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Lakota A native American (Indian) language written using the Latin script.
Land color space The color space available by using the Land 2-color process, developed by Dr. Edwin H. Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera and instant film process, and founder of Polaroid Corp.
language analysis See language determination.
language codes See references to: Ethnologue databases.
language determination The determination of a spoken language from a sample of text. See WebGlott.
Language Group A character subset of the character set of a Production First Software font. The Language Groups are numbered from 0 on up. Each Language Group character subset allows access to the characters necessary to typeset all the languages available under that Language Group. Language groups were implemented because of the many additional languages which can be represented by Production First Software Typographic International fonts. Unlike codepages, Language Groups are not limited to 1-byte character sets.
LanguageGroup Kit The Production First Software LanguageGroup kit implements 1-byte access for Latin (Roman), Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets of Production First Software PostScript fonts by enabling the selection of a number of additional 1-byte and 2-byte codepages, covering different languages and minority cultures. These codepages also support « hybrid alphabets. » Not all applications support the LanguageGroup Kit, but many page layout programs can. Any number of codepages can be used on a single document page, unlike codepages loaded on the systems level. More than 40 different LanguageGroups are currently included. This kit can be used with Macintosh, Windows, NeXT, and Unix operating systems. A PostScript printer is required. The kit is upgradable.
language guessing See language determination.
languages See references to: Ethnologue databases.
Language Suite A collection of ISO 10646/Unicode blocks which are present in Production First Software multibyte Unicode fonts. The current Language Suite makeup of Production First Software fonts may be viewed by clicking on the Production First Software home page Catalog button, then explanatory notes, then Typographic International Language Suites. See also U0 through U.. .
languages available with Production First Software Typographic International(tm) and Typographic International(tm) Ultrafont(tm) Font Classes--(this list is probably incomplete)
language/script typeface package(s) & LanguageGroup #
Abazin/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Abkhasian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Adyge/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Africaans/Latin Latin,U0-U14 20 or Unicode
African/Latin Latin,U0-U14 18 or Unicode
Albanian/Latin Latin none
Aleut/Latin Latin,U0-U14 19
Altak/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Arabic U3,U4,U6,U9-U11 Unicode
Armenian U1,U8-U14 Unicode
Assamese/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Avar/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Awabakal/Latin Latin,U0-U14 6 or Unicode
Awadhi/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Azerbaijani/hybrid Latin+Cyr+Special,U0-U14+special 45 or Unicode
Badaga/Tamil Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Bagheli/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Bashkir/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Basque/Latin Latin,U0-U14 2, 36, or Unicode
Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Betul/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Bhasha/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Bhatneri/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Bhili/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Bihari/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Bisayan/Latin Latin,U0-U14 14 or Unicode
Bobangi/Latin Latin none
Braj/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Breton/Latin Latin none
Bulgarian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Burushaski/hybrid Latin+Grk(mono)+Special,U1-U14 Unicode
Buryat/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Bushman/Latin Latin,U0-U14 23 or Unicode
Byelorussian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Catalan/Latin Latin none
Chadic/Latin Latin,U0-U14 18
Chamorro/Latin Latin,U0-U14 1 or Unicode
Chechen/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Chhattisgarhi/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Chhindwara/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Chickasaw/Latin Latin,U0-U14 20
Chinese/Bopomofo U7,U12 Unicode
Chuang/hybrid Latin+Special,U1-U14 39 or Unicode
Chukchi/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Chuvash/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Cornish/Latin Latin none
Creek/Latin Latin,U0-U14 5 or Unicode
Croatian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Croatian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 3 or Unicode
Cyrillic (basic) Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Cyrillic (historic) Cyr 41
Cyrillic (minority) Cyr,U1-U14 Unicode
Cyrillic (religious) Cyr 41
Czech/Latin Latin,U0-U14 3 or Unicode
Danish/Latin Latin none
