Title: Fonts & Encodings
Author: Yannis Haralambous
Translator: P. Scott Horne
Original Language: French 
Edition: First 
Publication Month: September 2007
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
ISBN 10: 0-596-10242-9
ISBN 13: 9780596102425
Pages: 1037
Cost: $59.99, £37.50

      "fonts & encodings" review

      gucharmap
      character palette
      character map      

    unicode greek
    unicode omega
    03A9

    03A9
    U+03A9

      Ω

      Ω

       Ω

    linux fonts
    linux font equvalents

    character
    encoding
    glyph
    font
    "font management"
    metafont
    omega 
    postscript
    tex 
    unicode

Somewhat Longer Review

Contents

• The Title
• About the Reviewer
• By the Numbers
• Likes
• Gripes
• Who's the Book for?
• Final Thoughts

The Title

Encodings

The characters c a t spell cat. The following all correctly spell cat: cat, cat, cat, cat, or cat.

Given this somewhat abstract interpretation of character, an encoding could be thought of as a mapping of codes (e.g. Unicode) to characters in a writing system.

Choosing the font then determines the shape of the character.

&

The & in the title of the book tells me to interpret encodings in some way related to fonts (as I do above).

Fonts

A glyph could be thought of as a shape for a character independent of such attributes as size.

A font could be thought of as a collection of (hopefully related) glyphs for representing an encoding or encodings.

Does the title fit the book?

The title does fit the book.

The first sentence of chapter 12 is: "Now we come to the heart of the book: creating fonts." This surprised me. Not to worry, though, you don't need to want to create fonts to benefit from this book.

Note:

• I should mention, that the above characterization of fonts and encodings is somewhat simplistic. For example, even in the fonts domain, there are many types of encodings. Hey, get the book (if you care) and you'll see what I mean.

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About the Reviewer

Experience with Web Sites

I've created many web sites, mostly not for work. I'm definitely not a professional web designer.

I've read and reviewed a number of books related to web design.

Experience with Encodings

I have some experience of HTML character entities while creating and maintaining web sites.

I have fielded many questions about what specific character entity to use for a specific character in a language other than English. Researching such questions has led me to many Unicode tables for characters for various writing systems.

That's the extent of my experience with encodings (in this domain).

Experience with Fonts

I've been selecting fonts for various documents for years.

In building websites, I've gone a little beyond that. Some of the font related CSS properties I use a lot (besides font-family) are:

• color
• font-style
• font-weight
• font-size
• text-decoration

I don't know much about fonts. Up until now, I've not created or modified any fonts.

Experience with the Publisher

I've made use of quite a few O'Reilly books. My experiences with O'Reilly books have been very positive.

I've written reviews of a number of O'Reilly books.

I'm coordinator of a Perl user group which belongs to O'Reilly's User Group Program (and also to the User Group Programs of Apress and Manning).

Programming Experience

I've been programming for years. I've made significant use of over 20 programming languages. My favorite programming language is Perl.

However, none of my programming experience has involved creating fonts.

OS Used

I primarily use SuSE Linux and use X a lot. I also use Free BSD a little.

So I read but didn't try anything in the following chapters:

• Chapter 6: Font Management on the Macintosh
• Chapter 7: Font Management under Windows

Instead I focused on:

• Chapter 8: Font Management under X Window

An Advocate of Freedom

I'm an advocate of freedom generally, and in particular I advocate free software.

What I Expected from this Book

What I mainly hoped for from this book was to learn a few things about fonts and encodings that would help me in

• creating web sites
• answering questions about character codes
• coaching others in creating web sites

In the Introduction, different types of people are listed who might read the book. The type that fits me best is:

• "the reader who wishes to create beautiful Web pages"

I read all of the book (the introduction, all the chapters and all the appendixes), but I concentrated on the parts most relevant to my concerns.

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By the Numbers

• 1 introduction (23 pages)
• 14 chapters (576 pages)
• 7 appendixes (370 pages)
• 1 bibliography (21 pages)
• 2 indexes (26 pages)

Notes:

• There are pages that are blank on one side after the introduction, some chapters, some appendixes, the bibliography and the first index.
• The number of pages in parentheses above are approximate. The blank sides of pages are counted.

