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AAT An abbreviation for Apple Advanced Typography. A technology in newer Macintosh operating systems which eliminates the reliance on QuickDraw GX.
.ABF file See bitmap formats.
abrupt serif See angled serif.
accent marks See diacritical marks.
Access-Board A U.S. federal agency which developes standards for architecture, communication, and construction which maximizes accessibility for people with disabilities. The standards under communications include guidelines for Internet software Web accessibility. See accesssible Web pages andand Unified Web Site Accessibility Guidelines.
This Encyclopædia of Typography and Electronic Communication has been fully compliant with these standards since its inception.
accessible Web pages See print legibility for the visually-impaired and Unified Web Site Accessibility Guidelines, and Web accessibility guidelines. See also intelligent agents.
.ACF file ACF is an abbreviation for ASCII Composite Font. A text file format which uses only human-readable characters and which describes, for a composite font, attributes of the descendent font components of a composite font. Production First Software OCF Type 0 fonts include ACF files.
Acrobat See PDF.
additive primary colors See process color.
ADEM Uncial See uncial.
Adobe Refers to the company (Adobe Systems Inc.) that developed the PostScript computer language in 1983. PostScript was the catalyst for the development of useful desktop publishing (and what is now the broader field of electronic publishing and electronic communication).
Adobe Font Metrics Another name for AFM files.
Adobe PostScript A page description language which was the first truly successfully commercialized computer language for page description purposes.
Adobe PostScript Extreme Printing architecture software combining the functions of a PostScript interpreter and Portable Document Format (PDF) in a workflow environment with job ticketing capabilities. The goal is to process pages of a document at greater than output device engine speeds.
Adobe Type Manager See ATM.
addressable resolution The inherent resolution of an input device (such as a scanner) or an output device (such as a raster video screen, laser printer, or imagesetter) which enables pixels to be individually and explicitly addressed, and, therefor, used. See interpolated resolution and resolution enhancement for alternate processes.
adnate serif See bracketed serif.
ADSL An abbreviation for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A higher speed communications protocall for transmitting digital information over metal wire phone lines than POTS (Plain Ordinary Telephone Service) or even ISDN lines. It is capable of downloading at approximately 1,500K baud rate transmission speed and uploading at about 1,100K baud. In contrast, a cable modem is currently capable of downloading at up to 3,000K baud and uploading at only 33.6K baud. A T-1 line can download and upload at 1,544K baud. In the United States, an ADSL line is expected to cost approximately 10 times the cost of a POTS line monthly, compared to approximately 3 times for an ISDN line.
advance width See character width.
agate A unit of measurement: 14 agates = 1 inch.
agent See intelligent agent.
aglet A contraction for agent applet.
AFII An acronym for Association for Font Information Interchange. An organization which maintains a glyph registry. The idea of a glyph registry is to provide typical examples of a design of specific glyphs. Alternate forms of glyphs can be registered by designers, but alternate designs of the same form cannot be. Each glyph is assigned a location and given a number.
Unfortunately, the usefulness of this concept has been subject to overextension; for the glyph registry numbers have begun to be incorporated into character names (such as 'afii9623' ). The problem with using glyph register entries as part of character names, is (1) what to do if the glyph to be named is not registered; and (2) the concept of maintaining a consistent or standardized character name set can be easily violated, because an unlimited number of alternate forms could conceivably be created. A better method of deriving character names is to use a set of consistent naming rules which are written to be consistent with legacy names already in use. If the rules are architected carefully, composite character names can even be parsed to determine the names of the component glyphs. This is the method used by Production First Software since 1990.
.AFM file AFM is an abbreviation for ASCII Font Metrics. A text file format which uses only human-readable characters and which describes, for a base font and some composite fonts, the character glyph names, character glyph width and height, pair kerning, track kerning, the construction of accented characters and ligatures, and other data. It is the data file that is used to determine the proper spacing of type character glyphs on a page by an application.
