Dear experts,
I'm wondering if anyone knows how to get in touch with M. John-Paul Knox, creator of Perrin OT:
http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-43897.htmlI'm really infatuated with that face, which I've been staring at for years. I just recently learned, from Mr Devroye's database, that it's been digitized. But, I can't find any traces of it anywhere. The old Typophile website seems to be gone for good, and that was my last hope. Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Comments
One weird thing about Typophile though is that at some point any accented character in old posts would completely dump the rest of the post, as you can see in my reply there: "Ren" was "René", and there was a lot more after that!
And yes, long live the Wayback Machine. Much of the internet is a landfill these days where everyone recopies the present to no purpose. That WM archive alone keeps something worth preserving.
As for the Math coverage, I asked because I have to decide myself, just in case, which are the more essential ones to include, according to application field. Is there a basic set for symbolic logic? I understand De Vinne is not a text face, but while I am at it, I could draw them to include in De Vinne Text and other text faces that I will do.
Here’s the ones I designed so far, but without much rationale as I do not know logic or, for that matter, mathematical and scientific fields of application.
P.S. The black squares, I added them for potential decorative purposes, trying to systematize the dimensions and I see these are considered Math operators, but I haven’t investigated them so far.
Symbols for quantifiers, existential and universal.
The symbols for set inclusion and intersection:
A few more symbols, for gradient, perpendicular, congruent, and set membership:
Two kinds of Greek deltas, one for partial derivatives, another for virtual work (the 'variational' delta):
Three more logic operators, for empty set, logical equivalence, and explicit definition:
However, I must say that this is a minimal set of symbols, as it were. It would be enough for people in the humanities and most social sciences; but definitely not enough for anyone who works in math or physics. Those guys need a ton of symbols.
Of course, if one decides to offer coverage for logic or math and/or physics in an extended way, I would ask more in detail. It was to give some kind of basic coverage for logic. These are for logic? Also the deltas?
But I don’t want to go off-topic, maybe the last posts would be better in a thread of its own.
For logic, you'd only need a few symbols: two quantifiers, union, intersection, set membership, arrows (one way, the other way, and both ways) the "Polish negation" operator, and the three-dot symbol (see below) that indicates the conclusion of an argument. And brackets/parentheses: round, square, and accolades. That's all for most logic text setting. There's a more exotic branch, called modal logic, that requires two more symbols: the empty square and empty rhombus/lozenge symbol. I think that covers it all.
https://www.abyme.net/catalogue/mercure/
Plus, 'Marquet' is more affordable. :-)
BTW, Claudio, I know you're working on a revival. If I may humbly suggest, I hope your text version will avoid the chopped terminals of some of the old De Vinnes (DJR kept that annoying bit in his Roslindale Text, and I don't like it at all). It's distracting and not beautiful. Rafaello was much better, I think.
I haven’t printed neither, but I think I see what you mean, Mercure seems a bit "overworked". And of course, these licensing prices are too high (especially considered the intent of "vulgarization" and historical awareness).
My revival is De Vinne, which is not a text typeface, and the only reason which prompted me to do it was to be extremely faithful to the original. I have also started the rare text version, for which it’s a bit difficult to find source material, but so far it’s coming together very nicely. I’ll show it when it’s in a more advanced stage.
So no risk about "reinterpretation", although I am not sure I get what you mean about Roslindale (aside being very "homogenized").