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US Govt Makes Times New Roman 14 Official Font
pollux03 writes "According to ABC news, 'In an internal memorandum distributed on Wednesday, the department declared "Courier New 12" - the font and size decreed for US diplomatic documents for years - to be obsolete and unacceptable after February 1.
"In response to many requests and with a view to making our written work easier to read, we are moving to a new standard font: 'Times New Roman 14'," said the memorandum. ' The report goes on to cite a few exceptions to the rule including official telegraphs."
There are only three exceptions to the draconian new typographical rules: telegrams, treaty materials prepared by the State Department's legal affairs office and documents drawn up for the president's signature, it said.
As those will all be done in the MS Comic Font.
How about Comic Sans, Bols,Italic and 20PT
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
I had my money on 20 point Dingbat.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Instead of actually doing something useful, they sit around and argue over the right font to use.
Dear God.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
the government declared- thumbtwiddling is now the offical activity to perform when you cannot think of useless directives.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Does this department have a name or can we assume that this is THE department?
It's time for the new rome to fall.
why so big? isn't 10 the default standard for most written communication?
ed
Not to be petty or anything, but just how slow of a news day does it have to be when a font change is considered newsworthy?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"New Roman Times"
Long live the empire.
I'm not sure I get why this is posted on slashdot?
is switching fonts some type fo huge technilogical leap for the government?
sorry officer, left my sig in my other computer.
God, thats gigantic, are these guys blind or something? Think of how much paper they would save going to 10.
I would think Verdana or Tahoma would be a much better solution. Times New Roman is SOOO Windows 3.1! :)
Are they using 1.1 inch margins and 1.5x line spacing too?
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
That's pretty large type. I'd suggest buying stock in pulp and paper because the government will be buying stacks of it to accommodate type that large.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
How appropriate since we are apparently the New Rome .
Shhh, Wingdings is the new crytographic encoding method for top secret documents, replacing the good old double-ROT13 encoding used during the Cold War.
The word "Oil" is often misintepreted as "Weapons of Mass Destruction" when written in Courier New 12.
Sam Seaborn
1. Patent technology for adding serifs to fonts.
2. Sue government & the world for buckets of money.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
Who owns the copyright to Times New Roman? Are there any licensing issues involved in this decision?
What a fitting font for an empire in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own arrogance..
I can only imagine how much time and money went into that decision.
When the US Govt makes Linux it's official OS, then I'll start believing in politicians again.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
US State Department
I guess RTFA is too much to ask on a slow news day.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Think about it, up until now it was courier but now it is times New ROMAN. This fits with the new view of the US as the Roman empire and sends a subtle but unmistakable message to everyone exactly how the US is to be addressed and in what way. Dont think that the word courier was originally french has nothing to do with it.
Sigs are dangerous coy things
That they are going from a fixed-width font (courier) to a variable-width font (Times). Columns of numbers, etc. won't line up as nice with Times, especially if the people creating the documents don't know what they are doing.
And this while every graphic designer knows that Verdana 10pt is one of the most easy to read fonts, both on paper and screen. (That is why so many websites use it as font.)
Does anyone know why we still have official telegrams? Seems a little obsolescent.
--Tom
MAN SHOOTS ROVER!
No wonder the 5 evil acolytes selected him.
Roman Font. Just in time for Empire.
in accordance with the national defense act and various others, all new documents have to be made terrorist-proof. therefore, the standard font for printed material from now on will be wingdings. you bet osama can't read that!
Karma
Telegrams?! They still use telegrams? If so, where can I still send one from? I'm sure a telegram to a Senator might get more attention than a letter and certainly more than an email. Plus sending telegrams sounds cool.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
...it only took about a $5 million research-study to tell these idiots this. Besides, who really cares anyway? I mean, just choose a font that can be read. And, with 14pt being the standard, the Russians/French/British will think we're all half blind.
might as well be Windings, probably easier to understand and a whole lot more entertaining! I know of at least one unnecessary war it would of stopped.
serenity now!
I would much rather read TNR then courier. But why 14???
Not suprising that Bush is the one making this change. LOL.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
The real reason why they are using a bigger font is the same reason I 2.1 space my essays: It looks like you did more work. Oh well, I guess they will have to reprint every document made before Feb 1, as they are "unacceptable."
I heard that the Bush goverment push 14pt size after the Paper & Wood pulp industry donated 10 bn to his electoral fund.
Over 90 years and counting !
with a view to making our written work easier to read
Any stud{y,ies}/research to indicate that 'Times New Roman 14' is easier to read than 'Courier New 12'?
Free XBox, PS2
I wonder how much paper (and, in turn, our tax dollars) would be saved each year if the government decided to use size 12 Times New Roman, or better yet, size 10.
