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Icelandic still has them. If they were really important we'd return to using them. They're not and we don't. I'm all for them (and eth, Ð/ð) but there's no need. There's a much better case to be made for a glyph to represent and/or but even the one offered doesn't flow; it's hard to distinguish from the ampersand and not easily written without multiple strokes which themselves lead to more confusion than clarification.

There is another tiny font in development Flea's Knees that also exploits subpixel rendering to aid legibility.

Some discussion among (mostly disappointed) type designers about the design appears at Typophile.

The iPad does not require fonts in svg. Like other modern browsers it supports @font-face using standard OTF fonts.

Typophile, TypeKit and Fast Company all say the iPhone/iPad don't support TTF or WOFF downloadable fonts, just SVG. Also, selection doesn't work right for SVG fonts on the iPad, and loading multiple weights of the same font is said to crash the browser.

Please disable Jobs Reality Distortion Field before using.

Obviously not, since no-one in the industry agrees with you. Your definition of what is cross-platform changes depending on whether the native platform for the code can be emulated.

Yes, there are many people in the industry that do not understand the underling technology, as well as many that have a vested interest in 'enterprise speak', but anybody that knows what an emulator is, knows that Java is one. I have never changed my definition. Cross platform is always, and one hundred percent of the time software that will run on multiple platforms unchanged. How it accomplishes it is irrelevant.

Wrong again, i never said the JVM was cross-platform. Obviously for example you cannot run the windows JVM on linux, or did you not know that? Again, your lack of knowledge regarding native vs interpreted code.

You are misinterpreting what I said. The JVM is just an emulator. Just as Vice is written for many platforms, the JVM is written for many platforms. As the link I supplied showed, the Java byte code IS machine language, just as 6502 machine language is machine language. Java is no more or no less cross platform than C64 Machine code. There is no confusion. Generally, but not always, the JVM is native code running on hardware. Always Java byte code is running in an emulator, but only because Sun failed to deliver the actual hardware.

Native code will execute natively on the hardware/os for which it was compiled. Interpreted code will execute on any hardware/os for which there is a native interpreter.

Yes, native code will execute natively on the hardware for which it is compiled. Interpreted code will execute on any hardware that there is an interpreter, native or otherwise. The same code can be run natively OR interpreted, depending on how and in what environment it is launched. You seem to think that code is somehow fixed as native or interpreted. This is not the case. Just look at some of the full PC emulator for the PC. They run x86 code interpreted on the PC which is the same platform that the same code could run natively.

6502 is a machine language, not an interpreted language. Python is an interpreted language, not a machine language. Those are not my definitions, they are the correct industry definitions.

No it is not the correct industry definition. 6502 is machine code, but there have been many 6502 interpreters. Claiming that when code is native when it is running in an interpreter is absurd. When 6502 code is running on a 6502 processor, it is native. When it is running in an interpreter on an x86, it is interpreted. Same code, different status concerning native/interpreted. Either way, if running on multiple platforms makes it cross platform.

If you're so confident that you know the difference between native and interpreted code then give me your definition. It would seem that you don't consider anything to be native code.

Native code is code that is compiled to a format that matches and runs commands that exist in the hardware it is currently running on. Interpreted code is code that issues commands to another layer which then figures out what commands to actually issue to the processor. The same compiled program can be one, the other, or both depending on where it is run.

You seem to be confused by Sun's strategic market approach in seizing the opportunity to take bold steps toward capturing momentum of the period of market disruption caused by it's industry-leading, award-winning flagship brand leading to accelerate its growth in the commercial space and an increase in its North American market penetration.

http://typophile.com/node/58166

Typographers' discussion here: http://typophile.com/node/52616

Alas, typographers, being designers, have mostly fallen into the blogosphere these days. To get a feel for fonts, the best suggestion I can give is to plunge your head into designer-blog-land; the only alternative is to take an actual course in the stuff. Above all blogs, I'd recommend I Love Typography. Theoretical articles, reviews of typefaces, history of type, interviews with typographers, samples of fonts in use, etc. It's where I caught on to my (totally nonprofessional!) interest in the stuff. Typophile might be of interest too; it's an active forum populated with a variety of opinions and questions, and probably a pretty good place to ask questions, if that's what you're after.