Daphla/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Delaware/hybrid Latin+Special,U1-U14 40 or Unicode
Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Dungan/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Dutch/Latin** Latin+Special,U0-U14 36 or Unicode
English (dictionary) Latin,U0-U14 5 or Unicode
English (oldstyle) Latin+Special,U0-U14+Special OS
English (standard) Latin none
English (typographic) Latin,U0-U14 IL1P @ or Unicode
Eskimo/Latin Latin,U0-U14 10
Esperanto/Latin Latin,U0-U14 9 or Unicode
Estonian/Latin Latin none
Evenki/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Ewe/Latin Latin,U0-U14 22
Faroese/Latin Latin none
Finnish/Latin*** Latin none
Fijan/Latin Latin,U0-U14 2 or Unicode
Fox/Latin Latin,U0-U14 20
French/Latin Latin,U0-U14 36, IL1P, or Unicode
Gaelic/Latin Latin,U0-U14 36 or Unicode
Garhwali/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Garo/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
German/Latin Latin none
Georgian U1,U6,U11,U12,U14 Unicode
Gondi/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Gondi/Telugu Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Greek (monotonal) Grk(mono),U1-U14 33* or Unicode
Greek (polytonal) Grk(poly) 42*
Greenlandic/Latin Latin,U0-U14 28, 36, or Unicode
Guarani/Latin Latin,U0-U14 10 or Unicode
Gujarati Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Gurmukhi Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Hallam/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Harappan Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Harauti/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Hausa/hybrid Latin+Special 18
U1-U14+Special 18
Hebrew Heb,WH 34*
Hindi/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Ho/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Hottentot/hybrid Latin+special,U0-U14 7 or Unicode
Houailou/Latin Latin,U0-U14 2 or Unicode
Hungarian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 3 or Unicode
Ibo/Latin Latin,U0-U14 1 or Unicode
Igbo/Latin Latin,U0-U14 18 or Unicode
Icelandic/Latin Latin none
IPA Phonetic:(partial) Latin,U0-U14 7 or Unicode
IPA Phonetic(complete) Latin+Special,U0-U14+Special 14
ISO Arabic (8859-6) Ara,U3,U4,U6,U9,U10,U11 31* or Unicode
ISO Cyrillic (8859-5) Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
ISO Greek (8859-7) Grk(mono),Grk(poly),U1-U14 33* or Unicode
ISO Hebrew (8859-8) Heb,WH 34*
U2,U3,U8-U11,U14-U14 Unicode
ISO Latin1 (8859-1) Latin none
ISO Latin2 (8859-2) Latin,U0-U14 12 or Unicode
ISO Latin3 (8859-3) Latin,U0-U14 24 or Unicode
ISO Latin4 (8859-4) Latin,U0-U14 25 or Unicode
ISO Latin5 (8859-9) Latin,U0-U14 26 or Unicode
ISO Latin6 (8859-10) Latin,U0-U14 28 or Unicode
ISO Latin7 (8859-12) Latin,U0-U14 29 or Unicode
ISO Latin8 Latin,U0-U14 30 or Unicode
ISO Latin9 (8859-15) Latin,U0-U14 35 or Unicode
ISO Latin10 (8859-16) Latin,U0-U14 36 or Unicode
ISO Latin11 Latin,U0-U14 37 or Unicode
ISO Latin12 Latin,U0-U14 38 or Unicode
Italian/Latin Latin none
Jaipuri/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Jaisalmer Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 46 or Unicode
Japanese/Hiragana U7,U12 Unicode
Japanese/Katakana U7,U12 Unicode
Jayanti Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kabardian-Circassian/Cyrillic
Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Kachchhi/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kalmyk/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Kanauji/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kanarese/Kannada Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kannada Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kano/hybrid Latin+Special,U1-U14+Special 17
Karachay/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Karakalpak/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Katsena/hybrid Latin+Special,U1-U14 17
Kazakh/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Khakass/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Khanty/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Khasi/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kirgiz/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Komi/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Konkani/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Hangul/Jamo U7,U12 Unicode
Kului/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kumaoni/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kurku/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kurd/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Kurukh/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Kuy/Thai Tha,U5,U6,U11-U14 none or Unicode
Ladakhi/Tibetan U6,U11,U12 Unicode
Ladino/Hebrew Heb,WH 34*
LogLan/Latin Latin none
Lahnda/Latin Latin none
Lahuli/Tibetan U6,U11,U12 Unicode
Lakota/Latin U0-U14 4 or Unicode
Lambadi/Telugu Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Lao Tha,U5,U6,U11-U14 none or Unicode
Latin (Classical)/Latin Latin,U0-U14 none or Unicode
Latin (Liturgical)/Latin Latin,U0-U14 5 or Unicode
Latvian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 2 or Unicode
Lavna/Thai Tha,U5,U6,U11-U14 none or Unicode
Lingala/Latin Latin+Special,U0-U14+Special 22
Lithuanian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 2 or Unicode