In related news, the US Government changes the official resolution of all desktops to 640x480, 256 colors.
I know that Microsoft kindly lets people use True Type fonts for free (I use some on my Linux system) but is this a case where Microsoft can suddenly say that it's no longer free to use and in order for the government to create official documents they must use Microsoft products?
Is that 14 point at 72 points per inch? or 96 points per inch?!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
and yet we still do not have an official language!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
How much money is this going to cost? Sounds like someone with nothing to do wanted to make himself/herself feel important by changing the official font, all it will do is waste the time (money) of the employees who will now have to check the font settings every time they type something for a while till all their software is switched, or waste time re-printing after realizing "oh shit it's in Courier".
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Good to know they're doing something useful with our tax dollars.
Next up is a bill to declare the official cow of the United States... [*sigh*, ok, go ahead, insert Monica or Hillary joke here]
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
I, for one, welcome our new roman time overlords
From the article: "a 'more modern' font."
I'm sure glad they put "more modern" in quotes, as Times New Roman was introduced in 1932!
-Peter
they don't let bloody lawyers write the documents.
Thank you, U.S. Government, for giving me more reasons to continue to preach for smaller government.
Attention, citizens! Your government has so much time and money on its hands that it felt compelled to declare an official font! That is all!
My sigs always suck.
US government seeks method to reduce paper waste caused by increasing the font size to 14 point...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
I'm sure I've been told (by someone whose job is teaching the disabled to use computers) that Times New Roman is relatively difficult for partially-sighted people to read, and sans-serif fonts such as Arial are much better. Can someone confirm/refute this, and does anyone know if they've taken this into account?
This is no different than college profs spending an entire class hour explaining how they would like papers to be formatted. Or TPS report cover sheets. Or any other stylistic guideline. It's a common occurrance, and as this only applies to the state department, the general public will not be affected in the least by this.
It's not like all AIM users will be forced to use TNR 14, black on white background....though that might not be a bad thing if they were. Those damn hot pink on lime green fonts are simply painful.
Freedom Font :-)
Worst
iN A nEWs flASH tHE GOVenMEnt HAs adOPTed STudLY CaPS AS tHE oFFIcIAl STanDARD FOr capITalIZaTION oF WoRdS...
Hope that font contains Spanish specific characters, English is still not the official language of the United States.
I see that you used Courier New on your last document, did you get the memo? Yeah, because we switched to Times New Roman, Yeah, I'll go ahead and send you another copy of that memo.
-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-
What would Yossarian do?
If I recall, Wordperfect had a feature that would actually adjust margins, font sizes, and line/character spacing to get your document from 13 to 15 pages long. Simply brilliant.
How are they going to construct ASCII art without a fixed width font? Plus wouldn't you expect a spy vs spy courier type person to carry secret documents written in Courier type? Geez! And 14 pt font??? That's frikken huge!! What ever happened to typewriter size font?
Eat at Joe's.
Then I did a google search on "way too much free time" and my name came up 133,000 times....
Happy Trails,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
They should have used an open license font like Bitstream Vera. This would have given them the fixed spaced "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" for tabular data, "Bitstream Vera Serif" for paragraph and "Bitstream Vera Sans" for headers, captions, etc. Simply beautiful and open. :)
So long as they're wasting their time picking out new fonts, they're not writing new laws restricting freedoms, increasing taxes or wasting money on new boondoggle programs.
It was found that a tainted shipment of Congressional office stationary notepads were 1/4 inch too large, and the letterheads were clearly in Western font which is simply inexcusable. A full inquiry will be launched in the coming weeks.... Lets pray to god someone gets to the bottom of this.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Better?
In other news... government officials embarasingly admitted that they need glasses but don't like to wear them.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
executive order coming soon.....
"Stop the presses!" ok... ok... sorry...
I'm suprised they didnt drop all their encryption, switch to wingdings, and say that they're more secure then ever.
John Adams is spinning in his grave!
Write clearly, and put your name at the top right corner.
Fiat Lux.
Quoth the article: There are only three exceptions to the draconian new typographical rules: telegrams, treaty materials prepared by the State Department's legal affairs office and documents drawn up for the president's signature, it said.
Hey, maybe you should RTFA before posting an article!
--Leo
In Soviet Russia, font changes YOU!
:P)
(besides, how many fonts can their possibly be for cyrillic?
Yeah, but terrorist too, ZM"Qoo
try it using Wingdings
The Official Language of Slashdot is Perl.
Best Slashdot Co
Does it really matter what font they use? It all ends up being blacked out anyway.
Will now be Freedomstile
A lot of big organizations make decisions like this. The State Dep't wants documents coming from it to have a similar look and feel. Just consider it a social CSS.
