How do I stretch text vertically?

Simply because it hurts my eyes 🙂 :

"Soluce" should be solution.

I know what means 'out of the record'.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 2 novembre 2008 21:15:14)

PeterBreis0807 wrote:
Simply because it hurts my eyes 🙂 :

"Soluce" should be solution.

Thanks, I perfectly know that my English is far from perfect … but when I read some messages here I feel useless to open a dictionary too often 😉

When I'm in Mail, the system's Spell Checker is active, when I am here, it isn't.
Maybe it's because I uses Firefox or Camino.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 2 novembre 2008 21:17:17)

Actually it is a nonsense to suggest it breaches Intellectual property rights.

Yvan is the only person I have ever seen assert this in 35 years of design and I am a type fanatic.

To stretch, condense or otherwise alter a font is a natural part of design and is inevitable as no reproduction method is perfect.

The only thing that would breach IPR would be to distort the font and then sell it as your own.

Yvan,

Your English is excellent, just I thought I'd mention this one thing.

KOENIG Yvan wrote:
I know what means 'out of the record'.

Even if you have heard something from Apple off the record, I think your sources are not very reliable.

We have been through this before, but it is some time since we discussed it last, so we could as well list the arguments again:

1. Some fonts are free (as in open source, gpl and all that). For those ones, there is no reason why Apple would prevent faux bold and italics. And yet Apple treats all fonts the same.

2. About all other word processors on all other platforms allow faux bold and italics. This includes the most widespread ones, like MS Office. It also includes Apple's own current development tools (and old applications like AppleWorks).

3. Even a big font designer like Adobe allows the most twisted modifications of any fonts (its own fonts and the fonts of others) in its own applications - not only faux bold and italics, but warping, changing patterns, borders, colours and about anything one can imagine.

4. If Apple really cared about the intellectual property rights for font designers in this respect, they would spend their time much better publicly denouncing the competition for not respecting it, than quietly preventing faux bold and italics for the few percent of the world's population that uses only Apple's products.

Of course one should protect the intellectual property of font designers, but this is not a very efficient way of doing it.

Actually it is a nonsense to suggest it breaches Intellectual property rights.

It seems that you don't know the advice of fonts designers.

Calculating a stretch or condense or small caps ALWAYS introduce distortion on the original design. If you don't see it, go to your ophtalmologist.

Only two excerpts:

+C’est de là qu’émerge l’idée d’un caractère du genre de l’Helvetica mais spécifique à la Ratp, chassant moins que le premier, tout en étant aussi lisible. Et le Parisine naquis vers 1996. Dessiné sur une base d’Helvetica Bold étroitisé à 90%, le Parisine Bold est conçu plus ouvert _pour rétablir les pertes dues à l’étroitisation._+

See also this link:
http://jlseditions.com/edition/editiontxt.html



Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 2 novembre 2008 22:09:36)

KOENIG Yvan wrote:

Actually it is a nonsense to suggest it breaches Intellectual property rights.

It seems that you don't know the advice of fonts designers.

Calculating a stretch or condense or small caps ALWAYS introduce distortion on the original design. If you don't see it, go to your ophtalmologist.

Only two excerpts:

+C’est de là qu’émerge l’idée d’un caractère du genre de l’Helvetica mais spécifique à la Ratp, chassant moins que le premier, tout en étant aussi lisible. Et le Parisine naquis vers 1996. Dessiné sur une base d’Helvetica Bold étroitisé à 90%, le Parisine Bold est conçu plus ouvert _pour rétablir les pertes dues à l’étroitisation._+

See also this link:
http://jlseditions.com/edition/editiontxt.html

Are you not mixing two issues now?

One question is: Is it aesthetically acceptable design to use faux italics and faux bold?

A completely different one is: Is it acceptable for the intellectual property rights of font designers to apply faux italics and faux bold?

The answers to the two questions are completely independent. You can answer yes to one and no to the other.

The link you provided only talks about the first question - acceptable design. What I (and probably Peter) question is only if there is any issue with intellectual property rights.

I am perfect well aware of what distortions do to a font, having designed a goodly number myself.

The reason you can get away with it in the 82% condensed version of ITC Garamond that Apple used was because there already was a difference between the horizontal and vertical weights and Garamond has a bias off vertical. The mild condensing Apple used was quite pleasant and modernised the appearance.

Most fonts, particularly sans serif fonts, look bad when distorted excessively. It is a very PC thing, in my eyes, because so many awful things are done in Word Art.

However you do not require permission, legally or morally, from the designer to distort the font, which is what you asserted, Yvan.

Font designs are not carved in stone. There are so many versions on versions of previous fonts, that it makes type matching a very difficult task. I would love to meet a designer who hasn't distorted an existing font to create a new design.

It actually has its practical uses anyway and has since phototypesetting came in.

A very slight condensing of 1-3% is often used to fix bad line breaks, or to fit type.

I always thought the Apple logo was Garamond Narrow. Am I wrong?

Walt

Apple eventually had a Postscript and Truetype font made up so that it could be typeset without needing to be condensed in software that was not always capable of doing so.

It was the same as the nasty Helvetica Narrow, that used to pollute all the Postscript RIPs, in that it was nothing but a straight forward condensing of the original design, saved to standard font file formats.

I remember the awful font substitution that used to repeatedly show up in Apple seminars as the Apple employees usually failed to install the appropriate fonts, or if they did, to install them correctly. There was no point trying to help them fix it, they weren't ever inclined to listen.

Most fonts, particularly sans serif fonts, look bad when distorted excessively. It is a very PC thing, in my eyes, because so many awful things are done in Word Art.