AI An abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence.
air Another term for white space.
algebraic construction or algebraic graphics construction A graphical image construction method which stores the details of the image as coefficients of algebraic polynomial or transendental equations. The equations are then evaluated for specific areas of the image to determine the color. Compare with bitmap graphics and vector graphics. This method can be implemented as an extension of vector graphics methods.
algorithm A logic-derived procedure (either computerized or manual) used to perform a certain function.
aliasing An artifact produced by distorting or not using the high frequency components of an image, signal, data stream, etc. due to some limitation such as undersampling or inadequate detection bandwidth. The result is unwanted appearance of low frequency components (aliases) which must be filtered out and replaced with the missing high frequency components. The process of removal/replacement of frequencies is called « anti-aliasing. »
Aliasing issues in typography arise in trying to reproduce images of letterform outlines using insufficient display resolution. Applying anti-aliasing techniques replaces the unwanted low frequency and missing high frequency components by extrapolation of the remaining signal. Visually, this tends to produce a « fuzzy » or « softened » but more accurately-shaped image. See also hand-tuning. A major difference between anti-aliasing and hand-tuning is that the former can be a mathematical process, whereas the latter is performed strictly by eye. Examples of anti-aliasing and hand-tuning are shown below.
alphanumeric Consisting solely of Roman upper and lower case alphabet and Arabic numeral characters.
alternate character Usually, a misnomer, except for one particular case (a different character representing an alternate glyph design to a glyph represented by another character). What is oftentimes meant is an « alternate glyph. »
alternate glyph A glyph which is available as another (alternate) representation or design in a font.
Method (1) requires external glyph management machinery to be built into the application or operating system. Methods (2) and (3) are essentially the same, although there may be rendering performance differences. Adding additional glyphs is simpler with method (3). When alternate glyphs are added using methods (2) and (3), the code points to which they are assigned can be considered to be alternate characters.
Production First Software font packages make use of all three methods. When present, alternate characters in Production First Software fonts are classified as « special characters, » assigned to descendant fonts, or placed in a ISO10646/Unicode Private Use Zone.
alternative font See grunge font.
Americans for Technology Leadership A pro-Microsoft lobbying group.
American Type Founders See ATF.
amikake A shaded box used with Japanese kanji characters.
analog A term which denotes « continuously variable. »
analog letterform A letterform image which has smooth, continuously variable outlines, such as images drawn, painted, or offset printed on paper. Sometimes they are scanned and used as a starting basis for digitizing letterforms for making a computer font.
anamorphic effect A well-behaved distortion of an image or an arrangement of glyph images implemented in such a way as to be reversible by carrying out an inverse or adjoint process.
An example of this in a first order one-dimensional effect was the CinemaScope movie film recording process, whereby a wide-screen aspect image was squeezed onto ordinary 35 mm film frames. The inverse process was a projector lens which inversely distorted the film image to project it in wide-screen format. Analog anamorphosis (the noun corresponding to the adjective) has been traditionally a low-order process, because of the difficulty manufacturing optics able to achieve accurate high-order effects. However, in the computerized digital age, this restriction has been lifted. When more complex distortions are performed (higher order, multidimentional), the term « envelope shaping » is usually used.
anchor point A single isolated point or one of a pair placed on an outline so as to stabilize the outline against stenosis of a stroke at a certain location under distortion of the glyph topologic space. Anchor points may or may not be superfluous to the undistorted outline. Almost the opposite of focus point.
angle See typeface angle.
angled serif A serif which forms a distinct angle with the stem to which it is attached. Typeface examples include: Contura, Latin Wide, and Trump Gravur.
angle of stress or angled stress The angle, measured counterclockwise from the vertical, of the axis inclination of a typeface design. When the angle is zero, the design is said to have « vertical stress. » If the angle is not zero, the design is said to have « angled stress. » Sometimes the terms « positive stress » and « negative stress » are also used, depending on whether the angle of stress is positive (axis leaning to the left) or negative (axis leaning to the right). Very few upright designs have negative angled stress. Angled stress was originally a characteristic of early Old Style designs. Angled stress then disappeared towards the end of the Old Style period and beyond (into Transitional and Modern periods).
Anglo-American point See pica point.
animated GIF See GIF89a.
anisotropic resolution See asymmetric resolution.
anisotropic scaling See non-linear scaling.
annotation See references under inline annotation and interlinear annotation.
ANSI Abbreviation for American National Standards Institute.
ANSI character set The character set used by Microsoft Windows.
anti-aliasing or antialiasing In electronic communication and typography, the term refers to the adding of additional images or parts of images so as to decoy the eye into seeing something that cannot be represented digitally. (See the discussion on aliasing.) Specifically, the goal is usually to make curved lines or slanted lines appear smooth, or straight horizontal or vertical lines appear in certain positions. Lines cannot be represented smoothly or in the proper position because the device resolution (computer screen or printer) does not permit small enough pixels to be used to represent the image accurately. In practice, the eye is fooled by painting extra pixels in various shades or colors intermediate between the background color and the glyph image color.