I subcontracted for State for a while, and this is actually a step in the right direction. They have 2 print shops, one for GS and one for FS, and people have lately been printing some really stupid looking reports and circulars. It's kind of a shame that they chose 14 pt TNR, since that pretty much keeps you from being able to make a small, glossy report like people like nowadays, but some consistency would be a good thing.
Also, this only seems to apply to printed materials. Electronic publications can stay in whatever font you want, which is good since I hate seriffed fonts on a screen.
All's true that is mistrusted
In other news, students around the country rejoice. Now, they can use US Governement official font to turn a two page paper into three pages.
I am amazed how political slashdot is. A valid point is made, and it is modded down. *sigh*
The President was tired of receiving official documents that ended with the ASCII art version of goatse.cx.
There are many versions of Times New Roman out there - Windows has one, MacOS has another (I do know they're different from Windows and pre-OSX MacOS), I believe LaTeX has yet another...
Font fun...
"All your serif belong to us."
:)
Go ahead, mod me down. I know I would.
This of course a holdover from the g-men's days padding out papers with page requirements.
Jeezus!!! What a freeking scandal!!!
I can't handle the crazy pace of change anymore, it's stuff like this that made the UnaBomber snap.
We're heading down a long dark spiral of doom, and this is just one example of the madness. From now on, just call me AmishMan. I'm done with all this technology crap.(*)
(*) Well, except my iPod. I'm keeping that.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Actually, the typically available Times New Roman has lining figures which are an ``en-space'' wide.
If one types _just_ numbers things line up as if one were using a monospaced font. The problem is the default space (I checked TimesNewRomanPS YMMV w/ other versions) is half an en-space, so that even if one sets up the typesetting to not vary the space, one has to double up on the spaces. Naturally, people should just use tabs properly, but.....
Microsoft has focused their OpenType work on linguistics, not typesetting capabilities, so the above should hold even for Windows 2000 and later (naturally it doesn't hold if someone is using Adobe InDesign and sets the option for old-style figures and proportional numbers).
For those who're curious, I touch on some of this sort of thing in some of my didactic typography samples available from my website URL.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
what a fucking fuck fuck fuck, i'd like to know?
Never ceases to amaze me how trolls will seize on anything to bash the US. So the Roman Empire collapsed under the weight of its own arrogance? Or maybe you just predict that the US will? Pray tell, learned troll.
This guy is way out there
They chose the Times New Roman typeface at 14 point, consisting of the fonts regular, italic, bold and bold italic.
A typeface could technically be a font if you only have one version of that typeface = the one font in it.
But what I really don't get is size 14. If you have problems reading size 12, you better make an appointment with your eye doctor. (Preferrably use a cab or public transportation to go there...)
moving from a fixed width/monospaced font to a variable spaced font will make it more difficult for simpler forms of communication to interface officially with government entities.
increasing complexity typically reduces reliability.
You better hope we don't collapse. I "hate America" (ie. disagree with current policy) as much as any thinking person, but I know that as bad as we are, the death throws would be 100x worse for me/us/everyone.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
Encrypted "Super Secret" communications will be done with Wingdings 16Isn't this the crypto that SCO used in their code comparisons?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I deal with the documents in the article and it's a big deal to those involved. There are standards and they are expected to be adhered to. I've seen documents thrown out or sent back due to the font and font sizing used! This change is also going to cause a problem in larger documents in which items are commonly referred to by page number. The new printouts of older documents will have different page numbers and this may cause a headache for those that refer to them in that way. This is especially prevalent in the judicial system.
We won't be making the same mistakes as the Old Roman Empire. *Our* leader is Yale and Harvard educated!
The Black Iron Prison is alive and well.
But historically speaking, of course, the Roman Empire's western collapse did nothing to its eastern empire, which was later renamed the "Ottaman Empire", but was largely constructed out of lands conquered by the Romans.
World War I was the former Western states of the Roman Empire attacking (and reclaiming) the actual power of the vestigal Roman Empire.
While it could be argued that Victorian London was the new "Rome", the actual throne resided in Turkey.
In any case World War II was the shifting of power amongst Western governments - for Hitler it was the recreation of the empire under him - but for everyone else it was in fact protecting the empire against the barbarians all over again. After the dust settled, the throne was moved from London to Washington, where it is today.
The symbolism of 1st Century Rome continues today in America. Eagles, for example, where the symbol of both Rome and America. The use of Greek inspired architecture in our government buildings.
The list goes on and on. Suffice it to say that the Roman Empire is alive and well, and under its new auspices - World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, North Atlantic Treaty Organization - it continues to operate.
Those columns of numbers align quite well, because the designers of this font made all the numbers of equal width.