However you do not require permission, legally or morally, from the designer to distort the font, which is what you asserted, Yvan.

Font designs are not carved in stone. There are so many versions on versions of previous fonts, that it makes type matching a very difficult task. I would love to meet a designer who hasn't distorted an existing font to create a new design.

I never wrote that fonts are carved in stone.
What I wrote is that the font 'trucmuche' designed by 'Mr. Dupont' is a program and that, as every program, it is protected by intellectual property rules.
This means that we aren't allowed to modify it without the author permission.

Like many users you are mixing two things.
When we use a font on a computer, we don't use a "theorical Garamond font".
We are using the program designed by some one to draw a specific interpretation of the "theorical Garamond". Nobody is forced to use this specific Garamond designed by one designer. When we choose to use it, we have to apply the rule exactly as when we use Pages we aren't allowed to copy it on two computers or to enter its internal code (this late limit is not true everywhere, in Europe we are allowed to decipher the code if it's the unique solution to communicate with other products).

The problem is not to know if a "faux" font is pretty or awful. It is that it doesn't match what the author designed and this is illegal.

The fact that some doesn't apply the rules don't prove that I am wrong.

Some human beings kill other human beings but the homicide remains a crime.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE lundi 3 novembre 2008 15:07:04)

Magnus Lewan wrote:

KOENIG Yvan wrote:
I know what means 'out of the record'.

Even if you have heard something from Apple off the record, I think your sources are not very reliable.

We have been through this before, but it is some time since we discussed it last, so we could as well list the arguments again:

1. Some fonts are free (as in open source, gpl and all that). For those ones, there is no reason why Apple would prevent faux bold and italics. And yet Apple treats all fonts the same.

Do you know a way to treat fonts differently according to their commercial status ?

2. About all other word processors on all other platforms allow faux bold and italics. This includes the most widespread ones, like MS Office. It also includes Apple's own current development tools (and old applications like AppleWorks).

The fact that some doesn't respect intellectual property doesn't change the rule.
I'm perfectly aware that the development tools are able to calculate "faux". I wrote in an other thread that the problem was open during a long period during the conception of Mac OS X, some wishing to offer the ability to calculate "faux", others wishing to respect intellectual property. We know which ones won.
Yes, AppleWorks is an old fashioned product applying old choices. Once again, many changes where decided during the conception of Mac OS X. The function remains in the coelacanthus. I may easily imagine two reasons:
(a) nobody was able to remove the feature
(b) nobody was able to link the program to the new Fonts pane

3. Even a big font designer like Adobe allows the most twisted modifications of any fonts (its own fonts and the fonts of others) in its own applications - not only faux bold and italics, but warping, changing patterns, borders, colours and about anything one can imagine.

Adobe make its own choices, they are not linked to Apple's ones.

4. If Apple really cared about the intellectual property rights for font designers in this respect, they would spend their time much better publicly denouncing the competition for not respecting it, than quietly preventing faux bold and italics for the few percent of the world's population that uses only Apple's products.

Of course one should protect the intellectual property of font designers, but this is not a very efficient way of doing it.

My guess and this time it's only my guess, it's that they balanced between two things:

(a) it's one thing to refuse to be accomplice of a violation of law, it's an other one to fight against these violations.

(b) attempts to communicate upon this choice would be positive among fonts designers which are not numerous but would be negative among the crowd of users which, if we are optimistic is unaware of what intellectual property means, and, if we are realistic doesn't take care of this kind of rule (see the music problems).
We all know an example of a feature about which Apple was very reluctant to communicate: viruses. If I remember well it's only recently that Apple publicly claims that Mac OS X is quite free of viruses (I write 'quite' an infected file may perfectly enter a Mac and be sent as is to an other machine).

Back to the posted excerpts, I had no time for a serious search. I remember a link passed by Tom Gewecke some months ago in which the problem was clearly described.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE lundi 3 novembre 2008 15:35:48)

Thanks for your comments! I think that summarizes our opinions quite well.

KOENIG Yvan wrote:
Do you know a way to treat fonts differently according to their commercial status ?

If one wanted to, one could do it, but there is currently +no structured flag+ in fonts to tell whether the font owner accepts normal modifications or not.

There is one whether to allow embedding, but not to allow modification.

However, one could check the Font Vendor name, which can be stored in the fonts, and then vary the behaviour depending on vendor. One could also check the fields for Copyright and Trademark and License Description, and see what information they contained. If they contain "GPL" one could allow modifications.

No, I do not claim it is worth it; I'm just saying that it could be done, if one was desperate to do it.

And if the industry saw a real need for it, they could easily add a structured flag for modification as well.

Of course, if the need for that appears, one may assume that a new flag may be inserted in font files but given the number of available fonts it would not be really efficient.
And at this time there is no such a flag.

So, with Apple commercial products matching Mac OS X schemes, we have to live without the ability to transform the shape of glyphs defined in Font Files.

Given the number of fonts available, I really don't feel that as a really annoying feature.
We may easily find several variants of a given font.
It's very unusual that a third party font remains of my machine if it doesn't offer a large set of variants.
Have you already tested "Warnock Pro" delivered with the system ?
It's a clean Serif font with 32 variants.

If I have free time, to morrow I will put on my iDisk a list of the font names as they are stored in Pages of those available on my machine.

You will see that some of them offer a lot of variants and of course, if we want that font designers earn their life we may buy fonts from time to time.
No need to use numerous ones. A set of font used regularly is a kind of signature.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE lundi 3 novembre 2008 22:32:05)