts were smaller (that is, contained a significantly > smaller number of characters in the font--even adding diacriticals and > other items needed for non-English usage would only add a dozen or so > character) than the 256 characters you suggest; But for a long time the practical restriction was 128, and on the Internet in certain circumstances, you're still limited to 7-bit characters (i.e., the first 128 characters of the 256). And even to this day there are character set mapping problems so that you can't always be certain that others will see what you see for the upper 128 characters (on web pages, it takes a proper character set declaration to get things to come out right). > and > > 2) that in most typefaces, the number characters in the fonts (with > the possible exception of the "1") appear to have had fixed, rather > than proportional, widths. > > I am not prepared to deny that there may have been typefaces in which > the fonts contained proportional width numerals, though these do not > appear to have been standard, nor that proportional width numerals may > have been available for most typefaces, though if they were available, > I suspect the proportional width types were the add ons, not the fixed > width ones. But as long as one number is narrower or wider, it shows that the numbers are proportional, because you wouldn't be able to mix 1s in with other digits and maintain uniform vertical columns (without adding leding between the type pieces). However, I don't think we're disputing anything important at this point! Of course, the most fun arguments are always when you are already in 99% agreement. ;) -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