Facts have this annoying tendency to mess up the best theories..
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just because a font is widespread doesn't make it good. They should have chosen one of the other traditional typefaces, like Garamond or Palatino.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I'm guessing everyone who is complaining is either currently unemployed or never really had a job in the first place. If they did they would know that every company and big organization makes a decision like this.
...the department of homeland security recently adopted Zapf Dingbats as its official font.
Should clear up their communiques a bit.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Times New Roman instead Garamond? What were those aesthetically clueless dingbats thinking?
That's it. I've completely lost faith in our government, and political processes in general. If they can't ascertain Garamond's clear superiority to TNR, well, they'll just have to impeached, that's all.
And sent for serious rehabilitation. And re-training, with those methods used for de-programming cult victims.
I mean, seriously, TNR over Garamond? I ask you...
Wow, I like how the State Department is suddenly the entire US Government. Good job, Slashdot.
The couriers of freedom are turning into
the couriers of globalism.
This clearly reflects the increase in mean age in the US, for both the government and citizenry. As the average person's vision deteriorates (minus laser surger), on average, more people will need larger print.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Just to keep the conspiracy nuts happy:
I bet this is some big kickback to the paper industry for bribing politicians. 14pt documents use more paper.
Or....
This is just another example of how old people are taking over the country. Us young people don't need big fonts, why should we pay for big fonts only old people need?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Senator Withered: "Hoo HA, I love the smell of pulling the wool over the American People's eyes!" *mark* *mark* *mark*
Senator Oldfart: "You said it...SENATOR!" (Both collapse in laughter) "Hoooo...Whew. *sniff* *mark* *mark* *mark* What do you think, should I censor this part about a huge raise for us?"
Senator Heartevent: "HAW HAW! Censor the whole damn thing! *mark* *mark* *mark* I'm losing my buzz!"
And that's how it happened, I swear.
See here's the problem. 10 point at 96 DPI and 10 point at 72 DPI *SHOULD* be the same thing, point does *NOT* equal pixel, that's a common fallicy propogated by Microsoft. Points are Points, there are 72 of them in an inch. Points are NOT pixels!
So to answer your question. No, 12 point is the accepted standard for most communication. Unfortunately since the majority of computers in the world render points incorrectly '10 point' has become a defacto, and typographically incorrect, standard.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Did Microsoft bribe them for using their font?
They could have chosen a free font (like Bitstream Vera) as well!
forgetting that Times roman is a shit font. Size 14 is way to big, i would feel insulted if i had to read a document with a font size like that. Size 14 is classed as being suitable for people with poor sight. Verdana or Skia is a much better font anyways.
Jonathanjk.com
We don't use "telegrams" anymore - that's just a name that's stuck around for who knows what purpose.
Cables, telegrams...basically they're just emails.
I say "we" b/c I work at the State Department.
I bet your teachers never caught on either.
"I want to make it perfectly clear to every one in the world that just because I'm shortsighted does not mean that I can afford not to be misudnerstood."
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Is that the font used in the book _1984_?
The roman empire did not collapse under the weight of its own arrogrance. It decayed in the quagmire of its own apathy.
-JD
call them. They will pay attention to whatever form of communication you choose, but: - email is worst -- they get tons, a lot is just dashed off, and they are frequently mailbombed by issue advocacy groups - the US post in and out of the Capitol is greatly delayed since the anthrax scares. The latency involved has made letters earn less attention than they used to. Again, volume is a problem. - phone calls are your best bet. You'll get somebody to talk to, and demand a portion of the staff's finite attention.
You see it everywhere. I'm so fed up with this Font.
No more ASCII art in official US government memos.
So, now we've got an official font to use... but they can't decide what language to write with it. English? Spanish? Spanglish?
Personally, I think the official government language should be Engrish. It'd make that crap more fun to read, at least...
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
While I personally would have prefered something a little more elegant, I can't see bitching to much about an obvious (print them out and tell me different,) improvement.
I just want to scream. Yes, I'm something of a font/type geek. But still, who in the name of John Hancock decided to write legally binding documents in a non-monospaced font??!!? Yes I know that serifs are easier to read, there are serifs in courier. By making this a proportional font they're actually making these documents HARDER to edit! Everything I've EVER submitted for publication to an editor (a very very small sample mind you) has been courier 12, double spaced. Why? It's easier to edit that way!
Grrr. Who gave the government desktop publishing tools anyway? The next thing you know they'll start sending out newsletters in 'Chicago'.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
So if I use Arial does that make me a terrorist?
A fixed width font like courier (new) is horrible to read when printed on paper. It's great for code or such things, not for actual documents.
