Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 UW 5/3/83; site uw-beaver Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!laser-lovers From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers Subject: CHILD ABDUCTED BY WILD FONT Message-ID: <2363@uw-beaver> Date: Thu, 29-Nov-84 21:09:56 EST Article-I.D.: uw-beave.2363 Posted: Thu Nov 29 21:09:56 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 2-Dec-84 03:20:52 EST Sender: daemon@uw-beave Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 79 From: Dan Mills[reprinted from "The National Inquisitor"] CHILD ABDUCTED BY WILD FONT (Silicon Valley) Nine year old Donna Marie DiAngelo was delighted when her dad brought home a new "personal laser printer" for the DiAngelo family home computer. "With this `productivity device' our family will have more effective printed communication," said Hamilton ("Bud") DiAngelo to his happy household. But the dream turned into a nightmare when little Donna Marie tried to print out her Christmas letter to Santa. As the compact marking engine was humming away on her text page file, Donna Marie tried to open the device to see "Where all the little pixels go," and before the eyes of her horrified parents she was dragged into the innards of the system by a wild font. "It was absolutely horrible," sobbed Betty DiAngelo, "that thing just reached right out with one of its extruders and snagged poor Donna Marie on its wicked serifs." "Just like hauling in a fish with a gaffing hook," said Bud DiAngelo, an avid angler in happier days. "There wasn't a thing we could do." The DiAngelos struggled in vain to pull Donna back into the safety of the family den, but the sturdy font was too strong for them. Despite the screams of the terrified child, the DiAngelos were unable to extricate Donna Marie from the clutches of the renegade "Lucida" font. Their daughter was sucked into the software. When police and fire department rescue squads tried to go into the printer after Donna Marie, they were halted by an impenetrable maze of bizarre characters, and ultimately driven back by a mind-boggling font file format. "Those extended ASCII sets and proprietary font encodings are real `bears'," said Captain Bert Powers of the Silicon Valley Thought Police. Authorities are reluctant to turn off the table-top printer to analyze Donna Marie's whereabouts in the system because, "She might still be in RAM," as Captain Powers explained it. The font's co-creator, internationally famed typeface designer and Stanford Professor Charles Bigelow, was called in as a consulting expert to help in the rescue of Donna Marie. "The Inquisitor" asked Professor Bigelow how such a thing could happen. "You have to understand that this is a new font, just out of beta test," explained Prof. Bigelow. "It's a young, vigorous, husky design, with a lot of stamina and strength. People have to be ready for its clarity and power. It apparently overwhelmed little Donna Marie." Local authorities asked Bigelow why tragedies like this haven't happened with other laser printer fonts. "You have to remember," answered Bigelow, "that most other laser fonts are just worn out veterans of obsolete analog metal typography." "For example," he explained, "Times Roman is 53 years old and Helvetica is 27 years old, but it's seen a lot of column inches." Most readers don't realize it, but those weary old fonts are really past retirement, but have been pressed back into service because of a lack of imaginative, innovative designs for digital technology. Basically, those over-worked hot-metal typeface designs are like a toothless old lion, arthritic with age and limp with exhaustion. The Lucida fonts, in contrast, are full of excitement, with a rich variety of expressions and a forceful impact for the new generation of communicators." As Bigelow talked, he and his partner, former free-spirit modern dancer calligrapher Kris Holmes, were arming themselves with the tools of their trade -- 9H mechanical pencils, drafting film, reducing glasses, digitizer tablets, cubic splines, and bitmap editors ("In case it gets really rough -- like we meet up with the jaggies!") -- and preparing to go into the printer controller after little Donna Marie. "We think it's the Serifed Italic that's got her," said Bigelow, "and that alphabet can be really tough; but Kris knows how to handle it -- after all, she learned her cursive from Lloyd (`Calligrapher Laureate') Reynolds." With Kris Holmes leading the way, and Bigelow reciting a Latin incantation about St. Francis of Griffo, they went off into the printer at a 45-degree angle. In the future, the DiAngelos plan to use only sans-serif typefaces for print out by their younger children. "The Lucida Sans Roman seems safe enough," said Betty DiAngelo, "but then it's hard to know what to expect in this new era of digital typography." And she glanced anxiously at the deceptively innocuous looking little printer, from which occassional chanting and muttered imprecations could still be heard.