Livonian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 Unicode
Luba-Lulua/Latin Latin,U0-U14 5 or Unicode
Luganda/Latin Latin,U0-U14 27
Macedonian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Madrese/Latin Latin,U0-U14 6 or Unicode
Malay/Latin Latin,U0-U14 5 or Unicode
Malay/Jawi U3,U4,U6,U9-U11 Unicode
Malayalam Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Malinke/Latin Latin none
Maltese/Latin Latin,U0-U14 6 or Unicode
Mandla/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Manipuri/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Mari/hybrid Latin+Special,U1-U14 17 or Unicode
Marshallese/Latin Latin,U0-U14 19
Marwari/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Maya/Latin Latin none
Mende/hybrid Latin+special,U0-U14 7 or Unicode
Miso/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Moldavian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Mongolian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Marathi/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Mordvin/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Mossi/Latin Latin none
Munda/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Mundari/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Naga/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Nama/hybrid Latin+Special,U1-U14 43
Navajo/Latin Latin,U0-U14 4 or Unicode
Neneto/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Nepali/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Newari/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Nigerian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 17 or Unicode
Norwegian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 none
Ojibwa/Latin Latin,U0-U14 2 or Unicode
Old Bulgarian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Old Russian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Old English Latin,U0-U14 1 or Unicode
Old Ossetian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Old Ukranian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Oriya Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Osage/Latin Latin,U0-U14 21
Ossetian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Pali/Thai Tha,U5,U6,U11-U14 none or Unicode
Palpa/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Phrygian/Greek Grk(poly) 42*
Pinyin/Latin Latin,U0-U14 15 or Unicode
Polish/Latin Latin,U0-U14 4 or Unicode
Portugese, Euro./Latin Latin,U0-U14 10 or Unicode
Portugese, Braz./Latin Latin,U0-U14 10*
Punjabi/Gurmukhi Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Pushto Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Provinçal/Latin Latin none
Rian/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Romanian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 11 or Unicode
Romany/Latin Latin,U0-U14 3 or Unicode
Romansch/Latin Latin none
Russian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Ruthenian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Sámi/Latin Latin,U0-U14 7 or Unicode
Samoan/Latin Latin,U0-U14 2 or Unicode
Sanskrit/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Santali/Bengali Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Santali/Devanagari Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Santali/Oriya Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Seneca/Latin Latin,U0-U14 10 or Unicode
Serbian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Sinhalese Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Slovak/Latin Latin,U0-U14 3 or Unicode
Slovenian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 3 or Unicode
Sokoto/hybrid Latin+Special,U0-U14+Special 17
Sorbian/Latin Latin,U0-U14 4 or Unicode
Spanish/Latin Latin none
Sudanese/Latin Latin none
Swazi/Latin Latin,U0-U14 18 or Unicode
Swedish/Latin Latin none
Tadzhik/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Tagalog/Latin Latin,U0-U14 1 or Unicode
Tahitian/Latin Latin none
Tajiki/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Tamil Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Tamil/Latin Latin,U0-U14 27 or Unicode
Tatar/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Telugu Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Thai Tha,U5,U6,U11-U14 none or Unicode
Tibetan U6,U11,U12 Unicode
Tlinget/Latin Latin,U0-U14 20
Toaripi/Latin Latin,U0-U14 5 or Unicode
Tulu/Kannada Indic,U4,U6,U10,U11 none or Unicode
Turkish/Latin Latin,U0-U14 6, 36, or Unicode
Turkman/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Tuva/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Twi/hybrid Latin+special,U0-U14+special 22
Typographic-1/hybrid 1T none
Typographic-2/Latin 2T none
Uighuric/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Udmurt/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32*
Ukranian/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Urdu (Latin) Latin,U0-U14 27
Uzbek/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Vietnamese (older style)/Latin
U0-U14+Special 13
Vietnamese (modern style)/Latin
Latin,U0-U14 16, 47## or Unicode
Welsh/Latin Latin,U0-U14 44 or Unicode
Wolof/Latin Latin none
Xhosa/Latin Latin,U0-U14 18
Yakut/Cyrillic Cyr,U1-U14 32* or Unicode
Yiddish/Hebrew Heb 34*
Yoruba/Latin Latin,U0-U14 8 or Unicode
Zuang/Latin Latin,U0-U14 18
Zulu/Latin Latin,U0-U14 18
* - For generation-1 fonts to be ISO 8859-compatible.
