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Re: fontname name for Caslon Book BE?



At 10:20 PM 98/02/02 +0000, Rebecca and Rowland wrote:

>Surely the firm that produces the fount is the `foundry', no matter who
>designed the thing originally?  The Postscript Type 1 fount files claim
>that they are copyright Adobe; I take this to mean that Adobe wrote and
>produces these fount programs, which means (as far as I can tell) that
>Adobe must be classed as the `foundry'.

Yes, based on outlines created at Berthold 

>If I'm wrong, can you explain what you mean by `foundry'?

Well, there are the people who create the shapes of the characters,
there are the people who turn that into a useable font program.
and there are people who market licenses to those programs.
Sometimes these are the same people, but often not.  I don't
know exactly how you want to refer to these.  It gets even more
confusing, when AGFA offers most of the Adobe library and Adobe
offers much of the Linotype library or whatever...

>btw, is there a better way of referring to firms that design and sell
>electronic fount?  The word `foundry' is appropriate if they are actually
>working in metal, but it's a bit silly otherwise.  I've bought founts from
>a foundry, but I doubt anyone else on this list has.

Language works this way.  We carry along words that are convenient
even when there original etemology no longer fits.  Shall we then drop
the term `font' also?

Regards, Berthold.

Berthold K.P. Horn
Cambridge, MA		mailto:bkph@ai.mit.edu