Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] New rules for Icehouse

  • From"Elliott C. Evans" <eeyore@xxxxxxxx>
  • DateTue, 11 Oct 2011 08:04:52 -0400
Nick Lamicela wrote:
Is this related to the fF guy? Or is that just a typing quirk?

It's a typography quirk. If you pull out an actual printed book,
and look for instances of "fi", you'll probably see that those
two letters have been 'kerned' together so that the "dot" of the
"i" is actually the overhanging tip of the "f". The cross bar of
the "f" may also physically join with the vertical of the "i".

Back in the days of metal type, there was a single piece of type
with that combo, called the "F I ligature". There is also an "F
L ligature", an "F F", and more. Most proportional computer fonts
have  carried over this practice. Modern professional page layout
programs even watch for places to replace the letters with the
ligature when they are typesetting the document for output. The
problem comes when you try to go from typesetting files to text.
If the converter doesn't know how how to turn the ligature back
into individual letters, it usually just drops.

We actually had a problem with this once at work back in, like,
1994 or 95. We'd gone with "Lowest Bidder Printing, Inc." and
their cheap pirated version of the font we were trying to use
did not actually contain ligatures. Imagine a 300 page software
manual with references to "data les" instead of "data files".

I don't know what's up with the fF thing.

--
Elliott C. "Eeyore" Evans
eeyore@xxxxxxxx