A font like Times New Roman was developped specifically for newspapers. It has a serif, which improves readabilty by guiding your eyes acros the lines. It has a relatively high size of such letters as a,e,o,m,n when compared to l,k,j,g. (Sorry I'm not familiar with the correct terms in english) This is done to effectively enlarge the appearance and thus readability. It has large thick vs. thin contrasts. All this is done to improve readabilty in a newspaper: narrow collumn width, small size.
It is even designed to compensate (or use) the effect of overprint: a small amount of ink allways flows out, making the thinnest parts of characters less thin.
When printed on a laserprinter, the font actually becomes a bit to contrast rich in thick/thin, because of the lack of overprint.
Times New Roman is far from the best choice in my opinion. It's outdated (not really suitable for laserprinting). It's not meant to be used as 13 pt font in documents with long lines.
A lot of people underestimate or are even completely ignorant to the influence of document layout: font, size, pagemargins. If you value the readability it's worth it to invest some time in the subject.
-- Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
The area where Washington D.C. now resides used to be called.... Rome!
A lot of Roman figures (such as Gods) are spread all over the area too.
Bigger font = more paper. Let's get rid of all those useless forests. They're full of bugs and they burn all the time.
For those that don't want to RTFA, here's what you're missing:
"There are only three exceptions to the draconian new typographical rules: telegrams, treaty materials prepared by the State Department's legal affairs office and documents drawn up for the president's signature, it said. The memorandum offered no explanation for the exceptions, leaving foreign service officers to speculate as to whether the White House, US treaty partners and telegram readers are not yet able to handle the change."
Clever aussies.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
This is surely a sign that our leaders are aging beyond their usefulness.
...has obviouly been spreading the cash and campaign contributions around in an effort to defeat their Courier competitors.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Using a large font like 14 pt might make the documents easier to read for some but it will waste a lot of paper and create more solid waste. They should switch to a smaller, but still usable size, like 10 pt.
Is that all US government reports now have to have to be accompanied by "the correct cover sheet". Oh, and all White House press conferences must have at least "fifteen pieces of flair".
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This was only the state department, choosing a font for correspondence. yeesh, even the submitters aren't reading the freakin articles.....
Clearly this needs more regulation. A license to mod perhaps.
And modders when you slap this as flamebait, troll, or offtopic, be gentle, I'm recovering from a bad sinus headache and those headslaps hurt. Other then that I've got the karma to burn.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
http://www.bancomicsans.com/home.html
Natural Resources Conservation Service, to be precise. We've used 12 pt Times New Roman for almost 10 years. Why was State still using Courier? IMHO, it's butt-ugly to read in print...
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
"In response to many requests and with a view to making our written work easier to read, we are moving to a new standard font: 'Times New Roman 14'," said the memorandum.
this is pretty amazing. back 13 years ago in 1991 i was working for the Army Materiel Command Headquarters and i repeatedly got a "talking to" from my bosses for using Times instead of Courier in official correspondence to other departments. i then went to the head of AMC HQ and suggested a change in policy to allow Times New Roman to also be acceptable, since we were now in the computer age, and not limited to typewriters and daisy-wheel printers, and since Times New Roman was demonstrably easier to read, and more attractive. He took my request to the Chief of Staff of the Army, who shot it down.
i was ahead of my time!
i could live a little longer in this prison
I'm a Palatino Linotype man myself.
The differences are small, but they mean a lot.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I have a copy of the Constitution done in TNR 10 and it takes 9 pages. Bumping the size up to 14 point makes it 16 pages.
80% more paper for what??
Never mind, after proof-reading the foregoing sentence I can see that Arial would be utterly undesirable to the government. Have they looked at Dingbats?
Sigs are bad for your health.
Now if only what the government writes is as clear as their typeface...
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
A telegram font in this day and age is simply scrumptrilescent.
Today the U.S. Government has issued these equally important directives:
1) All federal employees must tie their shoelaces using a right-over-left Ian knot.
2) Handwritten ampersands must be of the official '&' variety and not the 'sloppy plus' variety.
3) Toilet paper must be folded, not crumpled.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I worked for a nuclear plant for the past three summers as an IT intern. One of my jobs last summer was to find a way to standardize our documents that go to the NRC. The problem was basically that we had a ton of documents from way back when - many of which had equations that had special characters, such as a sigma, or an integral symbol - that were converted to modern formats inconsistently. Some would literally say "Sigma", some would have the character, some would have an ASCII art character.
This causes big problems. The NRC doesn't have all the fonts that could possibly have been used, and when they opened them with Word (we were, to my personal disappointment, a Microsoft shop), it would do its best to convert unknown characters to a readable format. However, some characters - even standard letters like a period - would convert poorly. In one instance, 2.60 converted to 2660 (or something very similar). This is definitely not a desired result for highly technical documents in a highly regulated industry. Thus, one thing we (I) had to do was to set the rule for our plant that any documents must use a very strict set of fonts.