** - To include digraphs.
*** - Does not include Sámi.
@ - Supplied with most font packages.
& - Certain typefaces (such as decorative, symbol, or titling
varieties) may not support the standard character sets.
# - Requires LanguageGroup Kit unless 'Unicode' is indicated.
If only a LanguageGroup is indicated (without 'Unicode'),
this indicates that Unicode (or ISO/IEC/10646) does not
include all characters required for that script or script
alphabet, and that the LanguageGroup special encoding is
required. Many Production First Software typeface packages
have letterform glyphs which have not been assigned a code
point in Unicode.
## - VISCII 1.1 encoding. Fewer characters than LG 16.
landscape A paper or image orientation in which the width is wider than the height.
laser An acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. An extremely efficient light output source, comprised of a solid-state element, gas-filled chamber, or transparent tubular solid, which emits an intense parallel synchronized beam of light. The light beam has an extremely small spot size. It is used in laser printers, imagesetters, film recorders, and some computer monitor screens to form images.
laser printer An output device using a laser to write the image of a composed page or document on one or more light-sensitive drums, which become electrically charged. Powdered toner particles become charged and are then attracted to the drums, and are transferred and fused to a medium (paper or plastic sheeting). This process is known as « xerogrophy. »
Monochrome laser printers use only one drum. Color laser printers usually use four drums, one for each process color (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), the medium being sequentially fed to and from each drum assembly.
Laser printers first became widely known during the desktop publishing revolution, especially with the advent of PostScript. The first monochrome laser printers had addressable resolutions of 300 × 300 dpi. As of 1999, there are monochrome laser printers with resolutions as high as 1800 × 1800 dpi. However, the resolutions of laser printers are limited by the physics of the toner-paper behavior, although these limits get pushed ever higher. The limitations on resolution are caused by the inertia and finite size of the toner particles, the surface smoothness and sticking characteristics of the medium, and the registration accuracy of the medium-handling mechanisms.
lateral reversal Another term for wrong reading.
Latin A typeface structural style having triangular-shaped or angled serifs. Two sub-categories have been defined:
(another definition follows)
Latin An alphabet or script. The Latin alphabet is also known as the « Roman » alphabet.The basic Latin alphabet consists of the following letterforms: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T Þ U V W X Y Z (UPPERCASE) and a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t þ u v w x y z (lowercase).
LCD An abbreviation for Liquid Crystal Device. A screen which is composed of liquid crystal devices, one per pixel, which darken or change color when activated.
Color twisted nematic LCD's are composed of three cells placed side-by-side, illuminating in red, green, and blue colors. They achieve only specular reflection (narrow viewing angle) and are rigid.
Cholesteric LCD's (so named because the liquid-crystal material was originally derived from animal cholesterol) are composed of red, green, and blue cells which are stacked, with polarizing filters in between. Developed by Kent Displays Inc., they look brighter than conventional LCD's in ambient lighting because they reflect the ambient lighting color by color, like ordinary paper with a color image printed on it. Cholesteric LCD's can also be economically manufactured physically smaller, enabling higher resolution displays, exceeding 200 dpi, and they can be made fairly flexible and almost paper-thin. They also achieve near Lambertian (isotropic) reflection for wide-angle viewing, and relatively fast response time.
