One more Thomas, sorry to be a pain in the ass, but.... You say: "I should be clear that when I say “quality” I am not talking about matters of mere taste. There are objective aspects of font quality. For example, in spacing a typical sans serif, if the cap H and N have straight sides, and the white space (sidebearings) allocated to the left and right sides of the cap H are significantly different values, and those in turn differ from the sidebearings of the cap N, then the font is simply badly made."
But... on the Extensis WebINK homepage, there is a banner of the Aston Font (aka Photolettering Jeanette), that looks like this http://cl.ly/image/0B3m2W2Q033K And since you are mentioning sidebearings, this is how it is supposed to look if properly set: http://cl.ly/image/132N3H1C2w3L (This is the Photollettering GonzalesJeanette 1993 digital version) 2013/10/13 Pablo Impallari <[email protected]> > Nice article Thomas! > I would have loved to be in Amsterdam this year :) > > By the way, regarding this paragraph: > "One of my perennial arguments with the folks at Google is about the fact > that they didn’t have a very high quality bar at all, and let in an awful > lot of fonts that I would say are simply crap or at least substandard, at > an objective level. Some of the folks on the Google side of the fence say > that they are simply giving their users free choice and that if one of the > fonts I consider to be junk becomes popular, then that’s evidence that it > was actually “good.” I don’t have much patience for this line of argument. > I think that Google is abandoning what it ought to see as a responsibility > to be a gatekeeper not of taste, but of quality, given that it is not hard > to find the expertise to deal with these things." > > There is not much difference to the MyFonts approach: > "We review the fonts for technical requirements, but we don’t make any > value judgment as to whether we think a design is great or lousy. That’s > for our customers to decide" > John Collins, vice president of MyFonts > http://www.monotype.com/blog/myfonts-website-democratizes-type-design/ > > I may ask: What are the technical requirements of MyFonts? > Pretty much everything gets published... just look at the "Intellecta" > fonts > At least Google send everything to iKern first. > > Also, the people on Pilo is always fixing technical issues on shared > MyFonts fonts, like cropped glyphs due to bad metrics; naming issues; > etc... > Dave is always checking all this on Google fonts. Not only metrics, but > also all the other metadata. > Hey! he even corrects the spelling mistakes on the descriptions. > > > > > > > 2013/10/13 Thomas Phinney <[email protected]> > >> FYI, I did a small update to the article, expanding a bit on my thoughts >> on quality.... >> >> On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 10:10 AM, Dave Crossland <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> http://www.thomasphinney.com/2013/10/free-fonts-revealed-and-reviled/ >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> “‘Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs.” >> —Roger Ebert >> >> -- >> -- >> Google Font Directory Discussions >> http://groups.google.com/group/googlefontdirectory-discuss >> >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Google Font Directory Discussions" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > > > > -- > Un Abrazo > Pablo Impallari > -- Un Abrazo Pablo Impallari