At quick glance, it seems like a stupid thing to waste company money on my pay for doing something like this, but it actually helps a lot. My first summer, I had to go through an inch tall stack of documents to make sure they converted properly. What a waste.
The 20 point dingbat is actually running the country, so maybe you should collect on your bet.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
No the U.S. is going to collapse under the weight of it's own greed and stupidity. And the rest of the world doesn't seem to be doing all that well in that department either.
What about the official font for college freshmen? TNR 14-point is fine when you sort of know something about the topic of the paper you're writing, but TNR 20-point will happily fill the 3-page requirement of the paper.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
But which smileys are officially sanctioned for use? The wrong smiley could start an international incident. :O
(and before I get trolled: no, I can't correct it with glasses)
I have had problems reading small font text for at least 10 years now, and the problem is, of course, getting worse. But I have learned a lot, about the needs of visually impaired people. One of these things is that Verdana is probably the ideal font for us. This fact was discussed in depth on the nystagmus newsgroup, and the good thing is, we all reached a consensus about Verdana.
I am surprised so few companies use it. Actually, none as far as I know. I am surprised mostly because I believe that a nice, readable font is pleasant even for the healthy eye, it's more ergonomic.
Sigged!
IIRC,
4=phone call
3=handwritten letter
2=fax or typewritten letter
1=email
or something very similar. Also IIRC, email is nearly ignored because it's easy to send. That's why you ought to use a fax gateway when you are trying to influence a representative... the email is assumed to come from a 12-year old with too much time on his hands, whereas the fax or written letter (presumably) took some amount of resources to send. (don't let them realize what a fax gateway is!)
:-/
Anywho, don't email. Fax or call. That way you'll be ignored with the rest of us instead of being ignored right off the bat.
Times New Roman is intended for newspaper columns where it scans easily. For wider formats, like letters and memos, New Century Schoolbook or some other font intended to be read at that width is more appropriate.
I always said governments were blind and this futher proves it. I could read Times New Roman 14 from space.
I'm sure at some point they must have used it in their manuals... "You must pay us $670 for each printed page that uses Times Roman. Have a nice day."
there's no place like ~
Do you have any better way to pass on documents from one machine to another??..
Come on Mr. Computer Geek, go and invent some kind of super device that lets you store data on it!.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
...are those people shortsighted or what?
Did anyone notice that the story is copyrighted by the Australian Broadcasting Company and all relevant URLs point to web sites in the .au domain?
I suspect this whole thing is a joke playing on the fears that if it came from ABC (the American Broadcasting Company which competes with NBC and CBS), it must be true!
...from a typographer's view.
No serious typographer would EVER dare to use Times New Roman nowadays. One could say it's the font for those who don't know better. Same with crappy Arial (Helvetica is waaay superior)!
Font selection and standardization is a big deal. People read through the process of pattern recognition. Using standard fonts substantially increases the speed at which people read and their comprehension of what they read.
Times New Roman is not a Microsoft v. the world thing. The font was developed by The Times in 1932. It is a relatively compact font. It was used by papers as they were able to get a large number of words per page and was easy to read.
A standardized font improves quality. It makes documents uniform, etc..
Microsoft included Times New Roman because it was a common, standardized font, not the other way around.
Back in 2001, Helvetica Bold Oblique was the big winner of the 73rd annual "Fonty Awards". Times New Roman 14 didn't even get an honorable mention! Look at how far a font can come in a mere 2.5 years!
PERL:
All of the power of Voodoo with most of the understandibility!
I find this interesting.
Ask anyone in the publishing industry, and chances are they will tell you that the most readable font available is Courier (in any standard variety) 12pt Regular.
I.e., precisely the font they are moving away from, on the grounds of readability.
I wonder if the person who made this choice is someone who has to read a lot of documents, or just somebody who thinks a proportional font looks nicer?
"the department declared Courier New 12" - the font and size decreed for US diplomatic documents for years - to be obsolete and unacceptable
Because our elected officals are too old and have a hard time reading 12pt fonts.
If they have problems reading their own documents they should change the red ink too.
Open source is the art of letting other people write your bad code.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I'm surprised they didn't standardize on that ugly road sign font in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Transportation Department has been lots and lots of money researching that font. It suppose to be easier for elderly people to read. Maybe it would look better on paper.
"Life is such a sweet insanity, the more you learn, the less you know"
No wonder the new federal budget is so massive. One of these things could be used as a murder weapon or ballast. I'm sure the real reason for this new rule is that it takes more paper to print something in a bigger font, which looks more impressive on TV. See! Your tax dollars at work!