LCDS An abbreviation for Linux Community Development System. A free service which allows software developers access Linux on an IBM System/390 mainframe over the internet for Linux software development and testing.
LDAP An acronym for Lightweight Directory Access Protocall. A protocall, developed by IBM and now an Internet security standard, for directory services.
leader A string of characters, usually either identical or repeating, which serves as a fill between two other strings. So named, because it leads the eye from one string to the other. Commonly found in tables or lists.
leading (led' ing) The total distance due to space added between the baselines of lines of type on a page. A leading of 0 would superimpose lines of type. A value of leading larger than the point size is considered « positive, » while a value of leading less than the point size is considered « negative. » A common formula for leading is 1.2 × point size, or 120 percent of the point size. So named from the era of hot type, when strips of lead alloy were inserted between type bodies to set interline spacing. See also minus leading and solid leading.
left justified See ragged right.
leg A character part which extends diagonally from left to right or right to left, extending to the baseline or below, and is anchored at one end to a stroke. Examples can be found in: K, X, k, x.
legacy software or legacy data A term referring to software or data which no longer is current. With respect to software, the term usually means an outdated version or a product which is no longer available.
Legibility A typeface structural style of typeface designs with characteristics which improve legibility. Characteristics include relatively large ascenders, and short descenders. Typeface designs placed in this style category can also be properly placed in other structural style categories according to design characteristics. Two sub-categories are defined:
letter A unit which is used to write words or expressions. Letters are represented by characters and have two general categories: alphabetic (see letterform) and ideographic (see ideograph). Both categories also include characters which are formally in those categories, but are usually mixed together in usage and not colloquially usually considered as such, such as numerals, punctuation, and other symbols. A numeral used in, say, the Latin script is considered alphabetic, while a numeral represented in Japanese can be either an alphabetic or an ideographic numeral.
letter class A property of characters which indicates whether a character is alphabetic (used for an alphabet or syllabary) or ideographic.
letterfit The visual spacing characteristics between character glyphs.
letterform A glyph representing a phonetic component of an alphabet.
Lettering A typeface structural style similar to lettering styles used by early 20th century American sign painters. Some of the typefaces in this category could be considered decorative styles. A typeface example is University Roman.
letterpress A printing process based on printing plates having raised images. The raised images are inked, and paper or other medium is pressed against the plate. The Gutenburg press, as well as many small page presses are based on this process. See lithography for a newer, alternative printing process.
letterset A printing process combining lithography with letterpress on the same page.
letterspacing See character fit.
Letraset The U.S. name for the Esselte Pendaflex foundry, and also a trademark owned by that company for their well-known dry-transfer lettering sheets.
Leyland Initiative A joint project by the United States Agency for International Development and the United States State Department to provide African nations access to the Internet.
The irony of this project is that many African languages will be not be scribable on the Internet because virtually no software applications or operating systems, and relatively few fonts, are available which support necessary encodings for all or most of the characters necessary to represent African languages (most of which use extended Latin alphabets). In fact, there are not even encoding standards (other than the encodings developed by Production First Software) which can be used. Most fonts designed by Production First Software have among the most extensive collection ever developed of characters required by scriptable African languages.
ligature A character whose glyph is the incorporation of two or more base glyphs which are visually connected or combined, and is a substitution for the two or more base characters represented by the base glyphs. Examples in the Latin (Roman) script include: æ for ae, ( fi ) for ( f )( i ).
Ligatures are customarily used (as opposed to being style-optional) in writing some langauges like Arabic and Indic scripts. In Latin alphabet-based languages (like English), the use of ligatures is optional and style-discretionary. This, unfortunately, is one of the factors which has led to the difficulty in using ligatures for non-Arabic alphabets. Prior to the desktop publishing revolution (about 1985) during the eras of hot (metal) type, phototypepositors, and dedicated proprietary computerized typesetting systems; ligatures were de rigeur when typesetting in serifed typefaces. This changed because most desktop computer systems and related word processing or page layout software did not allow ligatures to be used in an expedient manner. Most operating systems have localized versions for Arabic, which include automatic ligature substitution. (See contextual processing.) But as of 1999, there were no operating systems which provide optional automatic ligature substitution for Latin-based alphabets or alphabets of other scripts (Armenian, Cyrillic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Old Hungarian) using ligatures.
