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From: ath@helios.prosys.se (Anders Thulin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Re^2: Are there any 'real' fonts available?
Message-ID: <459@helios.prosys.se>
Date: 9 Aug 89 06:33:27 GMT
References: <440@helios.prosys.se> <1006@adobe.UUCP> <1339@draken.nada.kth.se> <1012@adobe.UUCP> <3898@phri.UUCP> <120166@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Organization: Programsystem AB, Linkoping, SWEDEN
Lines: 37

In article <120166@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> garths%glass@Sun.COM (Garth Snyder) writes:
>roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes, about Adobe's Font&Function catalog:
>> I've always wondered about the type samples.  Who picks the silly
>> little bits of text used in the type samples?
>I've wondered this too.  Some of the samples are downright assinine.
>Reading Font & Function makes me blush with empathetic embarassment
>for Adobe. :-)

The problem is perhaps to adapt the message of the catalogue to the
expected audience.

If the catalogue was intended for professional typographers *only*,
you'd probably see one single text used for all type faces. This text
would be partly 'normal' and partly 'difficult'.  'VAX' is one such
difficult word; the word 'Hamburg' is often considered as a
'fingerprint' of a type face -- it would probably included as well.
You might even see a row of 'mambmcmdmemfmg...'.  

We, however, the actual and expected audience of the catalogue, would
probably find this rather boring -- we would much rather have a
'real', preferably amusing text that says something we can understand,
and perhaps learn something from: a text we think gives us an idea of
how our papers and news sheets could look.  That is, if we could
persuade the boss to hand out some more money for fonts to replace
those we bought last month and turned out to be useless except for
advertisements of Tibetan temple bells or Singalese junks ...

The explanation for 'silly little bits of text' and 'asinine' samples
is probably, then, that Adobe has adapted their message to the
expected consumer. 

[ Feel free to add as many smiley faces as you like to the previous
paragraph in order to make it more adapted to the actual reader ] :-)

-- 
Anders Thulin, Programsystem AB, Teknikringen 2A, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden
ath@prosys.se   {uunet,mcvax}!sunic!prosys!ath