Anti-aliasing is part art and part science. The science component enters because it is possible to mathematically determine what intermediate shade or color to paint a pixel according to the shape and position of the intended curve passing through the pixel. The art component arises because what the human eye perceives also depends on what the brain expects to perceive. It is impossible for a computerized algorithm to read a human's mind to determine this. Therefore, the best anti-aliasing oftentimes can only be achieved by hand-tuning. Many of the illustrations in this encyclopædia using letterforms have been computer-anti-aliased and then hand-tuned.
There are also degrees of anti-aliasing, where the degree can be increased by allowing more pixels to be altered. The number of shades of gray a pixel can be painted also controls the success of anti-aliasing. The more shades of gray that can be used (proportional to the « bits per pixel » parameter) the more successful, up to a point. The illustrations below indicate the effect of anti-aliasing and the effect of hand-tuning on both raw bitmap representations and computer-anti-aliased representations. The degree and extent of anti-aliasing can also be varied (not shown), where, for example, only certain contours are anti-aliased, and some to varying degrees. This technique has also been used in preparing many of the illustrations in this encyclopædia. anti-aliasing inevitably typically results in some « smearing » to most eyes; and this effect often determines which portions of the image should be anti-aliased, or whethe use of anti-aliasing is advantageous in a particular situation.
Another technique, called hinting, is also employed to improve the representation of letterforms at low resolutions. It is arbitrary whether the technique of anti-aliasing is considered a hinting technique or not. It certainly shares the same aim, for when hinting is applied, the image is also altered, but in a different manner. Histroically, the term « hinting » came into use probably before the technique of anti-aliasing was implemented on a practical scale. The dividing line seems to be the placement of extra pixels of, and alteration of pixels to, intermediate shades or colors in anti-aliasing, whereas hinting adds or alters pixels of the same shade or color. Another difference is that hinting is usually built into a font, whereas anti-aliasing is usually built into either a bitmap image or into viewing software (such as ATM, Acrobat, or Windows GUI). Unfortunately, for the reasons stated above, it may not be a successful idea to implement
anti-aliasing into viewing software.
antiqua Any typeface design with serifs.
antique A structural typeface style, usually serifed, where solid outline strokes are drawn so as to look slightly ragged or worn.
AOLTV A Web-television interface appliance introduced by AmericaOnLine (AOL) whereby both the Web and television can be accessed and interoperated, along with Email features (interactive TV). It was fashioned as a compeditor to Microsoft's WebTV, no doubt intended for eventual world-wide availability, especially since Microsoft is attempting to make inroads in China with a WebTV-like appliance.
AOL purchased NetScape Communications in the late 90's after NetScape was virtually put out of business by Microsoft when Microsoft began giving away Internet Explorer for free. Internet Explorer was a Web browser competing with Navigator (NetScape's only product) and later Microsoft bundled it with, or built it into, versions of Windows 9X, so that there was no reason for customers to purchase Navigator.
apex Upper junction point in character stems which meet at less than 90 degrees. A, M, N, W have apexes.
API An abbreviation for Application Programming Interface. An operating system interface through which an application or utility communicates. Any data that an application or utility generates or any data that is required by the application or utility passes through this interface.
Apple Language Kit A software package which is installed under Macintosh System 7.x to enable the use of a non-Roman (non-Latin) script. The kit usually may include keyboard drivers, input method editor(s), and 1-5 fonts servicing that script. Current kits include: Arabic/Persian, Chinese, Hebrew, Indic, and Japanese. If all five scripts need to be supported, then five kits must be purchased and installed. They range in price from US$100 to US$300. No counterpart on other platforms exist.
Production First Software has available a cross-platform LanguageGroup Kit which is required for usage of Cyrillic, Greek, and Roman fonts for uncommon Cyrillic, Greek, hybrid, and Roman alphabet script encodings; but only one kit is required, which can be used with any number of fonts.