Another factor contributing to the difficulty in using ligatures for non-Arabic alphabets, particularly Latin, is that some platforms do not provide a mechanism or feature which enables a ligature glyph to replace one or more base character glyphs independent of the operating system. If one or more of the characters covered by the ligature have diacritical marks, the replacement mechanism requirement becomes even more complicated. One solution for this mechanism outside of the operating system consists of building it into an « intelligent font format » (such as TrueTypeGX, or OpenType). Another method is to specify ligatures through encoding. There are two ways this can be done. The first way is to encode ligatures directly. This is a method, unfortunately under-used, which can be easily employed. It does not require changes to operating systems or applications, and is backward-compatible with legacy software. Unfortunately, the standard 1-byte character set of Microsoft Windows, for example, does not contain the more commonly-used ligatures ( fi ) and ( fl ), let alone the remaining f-ligatures. However, the standard 1-byte character set for Macintosh System 6 and 7 (MacRoman) includes those ligatures. In order to include ligatures on platforms which do not normally include them in their standard character set, a mechanism must be used which overrides the default encoding and replaces it with an encoding which includes the desired ligatures, providing the character set of the font includes them. This can be achieved in a number of ways. The second way is to define format-control characters which designate that a string of 2 or more characters in plain text comprise a ligature. The proper ligature glyph would then be automatically substituted before being displayed or rendered by software in place of a string of glyphs of fundamemntal base characters.
Under conditions where contextual processing by an operating system is not implemented, an intelligent font with an aware application is not available, encoding cannot be modified, and where a font does not include the desired ligatures, the usual way of accessing missing ligatures is by a font change to a font having those ligatures or a font which comprises an expert set. The problem with using additional fonts is that automatic pair kerning and other typographic treatments cannot usually be applied across fonts, except in very specific situations. Switching back and fourth between several fonts to access ligatures also takes extra person-time and is prone to error.
A third factor contributing to the difficulty using ligatures with non-Arabic alphabets is the effect of some typesetting and page layout conventions, such as hyphenation, justification algorithms and track kerning. Justification algorithms and track kerning vary the spacing between characters. Either can produce bizarre results when using ligatures. It happens because the spacing between the characters in a ligature glyph is fixed, since the ligature is handled like a single character in accessing a font, the purpose of a font being merely to supply the proper glyph for imaging. However, the layout spacing between characters has been changed due to justification or track kerning. Some examples of this problem are shown in the following line:
Very few word processing and page layout software packages (and no operating systems) enable automatic ligature substitution for non-Arabic alphabets as of 1999. A variety of TrueType font, called TrueType GX, has a built-in capability for automatic ligature substitution for all alphabets. However, special applications must be used, and the capability is available only under Macintosh System 7.x and later. Another variety of TrueType (OpenType), also has the capability of storing and selecting ligature glyphs. However, there is no way that these fonts could get line-by-line justification feedback from the page layout program to eliminate the bizarre results illustrated above or hyphenation information to determine whether to substitute a ligature or not. Therefore, the proper venue for automatic ligature substitution is the application, rather than the operating system or fonts, for a number of reasons: controllability, storage efficiency, consistency, backward compatibility, and other reasons.
