Examples of Serif Styles?

ClintGoss
ClintGoss Posts: 66
in Technique and Theory
Is there a good visual reference for the serif styles of the Font Family Classification Class and Subclass?

In particular, I am trying to classify Charis SIL / Bitstream Charter and I can't determine the Subclass from the resources I can locate. However ... a general visual reference for all the classes and subclasses of the Font Family Classification would be great ...

Resources such as https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-1/type-anatomy/type-classifications are good for the Class, but not the SubClass.

Comments

  • ClintGoss
    ClintGoss Posts: 66
    I am particularly thinking of the distinction between the defined sub-types of Clarendon: Modern, Traditional, Newspaper, Stub Serif, Monotone, Typewriter, and Clarendon.

    Microsoft offers text descriptions (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/ibmfc), but nothing visual. 
  • ClintGoss
    ClintGoss Posts: 66
    edited March 2020
    It looks like Yannis Haralambous, Fonts & Encodings, O'Reilly ... page 416 (for my particular query about Clarendon) is a good match for this ...
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,899
    Yes, except that book is seriously riddled with errors. Some of them are subtle and pernicious, others are real howlers.

    Your case is in between: where the IBM classification spec calls for “Century” the book shows Century Oldstyle, which is … different.


  • ClintGoss
    ClintGoss Posts: 66
    edited March 2020
    Thank you Thomas, even though that is a bit depressing. I had gotten the impression that Haralambous was quite authoritative in this area.

    Might there be a better source? ... one that shows samples of the actual fonts cited by Microsoft? Collecting them myself would be a bit of a project ... 
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,899
    I don’t know a good source for this.  :(

    Also, Press Roman is an old IBM typewriter font, from the 1960s. It superficially looks a lot like Times, but with widths adapted to IBM’s Selectric Composer system (notably the M and W are much narrower, numerals a bit narrower across the board). I don’t have a high-res scan of it, unfortunately.
  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,008
    edited March 2020

    It’s not a great scan, but here’s a sample of Press Roman from a circa 1970 specimen.

    Classification is always a thorny (but interesting!) topic. Tell us more about what you’re working on and maybe we can provide useful resources. Any reason why you’re limited to the IBM system?
  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,008
    edited March 2020
    In IBM’s antiquated system, Charter would probably be classified as “5 Slab Serifs” because that’s the only serif class without bracketing (transition from serif to stem). The subclass would be “2 : Humanist”.
  • ClintGoss
    ClintGoss Posts: 66
    Thank you Stephen ... I am compositing a multi-script OFL font using Charis SIL for Latin script. I would like to set OS/2.sFamilyClass to an appropriate value, but Charis did not set this (pair of) fields. I was kind of at a loss for how to do this ...

    Might there be a reason not to set this field?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,899
    @Stephen Coles is probably right. Like Clint, I was trying to find a match in the Clarendon section, and not having much luck. But then again, the serifs are not purely horizontal... the whole thing shows the weaknesses of type classification in general, and that system in particular.

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