Apple Type Services or ATS The font management interface on newer Macintosh operating systems.
applet A term used to designate a « small » application. The term was originally applied to small basic word processors and paint programs which were bundled with operating systems. Now, the term has also been applied to applications written in Java intended for thin clients or network computers, and to mini-applications and utilities used by Web pages and callable through HTML or XML.The operation of this Encyclopædia of Typography and Electronic Communication uses applets.
appliance In the context of telecomunications and computer technology: any conceivable device, other than a desktop computer system, laptop computer system, or large computer system, which could connect to another computer or network. This could include palmtops or other handheld devices, cellular phones, FAX machines, printers or copiers, cameras, audio/video equipment, refrigerators, airplanes, automobiles, boats and ships, rockets, trains, weapons, and other items.
Some pundits believe that appliances do not constitute a legitimate category of electronic communication for the following reasons:
1) Users who seek Internet access are already on-line. Those who are not on-line do not have the technological awareness or financial resources required for making them attractive for marketeers.
2) Internet appliances present a narrow degree of functionality and less flexibility than a workstation or personal computer.
3) The operation of Internet appliances usually require periodic subscription fees or service charges whether utilized or not, quite opposite to that of a traditional appliance like a radio or toaster oven.
4) The capital cost of an Internet appliance is almost comparable to that of a low-end personal computer.
application A computer program which performs a major task or a series of related tasks and delivers a finished product. Applications perform page layout, drawing, spreadsheet preparation, color separation, type styling, word processing, etc.
apron Extra space which is added to margins of body text on a document page which includes a foldout.
ArchML An abbreviation of Architectural Markup Language, under development by Production First Software, which is designed to represent and render architectural or design drawings and blueprints in multiple languages. It includes a built-in multibyte Web font facility, which can be used, not only to represent drawing text, but also to render images and symbols necessary for complete design representation.
ARMSCII An acronym for ARMenian Standard Code for Information Interchange. An encoding standard for Armenian script. See also ISO/DIS/10585.
arm A stroke which is attached to another stroke at one end and which does not generally intersect the baseline. Examples found in: E, F, K, X, k, x.
ARPAnet A computer communications network which was the predecessor to the Internet. It was set up by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a department of the Defense Nuclear Agency, which is under the U. S. Department of Defense.
Art Deco A typeface structural style influenced by the Art Deco period (1920s to 1930s). Designs are characterized by bold outlines and streamlined, stylized geometry. This class can be subdivided into three sub-categories:
Standard - High contrast; often, one stem per letterform usually thick, and other strokes usually thin. Typeface examples include: Broadway, Clyde, Min-Curl, Ricky Tick, Roco.
Modified - Characteristics of Standard plus lines and patterns. Typeface examples include: Alex, Beverly Hills, Broadway Engraved, Modernistic, Piccadilly.
Thin Line - Thin monoline strokes. Typeface examples include: ITC Bauhaus Light, ITC Busorama Light, Huxley Vertical, Mossman, Pico Casual.
Art Nouveau A typeface design influenced by the Art Nouveau movement, a 20-year period centered at the beginning of the 20th century. The movement is characterized by a dreamy, sensuous style, with variable ornamentation. Architecture, clothing, furniture, painting, sculpture, industrial design, and typography have been influenced by the movement.
artificial intelligence A technology of computer science which shapes the design of computer software by attempting to imitate the human reasoning and logic process. Strategy categories already developed include:
The successful application of artificial intelligence has produced many useful devices in the consumer, industrial, and scientific world including ocr and virus-detecting software; ABS braking systems and traction-control systems on aircraft, trains, and road vehicles; on-board emission control and engine diagnostic and tuneup systems for road vehicles; collision avoidance systems for aircraft; automatic identification systems based on individual human fingerprint or retinal patterns; stoves and ovens, tape recorders, washer/dryers and other machines with multiple glitch-free select modes; « plug and play » computer systems; drug-interaction software for pharmacies and physicians; electronic communication devices such as cellular phones, FAX machines, modems, and TV cable boxes; and many other applications and products.
Artificial Uncial See uncial.
ASCII An acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
ASCII character set The character set originally defined by ASCII. ASCII characters consistof the regular modern Roman alphabet characters (A-Z, a-z), numbers (0-9), punctuation marks and additional text characters, and control code characters. Control code characters are used by word processors for formatting text. The ASCII character set comprises of 128 characters and can be represented using only 7 bits per character. The ASCII character set is usually a character subset of most other commonly used character sets. The characters are often described as « ASCII characters, » and the human-readable text they are used to represent is often termed « ASCII text. » All ASCII characters, except for the first 32 (control codes), can be directly entered from a U.S. computer keyboard. The first 32 can be entered using Alt+nn or Ctrl+n.