You must be new... to typography.

What's surprising is the appearance of an article like this on Slashdot, a site frequented by roughly zero typographers. Not that the lack of typographers is a bad thing, Slashdot is about Free software, bashing Microsoft, and language paradigm flamewars. Hardly this site's target market.

I have more than a passing interest in typography, but trust me, it takes years to learn about this stuff. I would suggest Slashdot leaves type related articles to Typophile, I love typography and all the others.

Remember that this is not just creating text. It is an intricate art form, dating back thousands of years. If you, or anyone else, wants to educate themselves The Elements of Typographic Style is essential reading. One other thing I've found: many typographers (but not type designers so much) are even more pedantic, exacting and pretentious than software engineers, or even grammar Nazis. If you posted the above on the Typophile forums, they'd probably be round your house with pitchforks and torches. :)

The Snark, a ligature of the full stop and tilde (~) was proposed to other type designers and typographers at http://www.typophile.com/ for signifying all sorts of irony, including verbal irony, such as sarcasm.

Oh really.~

Font designers are also concerned about the uncontrolled redistribution and frightening aesthetics that will result from Safari's new ability to include fonts within the HTML.

Getting a designer to consult on your site is important, but you will also need to effectively communicate with each other. If you want to start learning about design, I'd add some of the sites from the deck to your rss reader. I find A List Apart provides a good mix of posts about both front-end and back-end design. Typography is also important, so I'd subscribe to some of the foundry blogs, or typography blogs. After reading these for a while you'll gain an understanding of how designers approach problems.

Au contraire!

http://www.thomloubet.com/doritos.jpg
http://www.typophile.com/files/doritos.gif

Here's One video that was improperly pulled (it was a parody, not a copy, and most definitely not someone rebroadcasting a Viacom segment without permission).

And, yes, I do think Viacom has a right to defend their copyrights, but pulling parodys is clearing going too far.

Actually, lol might become a sort of punctuation mark itself: http://typophile.com/node/16343 (This one gets it across nicely.)

Actually, lol might become a sort of punctuation mark itself: http://typophile.com/node/16343 (This one gets it across nicely.)

When I installed the Windows Vista Beta, there was a segment in the EULA expressly saying that you can't copy the fonts
Easy to figure out why...

Funny that the core web fonts have been discontinued by MS as well. Sadly, the font industry is riddled with companies stealing each other's fonts all the time.

Start with a site like http://www.typophile.com/ and go from there. There are a ton of fonts out there, all with personality and their own style each fitted for a different situation

That's the most fucked up site I've accidentally visited in a long while.

Let's see:
      1. Fixed screen size
      2. Three goofy columns, that I can't use the scroll
            mouse inside. If I click in one, it jumps to some
            story.
      3. The text in those little columns renders weird on
            my 1280x1024 19" LCD monitor. Good Lovin'
      4. The story links are pretty crappy too.

I could go on-and-on all day about what I didn't like about the site.
I'm not sure what the site was about, I just found it irritating to visit.

feh.

Is there some font fetish that I just don't get?

Yes. There is. I've had a fetish for typography for a long time (i'm not a graphic designers, i'm a programmer). Fonts make all the difference. However, good typography should not be noticed. You only notice it when it's bad.

Start with a site like http://www.typophile.com/ and go from there. There are a ton of fonts out there, all with personality and their own style each fitted for a different situation.

Actually, most of it is Chalkboard, Apple's inexplicable clone of Comic Sans.

You're right: we should be sceptical of all claims to "inventing" proportional digital type. One would have to defer to historians such as Richard Southall to ferret out the convoluted truth. Certainly by the time of PageMaker's introduction, typesetter manufacturers were using a variety of digital methods to set type (of a quality Mac users could only dream about).

But even back in Silicon Valley, we all remember inspiring screenshots of the Xerox research machines - and earlier still, the high resolution Smalltalk-80 interface - which give the lie to Jobs' remarks. Digital typography itself was an inevitable revolution, with some accidental heroes on the road to commercialisation and commodification.

(An aside: Isn't it uncanny how closely InDesign 2 tracks our late-80s wishlist for JustText 3? :)