Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Kobo eReader Gains New Fonts, Adjustable Margins, Line Spacing

Not sold on the Kindle? If you're head over heels for the Kobo eReader Touch Edition, there's actually a good bit of good news to share. The company's continuing the update process surrounding the device, with a new v1.9.5 firmware update that allows substantial customization with new font, margin and layout options.  Below are highlights of the updates:

* Personalize Your Reading Experience by Adding New Fonts: The new firmware allows users to add their own fonts easily and quickly for total personalization.  Simply create a new Font directory on the Touch Edition using your laptop, netbook or desktop computer, then drag custom fonts into the Font folder.  Nook and Kindle don’t offer the ability to add fonts and personalize the reading experience in this manner.

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Touch Edition Gets Updated With Font Customization

We had mixed feelings when it came to Kobo’s Touch Edition eReader. Specifically, we felt that the device was “not really a better reading knowledge than other devices (though not a worse).” However, that feeling might change since the Kobo eReader Touch Edition is getting an update, which should bring with it some cool new customization features.

Basically the update will give users the ability to add their own fonts, and make new fonts on their laptop which can then be synced over to the Kobo eReader. The Kobo eReader Touch Edition is a beautiful simplistic device, so chances are a lot of Kobo owners aren’t necessarily what we’d call tech savvy. If you happen to be one of them and the idea of side-loading fonts seems scary, no worries. You’ll still be able to modify your Kobo’s font by choosing from the five fonts that will be included in the update: Amasis, Delima, Felbridge, Gil Sans, and Rockwell. That brings Kobo’s on-board font offerings to a total of seven fonts, across 25 different sizes.

The update will also bring line-spacing, margin, and justification control to the Kobo eReader Touch Edition, all along with the ability to turn off Kobo styling altogether. It’s worth noting that Kobo’s greatest competitors encourage and the Nook, don’t offer the ability to add fonts. The whole point of an eReader is to find an opportune, space-saving way to enjoy books, and customizable font’s sounds like a great way to improve the experience. Maybe the Kobo could be a “better” reading experience after all.


Monday, 22 August 2011

Mozilla's browser-based pdf project 'close' to reality

Efforts to make a JavaScript-based PDF reader for Mozilla’s Firefox and other HTML5-enabled browsers appeared to gain more ground in July after its pdf.js project reached a “milestone."

Programmers Andreas Gal and Chris Jones said pdf.js said that version 0.2 of their project managed to render the Tracemonkey paper perfectly, dynamically loading TrueType and Type 1 fonts.

“This is the most dramatic demonstration of pdf.js’s biggest feature in 0.2: loading Type 1 fonts ... Dynamically loading Type 1 fonts into a web application was a big challenge," they said in Mozilla’s blog.


Wednesday, 17 August 2011

Font Pain and Poetry: So Much Depends on a Curve

Font wonks fight. They champion some typefaces and sneer at others. They go ballistic if a system of signage is altered, as when Ikea changed its designated corporate font from Futura to Verdana in 2009. And they show off tribal symbols. A T-shirt that is depicted in Simon Garfield’s “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts” is adorned with nothing but the ornate ampersand of the font Caslon. This graphic, Mr. Garfield remarks, is capable of “occasionally eliciting a nod from another aficionado, like smug fans of a cool pop band before it becomes famous.”

Sometimes (as with Ikea’s typeface treachery) a tipping point will rock the world of fonts. “Just My Type” should be one of them. This is a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss’s best-selling “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things. Your friends’ eyes may glaze over when you begin to regale them with the font-related trivia with which this book is packed. (What is the Woody Allen movie credits font? Windsor.) If that should happen, recommend that they read Mr. Garfield too.

Tuesday, 16 August 2011

fonts (class, styles) for new academic journal

I am involved with starting a new academic economics and finance journal. Thus, the world is our oyster---we can choose whatever looks we want to choose. Since I have a role, LaTeX is going to be our typesetting system.

Now, I want my authors to be able to install the latest TexLive and be able to format the article themselves, although we will do this for many of them. This means that I do not want any fonts or other required inputs that are proprietary, and that require anything unusual. It should work out of the box.

For fonts, I need a full complement of math with the text. cmr is out. Even though it is now scalable, it just has acquired too much of a "texy working paper" look at this point. I am thinking mathptmx. I also like the idea of sticking to one font for headings and text, if only because this won't create a garish amateurish look, and I can see myself committing a faux pas if I had to mix fonts. TUG lucida is out, not because it requires a purchase, but because it requires an installation. Would the TeX Gyre fonts offer some good suitable alternative to mathptmx? Again, I need something fairly complete.

What is considered to be the most sane BiBTeX bst format? (we use harvard.sty in economics.)

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

AFP Consortium Announces New Version of AFP Architecture

The leading architecture for transaction printing has been updated to improve the operational efficiency of printing environments, while providing a higher level of interoperability among AFP products, including carry for the latest fonts, images and graphics. Most transaction documents and sensitive or critical communications associated with financial, insurance, sell, utilities and healthcare institutions worldwide use AFP amounting to tens of millions of mail pieces produced daily.

The new exchange set IS/3 are designed to provide the functionality required for today's complex production printing environments. Support for IS/3 will enable smoother addition across the elements of a printing system -- including formatters, servers, transforms, printers, AFP viewers and archive systems -- with less customization and faster time to manufacture with any given configuration. The enhanced interoperability of IS/3-compliant components will allow customers to significantly cut the price and time involved in configuring, installing and operating multi-vendor AFP systems.
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IS/3 features inclusive color support, including process and spot colors, ICC-based color management, and industry-standard image file formats such as TIFF and JPEG. IS/3 also includes support for industry-standard OpenType fonts and Unicode-based data encodings.

"With this new version, we are cementing AFP's position as the standard presentation architecture for monochrome and color variable-data production printing," said Harry Lewis, chairman of the AFP grouping. "By improving interoperability of AFP solutions across vendors, we reassure customers that they can design their print environment using best-of-breed AFP components from multiple vendors with self-confidence that they will work together easily and efficiently."

Monday, 8 August 2011

Facing off with Fonts

This request from an author whose book I was coordinating a few years ago opened my eyes to the psychology of fonts. She wanted to send questionnaires to a bunch of people and, since she was far off in Russia, wanted me to do the sending.

“I find that this is a most readable font and people always reply when I send it in this font,” she explained.
That set me thinking about fonts and the visual persuasion strategy. Just as we respond better to some handwriting, is it true that we respond better to some fonts? Father Google said yes. 

And, just as handwriting can tell us a lot about the writer, can the computer fonts tell us anything about the person using them? 

Oh yes, said Father Google again, throwing an old study The psychology of Fonts, by Dr Aric Sigman, commissioned by Lexmark Printers, at me.