ASCII font metrics See .AFM file.
ASCII text Text which is comprised only of characters representable using 7 bits (numbers 0 to 127).
ascender A character stem which rises above the x-height dimension without being reconnected to a portion of the character above the x-height.
assimilation (ideosyncratic)The property of a typeface design, existing to varying degrees, incorporating reflected and symmetrical and similarity patterns across letterforms and other glyphs.
Asomtavruli A secular incriptional unicameral alphabet of Georgian. Some Production First Software fonts have Asomtavruli encoded as UPPERCASE in the Georgian block.
aspect ratio The ratio of width to height of a glyph, image, or object.
.ASP file An acronym for Active-X Server Pages. A file comprising a Web application with HTML pages which may call Active-X Server Objects, graphics files, and associated content files.
(another definition follows)
ASP An acronym for Application Service Provider, a computer technology packaging strategy which combines software, hardware, and networking technologies.Assigned Classes Industry-standard typeface classifications based on various partly arbitrary or historic and partly scientific identification schemes. These include the following:
assistive technology A general category applied to intelligent agent software for challenged users and appliances making use of intelligent agents. Devices introduced in the late 1990's included BigKeys keyboard (for users with macular degeneration), QuadJoy mouse (for users with muscular impairment), Gus Communications Suite, IBM Homepage Reader, and SuperBraille(tm) laptop peronal computer (having a screen reader and Braille terminal) for visually-impaired users.
asymmetric resolution Addressable resolution which is different in the horizontal and vertical directions (orthogonal asymmetry). This is usually implemented in an output device because of some limitation of technology or compromise for cost or performance reasons.
ateji Ideographs with irregular meanings between languages.
ATF An abbreviation for American Type Founders. A company responsible for many famous typeface designs, including Ad Lib, Americana (1966), Baskerville (Roman), Bernhard Fashion (1929), Brush, Broadway, Century Schoolbook, Cheltenham, Commercial Script (1906), Dom Casual, Empire (1937), Engravers Old English, Franklin Gothic (1902), Hobo, Kaufmann Script, Murray Hill (1956), Park Avenue, Royal Script (1893), Wedding Text (1901), and many others.
ATM An abbreviation for Adobe Type Manager, a type manager utility program which displays the image of a character glyph on a computer monitor screen on-the-fly by obtaining its shape from a PostScript outline printer font above a certain type size, rather than a screen font. It is used in conjunction with page layout applications.
(another definition follows)
ATM An abbreviation for Asynchronous Transfer Mode. A high-speed telecommunications protocall.ATSUI An abbreviation for Apple Type Services for Unicode Interface. A technology in newer Macintosh operating systems which eliminates the reliance on QuickDraw GX and provides Unicode or UTF-16 compliance and usability.
ATVEF 1.1 An achronym for Advanced TeleVision Enhancement Forum specification 1.1, a hypertext markup language for interactive television.
authoring program or authoring software A computer application which is designed to create Web documents constructed using HTML or some other markup language.
autohinting The process of hinting a font performed automatically by a computer software program. The alternative is for a human designer to apply individual hint instructions to each glyph of a font using appropriate software.
automatic downloading A process where downloading is handled automatically, on demand, by system software or a combination of system software and hardware.
automatic ligature substitution The automatic substitution of a single ligature glyph for two or more character glyphs when a character string is being rendered.
automatic pair kerning See pair kerning.
autonomic computing A term coined by IBM in 2001 to refer to computer systems which are self-managing and can take care of themselves by having:
In 2001, IBM is providing research grants to higer institutions of learning to foster research in autonomic computing.
auxiliary file Another name for « font cache file. »
.AVI file See bitmap formats.
axis See design axis.
(another definition follows)
axis An imaginary straight line extending from the top of a glyph outline to the bottom and bisecting the outline strokes, traditionally at two points of minimum thickness.Axis is usually defined for the lowercase o of an upright typeface design having thick and thin stroke thicknesses (« stress ») which almost never occurs in sans-serif designs.
.A01 to .A99 files Production First Software Typographic International .AFM files containing character descriptions for only those glyphs encoded in the character subset of a particular Language Group. These are in addition to an .AFM file, which contains character descriptions of all glyphs in a font.
Åp-height The vertical height from the top of the 'Å' to the bottom of the 'p' descender.
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