What font will the cover of the TPS reports have?
The White house, they use crayon font.
What treaty partners?
You can still send a telegram?
Now they just need to hire Terrible Terry Tate to ensure workers make the transition.
You still using Courier, Richard?! Get ready for the Pain Train ... WOOOOOO!!!
I know! You'd be amazed how many poor slobs are scribing out every official document on copperplate. What a waste! Not to mention the stockpiles of white space in government warehouses for tweaking kerning pairs.
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
shut up and quit posting on Slashdot like you promised.
Sans serif fonts such as Tahoma, Verdana, Vera Sans, etc. are most suitable for on-screen display of textual documents such as web pages. However, Serif fonts still reign supreme for readability in print form.
As an exercise, for your enjoyment, take a sheet of paper and cover the upper slice of a word on a Serif font. 100% of the time, you can still read it. Do the same on the bottom slice as well. And, lastly, print out some Verdana/Tahoma and perform the same exercise, you'll find that more often than not you'll be second guessing what the word really is.
I'm not a font expert, but there are legit reasons for standardizing on this font.
14 point might be needed to:
1. Reduce government redundant wording by allowing the book to fill up faster as to allow one to "feel" that the content is thick.
or
2. Aid in the ever-aging American population.
Years ago when my ancestors came over on the boat, they quickly realized that they needed to learn the local language (whatever Native North American language was spoken) otherwise they'd be left behind, because if they didn't fit in to get a job, someone else was going to get the job they were working for.
Think of how much more cost effective it was to simply massacre the Native North Americans! And besides, since the Native North Americans weren't smart enough to invent guns, they didn't deserve to live, right? Nevermind their (superior) knowledge of the land, of medicine, food, and survival.
Language and culture go hand in hand. Language is powerful. Not everything is translatable.
A country with many cultures is a country with many challenges, but it is also the country with many strengths.
Please respect and love your neighbors and their children as you do your own.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Courier was monospaced. Times is proportional.
Some documents are going to be made unreadable because of this ridiculous piece of bureaucratese.
Documents that use too many fonts, or fonts that aren't installed on my system, or that use joke fonts, are a pain to read. But it is hardly the business of government to dictate what typeface should be used for documents; and at the very least, three typefaces are required: one monospaced and two proportional (serif and sans). The typographer should be trusted to select the most appropriate, because that's what typographers do. If you're going to let people loose on a system where they get to pick their own typeface, then freakin' teach them how to pick one. {They probably will pick Times [or Helvetica] anyway, or Courier if it needs to be monospaced, but if they know why to use it then they aren't going to get all resentful.} Governments run countries, and one would expect them to have drier lentils to soak.
Of course, if and when lives are lost due to such whims and caprices of the US Federal Government, the blame will be laid squarely on the shoulders of "terrorists", "drug dealers" or "paedophiles".
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I was so hoping the font of choice would be "wingdings."
Not that a government doc in that font would be any more or less decipherable.
From the official statement of Chinese givernmenet:
"We are the largest nation in the world and we truly deserve to have the largest font. We are not afraid to compete with the US in this font-size race. Ultimately our glorious nation of over one billion citizens will be the winner."
===============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
But, in recent news, the "Times New Roman" font is being renamed to "Freedom Font"
Sorry, I had to...
and please don't get into refresh rate or MHz
I remember several years ago my cousin from Costa Rica filed documents with INS to get her student visa extended.
What we received back was a hand written note from INS...the note was on a form explaining that, as part of an INS program towards efficiency, many correspondences would be handwritten instead of typed.
I wonder if that program is still in effect....it was in blue, and nice handwriting.
welcome our new Times New Roman 14 overlords.
... the Roman Empire's western collapse did nothing to its eastern empire, which was later renamed the "Ottaman Empire", but was largely constructed out of lands conquered by the Romans.
Partly true, but confused.
The Western Roman Empire fell in the 400's AD; the Eastern Roman Empire (known to modern historians as Byzantium) surived until 1453, when the capital of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. Byzantium was not exactly "renamed" the Ottoman Empire -- the Ottomans established their empire on conquered Byzantine land.
-kgj
-kgj
Just for yuks, I thought I'd check out what these fonts looked like in my browser window. I happened to be running mozilla firebird on my Powerbook at the moment, so I went to the menus, selected Preferences, looked for the fonts section -- and couldn't find it. I went through all the rest of the menus, and couldn't find the string "font" anywhere.
... ;-)
Anyone here know if it's possible to set firebird's fonts? Did they just overlook this? Or, more likely, did they find some clever and inventive way to hide it, including calling it something without "font" in its name?