The situation concerning optional ligatures is even more difficult to solve if another requirement is imposed: that plain text not contain any characters directly representing ligatures. Adding ligature characters to plain text complicates the ability to search for text strings containing only fundamental base characters. If ligature characters could be present, a first processing pass to resolve ligatures would be required. Ligature identification itself might be a problem because there are currently at least nine encoding schemes (five 1-byte and four 2-byte) containing Latin ligatures. The 1-byte encoding schemes are: Adobe StandardEncoding, HP-Roman8, MacRoman, PFGeneral-1, and PFGeneral-2. The 2-byte encoding schemes are: HP-Extended Unicode, PF-Extended Unicode-1, PF-Extended Unicode-2, and Unicode-ISO/IEC10646. The OEM Unicode encoding schemes (the first three) also place the same Latin ligatures at more than one code point, the extra code points being in the Private Use Zone. Adding ligature characters to plain text is currently the only viable method to encode ligatures. The second method of using control characters to mark off strings representing glyphs to be replaced by a ligature (described above) would require changes on the operating system and encoding standard levels--something which generally takes years to achieve. It also would require a mechanism within a font which could enable an unencoded ligature glyph to be rendered or used without being encoded. Some commonly-used font formats do not permit this; and this method would fail for these fonts, even though required ligature glyphs may exist with the font.
Most Production First Software fonts enable at least the manual use of six f-ligatures with most applications under Windows without a font change, by using a number of different mechanisms. Some Production First Software fonts include Armenian, Cyrillic (including Old Church Slavonic), and as many as 42 Latin ligatures.
ligature substitution The substitution of a single ligature glyph for two or more character glyphs when a character string is being rendered.
The Lighthouse, Inc. See print legibility for the visually-impaired.
LIMDOW An acronym for Light Intensity Modulation Direct-OverWrite. A type of MO technology which is 50% faster in writing data.
Lindows An operating system based on Linux which also runs Windows applications seamlessly. It has the robustness of Unix and the look and feel of Microsoft Windows without the instabilities, security holes (TCP/IP raw sockets), privacy problems (Passport and peeping Tom issues), licensing cost increases, user hassels (digital certificate and software installation issues), and legal ramifications (U.S. DOJ case and European Union fines) of Windows.
Lineale See sans serif.
linear display order A term applied to text in a writing system or script in which character glyphs display and sound in the same order in which they exist in the text.
linear scaling The common practice of scaling the size of type uniformly in width, height, and spacing. Different scale factors can be applied vertically and horizontally. Alternatives would be envelope shaping, optical scaling and variable scaling.
lines per inch or lpi A standard measurement of the resolution of halftone screens, roughly equivalent to the number of halftone dot rows per inch.
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lines per inch A measure of spatial image resolution that a device (camera, film emulsion, CRT screen, etc.) can support. It is defined as the maximum number of parallel lines per inch that can be distinctly reproduced.line-break An action applied to text, one or more marks placed in a string of text, or one or more characters placed in a string of text to cause the text of a current line to terminate and continue as a new line, when the text is displayed by an application or utility. This is one of the functions included under the category of text formatting.
The character(s) required to do this vary with the platform. On Macintosh, this is achieved with a carriage return character, (CR) or <000d>. On a PC platform, this is usually achieved with a CR followed by a line feed, (LF) or <000a>. On a Unix platform, this is achieved by a LF. A line separator character also exists as <2028>. Line breaks can also occur within words by first hyphenating the word and then inserting line break characters in the text string. In some forms of text representation (such as HTML), line breaks are not usually specified, because formatting is performed automatically on-the-fly; and a line break can be automatically performed in some scripts wherever there is a word break. However, in these text representations, a line break can also be forced, by using special text tags (such as <br>) rather than by inserting special characters.
lining figures Numerals equal in height to the cap height. In some typefaces, numerals are designed to a different height, called the « figure height.»
link The counterpart of a mouse-activated « subroutine », or a jump to another part of a document, in markup languages such as HTML and SGML.
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link A character part connecting a loop with a bowl.Linotype or Linotype machine A typesetting machine invented by Otto Merganthaler in the late 1800's which casts one row of type as a single piece (« line - of - type »). Each line may have a mixture of typefaces and sizes. This process is performed automatically as the typesetter is entering text using a keyboard.