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Likes

Perhaps due to my background and interests, the parts I got the most out of were:

• the introduction
• chapters 2, 5, 10 and 11

(See the Chapter Titles List for the chapter titles.)

Explanations of Terms

The author gives many useful explanations of terms (such as glyph and character).

I especially appreciated learning what optical size referred to. I also appreciated learning what Panose-1 is.

Optical size is the size the font was designed for. E.g. The font Linotype Times Ten has an optical size of 10 (not surprisingly); it's designed for use at 10 points.

Panose-1 is a way of characterizing Latin fonts along 10 dimensions. Some of the factors taken into account are:

• serif style
• shape of letters
• stroke variation
• weight
• x-height

Analogies

The author is exceptionally good with analogies. I particularly enjoyed the analogies involving Captain Kirk.

I wonder if the author has considered writing novels. I hope so.

Perspective

Many times I was grateful for the author's perspective. For example:

• in Chapter 12 "History and Classification" (of Latin fonts)
• on the impact of copyrights on fonts

Style

I like the author's style. It could be characterized as:

• relaxed, fun
• thorough
• professional
• serious

Given the length of the book, the relaxed, fun aspect of the author's style is much appreciated.

Linux Aware

If you run Linux, you'll be pleasantly surprised that the author is very much aware of Linux/Unix. For example, there's a whole chapter on font management under X.

Two tools I learned of from the book and found particularly interesting were:

• gucharmap
• xlsfonts

gucharmap gives you a map of Unicode characters available. xlsfonts gives you a list of fonts available.

Lots of Information

The book contains a wealth of information on fonts and encodings. In this regard, I particularly appreciated the chapters on Unicode.

An Inspiration

As I read through the book, I found myself formulating questions and researching them on the Web.

I attribute this to two aspects of the author's style:

• relaxed, fun
• serious

I also found myself looking into the fonts on my system.

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Gripes

I really like this book, but I'll try to think of some things to gripe about.

Too Many Pages

I prefer shorter books. This book is more than 1000 pages long, which I consider humongous.

Too Much Not of Interest

I wasn't interested in the following:

• chapters 9, 12-14
• the 7 appendixes

(See the Chapters Titles list and the Appendix Titles list below it for the titles of these chapters and appendixes.)

Maybe later.

Confusing Figure Classifying Chapters

In the introduction, there's a cool figure that classifies the chapters of the book. The heart of the figure is a yin/yang sign.

The text explains the figure (which is good), but without the text I would have misunderstood the figure. I think the figure should be clear without the text.

Typos

I don't care about typos unless they are confusing, but some people do care about them regardless.

An example of a typo I encountered is:

• "was oined by Microsoft"

I think oined should be replaced by coined. Or perhaps there's a joke here and I missed it. What meaning would you assign to oined?

Some Terms not in Index

There were some terms I looked up in the index but didn't find. For example:

• HTML character entity
• dingbat fonts

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Who's the Book for?

According to the Book

In the Introduction to this book, potential readers are listed by type:

• designers and collectors of fonts
• people who want to produce beautiful documents or web pages
• people who are into TEX (or Ω, I presume)
• people well-versed in Unicode
• application developers
• people who don't fit any of the types above

On the back cover (of my copy, anyway), the following are listed as potentially benefitting from the book:

• software developers
• web developers
• graphic designers

However I concluded from first sentence of chapter 12 that the book is especially for people who want to create fonts.

Ideal For

An ideal reader of this book would have all the following characteristics:

• has some experience with fonts
• has some experience with Unicode
• is interested in knowing more about fonts and encodings
• has a sense of humor
• wants to create fonts

For

This book could be valuable for anyone interested in fonts or encodings (encodings in the font's domain, that is).

Not For

This book would probably not be good for anyone with any of the following characteristics:

• has no experience with fonts or Unicode
• doesn't wish to know more about fonts and encodings
• isn't willing to pay for the book

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Final Thoughts

The book contains a wealth of information re fonts and encodings. It's exceptionally well-written. It can be read from cover to cover or used as a reference (or both).

If you are into the subject matter, I recommend this book strongly.

The book is long and not cheap, so most people should stop by their favorite technical bookstore and look through it before purchasing it.

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