Primework

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  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,760
    edited August 19
    Gutenberg, woodblock setters and other, didn't have a choice. I mean they had as well, but it would be unrealistic to expect from them realizing it all in their lifespan. Later generations did have more capabilities to split from the limiting practice, but they continued with just replicating the same system, which should have been abolished even with typesetting machines, what to say with photo typesetting and especially with digital tech. So until today the em square stayed as a reference placeholder, and causing all the mess in relations, units, layout constructions, etc. It's time to accept that we are not laying typesetting blocks of characters, nor engraving ones. When typographers' minds go out from the boundaries of a "lego brick" like system, then the issues will hopefully vanish.
    This is something which which I substantially agree.
    I have a presentation on this topic — Problems of Adjacency — at TypeCon 2014 (for copyright reasons, the video does not include the footage of a nastaliq calligrapher at work with which I began the presentation). It is easy to say that we should break free from the little rectangles that have been the fundamental unit of typographic technology for almost 600 years, but it is worth also considering the several reasons why we have not yet. These are not primarily technical reasons, at least not in the sense that we could not invent a different technology to achieve the same or better results. They are expedient and cultural reasons: expedient because it is easier to translate the products of previous technological eras into new technologies if some fundamental concepts are maintained, and cultural because those products are typefaces and typography, which have a cultural existence beyond particular technologies. People want to be able to use existing typefaces within new technologies, because culture is longer than technological eras, so there is pressure to implement those designs for new kinds of text machines, and that encourages expedient solutions that are able to leverage inherited data, one type of which is a little rectangular piece of metal.
    Speaking from personal experience, I have found something interesting happening when working with complex scripts with significant issues of adjacency where OpenType Layout really struggles. Even as I am working out solutions within the limited GPOS framework, I have left the rectangles behind mentally and am thinking only in distances between points on a canvas. I know that the rectangles are still there, somewhere in the background, but they are simply not useful to the current task. I mention this, because I think the way to bring people forward in thinking about new text technologies is not to point out the problems and limitations of existing solutions — which may only inspire the brightest of them to find cleverer work arounds, as Simon has repeatedly done at the tooling level —, but to relocate the expediency. I do a lot of difficult things in difficult ways, so it surprises some people to hear that I would actually like to find easier ways.
  • kunstx
    kunstx Posts: 27
    edited August 19
    Craig Eliason said:
    kunstx said
    It's not a Claude Code response but a Claude processed response, and the problem is?
    7. Use of A.I.

    If A.I. is used in your post, it must be clearly labeled. Failure to do so will result in deletion of your post and/or banning.
    From the TypeDrawers rules. 
    It's the comment and not the post, but what is the definition of AI used? One thing is that something meaningful, some slop, or absolutely created with LLM without understanding, and another if you prompt AI as your secretary and say, on the subject of such and such, and that and that answer such and such on what he asked me, explaining such and such. And what to label? I comment and label "Used AI as my slave to process and compile my thoughts or notes, while I am making a mean after I finished a workout."

    And guess what, if you google something you are using AI for last decade or so.

    @Craig Eliason I am not addressing this to you personally, thanks for sharing the policy, but pointing out the stupidity of superficial policy without any parameters.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,760
    You could just add a simple comment e.g. [I used AI to help me craft this response.] 
  • kunstx
    kunstx Posts: 27
    John Hudson said:
    You could just add a simple comment e.g. [I used AI to help me craft this response.] 
    Ok, thanks.
  • kunstx
    kunstx Posts: 27
    edited August 19
    @John Hudson I got notification for your comments, it showed, and now can't see anything. Did you delete or it is a bug?

    *User experience, not paginating automatically.
  • kunstx
    kunstx Posts: 27
    @John Hudson Great, I will watch it. In regards to legacy usage every typeface can be translated so there is a version for legacy system and the new solution. I created solutions for advanced scripts in the custom engine, which is basically the same thing which Decotype made long time ago with ACE, only with different approach. (Certain context and rules are still missing but open for plugin integration for any world script).

    Don't waist time with GPOS, it is not built for non Latin and similar scripts, not even for Advanced Latin scripts presentation. Quasi-Arabic, the Venetian-Arabic used in OTF and similar is a disaster anyways, so it is just that the system is a bad architecture, either because it is inherited from a military IT system, or even still some politics included in it. I don't care, but it's a history, and hopefully the new era comes.

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