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Linotype The name of a type foundry started by Otto Merganthaler, who invented the Linotype machine. Originally, the firm was named the Merganthaler Type Foundry. Linotype was bought by Hell in the 1980's (a manufacturer of printing presses and imagesetters), and Linotype-Hell was bought by Heidelberg (another manuafacturer of well-received color printing presses) in the 1990's. Linotype was also well known as the introducing the first PostScript imagesetter in the mid 1980's, the Linotronic L100, during the early days of desktop publishing.Linux Linux is a version of Unix which is currently available in the public domain as « open software » at no cost. Linux, like Unix, uses a character-based command line interface. There are graphical user interfaces (GUI) available, specifically GNOME and KDE. A GUI designed for Unix, such as Motif, can also be used, but it must be licensed.
Linux is also able to share a file system and print support with WindowsNT, using a software product called Samba.
In July 1998, Intel Corporation announced support for Linux. Some industry observers concluded that the Windows and Intel alliance, known as « Wintel » was dead. This feeling existed because Linux was enjoying a very devoted following and could develop into a competitive operating system. Shortly thereafter, Compaq Computer, Dell Computer Corp., Gateway Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Silicon Graphics all announced that systems would be available using Linux instead of Windows. A commercial package version of Linux can be purchased from from Red Hat Software Inc., which IBM also invested in. However, for Linux to be a Microsoft killer, a world-class outstanding and configurable GUI would be necessary, which Linux does not yet possess.
Linux is not the only other major operating system which can run on Intel platforms. The BeOS can also run on Intel platforms, but (as of this writing) is unsupported by Intel.
liquid crystal device See LCD.
lithography A process of printing by transferring an image drawn with an oil-based material on stone or metal plate to paper or other medium. The process is based on the fact that oil and water do not mix. After the image is drawn, the surface is washed with water, then inked. The ink sticks to the greasy areas of the surface only, thereby producing the image in ink. The ink then transfers to the final medium. Lithography was invented in 1796 by Aloys Senefelder.
See also stereolithography for an unrelated process.
little endian or little-endian See byte ordering.
LMDS An abbreviation for Local Multipoint Distribution Service. A form of broadband wireless using microwave signals with a typical transmission range of less than 5 miles.
locale model A method of handling internationalization of software where variations due to country, language, or culture are hard-coded or predefined before the installation of software or operating systems. The alternative is multilingualization, which is a far better approach.
localization The term used to denote the modification hardware or software for easy use in a foreign country or culture. This might include translating character strings in the user interface; changing date, sort, hyphenation, monetary unit, writing direction, character set, codepage availability, or spell-check, keyboard driver, and IME characteristics in software; and keyboard configurations in hardware. As referring to software, this can be undertaken either by using a locale model in setting up a system, or through multilingualization changeable by an end user.
Loglan (Loglan ~ Logical language) A synthetic, algorithmic language, originally developed in the 1950s, which uses the Latin (Roman) alphabet and whose vocabulary and grammar are designed to be syntactically unambiguous. Loglan vocabulary is designed to be culturally-neutral but recognizable or related as much as possible to words in Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish; algorithmically-generated; or borrowed directly from scientific vocabularies. Loglan lexical grammar is based on Predicate Calculus terminology and format. The language is called algorithmic because one of the sources of words is algorithmic construction of new words from other words.
Loglan is administrated under the auspices of the Loglan Institute, Inc. of San Diego, California. It is being promoted primarily for: information storage and retrieval, communication between humans and computers; and computerized translation between spoken languages.
logotype A symbol design which represents a product, company, or company trademark; sometimes consisting of altered letterforms.
logo typeface A typeface designed specifically for use in representing text or providing letterforms for the creation of logos.
loop A rounded enclosed character part more irregular in shape than a bowl. A 'g' has an upper bowl and a lower loop.
loose line A line of text which contains interword spacing and/or interletter spacing much greater than other lines of text on the page.
lossless Describes a process which may destroy a portion of data but does not produce an unreconstructable loss of data.
lossy Describes a process which destroys a portion of data and produces an unreconstructable loss of data.
lowercase The designation given to small letters of a bicameral alphabet, so named because they were placed in the lower portion of a printer's metal type case. See also minuscule.
lowercase figures Another name for non-lining figures.
Ludlow or Ludlow machine A machine which casts one row of type as a single piece. Each line may have a mixture of typefaces and sizes. The casting matrices, however, are assembled by hand, not automatically as with the Linotype machine.
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