Re: Fonts with Unique Families with Family - why?

You may get a better answer, but this is probably part of it. Most
operating systems recognize just 4 styles per family, the regular, bold,
italic, and bold italic. When you buy a family that has numerous members,
including semi-bolds, different degrees of incline, or alternates, the
vendors figure the odds of your always getting the right variant
automatically with the bold, italic, and bold italic attribute features are
pretty slim. So, instead, they figure the knowledgeable buyer who wanted
all those variants will know how to request them manually, or to define a
"style" in their word processor which selects them semi-automatically. Some
vendors have gone to the trouble to create sets of four in which the light
and semi-bold variants are one group of four, the regular and bold variants
are another, etc. However, there is no standard, and this approach
sometimes confuses customers, too. With the present state of operating
systems, many figure making every font independent is the clearest, if not
an altogether convenient, method. You could edit your own copies with a
font editor and make the ones you want into families; but if you're sending
that work out to be printed, your non-standard fonts would not match
standard fonts owned by the service bureau. It may not actually make it any
more convenient to think that independent fonts are a compliment to your
sophistication, but maybe it'll make the problem less aggravating.


"FunkyRes" <mpeters@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.10.07.03.06.10.408918@xxxxxxxxxx
> I've purchased two font families from myfonts.com recently (well, more
> than that - but two of interest for this post)
>
> Wastrel from Typotheticals (Graham Meade)
> Family has 22 members - each member is seen as its own font family.
> If you select "Wastrel" in your word prosessor and click the Italic
> button, you get a fake italic - to get the real italic, you have to select
> "Wastrel Oblique" as the real font.
>
> OK, I thought maybe that was because its a smaller foundry etc.
>
> I also purchased LucidaMonoEFOP - an Elsner+Flake foundry font.
> Not a small player. Family has four members - each of them with an
> individual family name rather than a single family with styles:
>
> LucidaMonoEFOP-Roman
> LucidaMonoEFOP-Bold
> etc.
>
> Looked at the documentation that came with it:
>
> -=- (from their doc)
> "To guarantee compatibility on both Mac and PC platforms, this font was
> manufactured as »Single Font«. The choice of the font must be made via
> the »Font Menu«. If you choose a style like Italic or Bold through the
> »Style« Menu, you will get an electronic modification instead of a true
> design."
> -=-
>
> What exactly is the "compatibility" that they need to guarantee by having
> each font list itself as an individual family?
>
> It seems rather dumb to me that they would intentionally do this, and it
> seems to me it will cause a usability problem with users.
>
> If I can't get the real bold by typing Alt-B but instead have to select a
> different font from the menu, that's a serious usability problem.
>
> Does anyone know why a foundry like E+F is choosing to do this?
> I was not aware of any "compatibility" problems with correct way of a
> single family with style attributes, and it seems to me that these fonts
> will be completely unusable for any web display that uses bold, oblique,
> etc. styles in their style sheets - not to mention being a royal PITA to
> use in word processing.
>
> I'm curious as to why this decision was made (I want to know which OS
> vendor broke things the way they were before, which was fine for in
> Windows, Mac OS, and Linux - I only run Linux now, but family and style
> certainly worked on Windows and Mac OS last I use them).
>
> Thanks for any info on this.


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