Onward to setting fonts in mozilla itself. And safari, and IE, and maybe the old Netscape 4.7 that somehow got included.
Or maybe I won't bother. I usually override the fonts and colors anyway, so pages that set them are just wasting bandwidth.
(14 points? I usually force everything to 10 points. And people looking over my shoulder always complain about the unreadable text. But screens are always so small
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
But enough about France ...
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
Not to be petty or anything, but just how slow of a news day does it have to be when a font change is considered newsworthy?
....
Even the prestigious -- and drearily pedestrian -- Wall Street Journal has an "offbeat article" column on the front page, with such heavy-hitting economic news as "pickle packing still not automated"
-kgj
-kgj
I'm amused and depressed by this post...we can sent hundreds of thousands of troops to liberate a country several times the size of Texas in a very short time...and the head people still don't realize that Courier faxes not worth a shit.
:-)
On a side note, many states have moved to flat license plate printing (at least for special plates.)
Here in Ohio we're gonna be getting a special plate that has a kids theme, and I've suggested that the numbers for the plate be in lower case comic sans, or lower case first grader font. I know the BMV is gonna holler and go crazy about it, but the law will be written so that the organization can dictate what the plate will look like and I take that as we can dictate the font as well.
I admit though, messing with the BMV is a personal past time.
But I mention this because states have been using upper case font since license plates were made, and it makes no sense. A lot of upper case letters are very similar to other upper case letters (in Ohio "D" as in dog "O" as in opera and the number zero are pretty similar looking.) By going to all lower case fonts, it would be much easier to figure out the license plate number from afar.
10 posts on Monday, 4 so far today... You work? I want your job...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Standardize for documents recieved, and you can OCR inbound letters.
Standardize for documents sent, and people who want to OCR your outbound letters can do it easily.
We have always been at work with Eurasia.
We have always used Times New Roman 14.
We already noticed a Times of a New Roman [Empire] coming, thank you for your information.
There you are, staring at me again.
I've been playing a LOT of SimCity 4 lately, and... for a second there... I forgot which monitor I was looking at!
-ave
...or maybe not.
The Agency I work with, which is part of a different cabinet-level department, uses Times New Roman, 13 point, which apparently is OK with their bosses since we are to use it even for correspondence to the Secretary and to Congress.
I still can't get them to let up on putting two spaces after every period. Perhaps that will finally die off when the last of us who ever used a typewriter regularly are gone.
We have one: NewSpeak.
Report to your telescreen.
how appropriate. But wouldn't be Dingbats the right font for Mr. Bush instead?
Nice history on Times Roman and Times New Roman here
Alex
Heisenberg may have been here
"US bans time-honored typeface"
What the heck?
1: The memo only applies to standardizing internal documentation for one department.
2: Courier is "time-honored" only in that it was the ubiquitous typeface for single-font devices like typewriters and ascii printers, as well as degrading nicely to dot matrix. Monospace is a pain to read in extended printed documents.
3: The article calls the new rules draconian, in spite of the fact that previously, Courier New 12 was mandated for all official documents!
You're all missing the point here - Linux as I see it doesn't have the exact font "Times New Roman" as part of the default install - (at least OpenOffice 1.1 on Fedora Core 1 shows now Times Roman font...)
So, what does this edict from the government mean for Linux desktop adoption in the Government?
The assumption that the entire federal government lays paralyzed while this hot issue is debated is absurd and frankly simple minded. I find it amazing that in a discussion list full of IT people fail to realize the importance of standardization. At first glance it may seem trivial, but having all government docs in the same font and formet saves time and energy and layout. It also projects a constistant image, which is more professional. In addition, if font type and size were not controlled, then US government docs could be posted in dingbats, chancery, or 8 point font depending on the whim of a random bureaucrat. Rules are what holds a large organization together. At face value, it may seem silly, but underneath it can streamline processes.
My two cents,
Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
The federal government has also standardized all correspondence to be printed on paper. This will cause considerably difficulty for the IRS during the transition. An IRS spokesman stated that their practice of using onion skins was simply to give taxpayers another reason to cry when the open a letter from our agency.
Well, I guess it is only appropriate that the government waited until the 21st century to abandon a typeface meant to look like a typewriter, in favor of a typeface that is almost synonymous with Microsoft Word.
The choice of 14-point type, too, is interesting: the standard is usually 12 points, but I guess the point size increase is meant to appeal to baby boomers' aging eyes.
For my money, I would have preferred a slightly less stuffy serifed face, like Bembo, or even Goudy. No less official-looking, but rounder and more accessible.
OK, I'd actually have preferred something even more modern, like a sans-serif font such as the emininently readable Gill Sans, but that would be asking too much of the Fed.
[Dean's transition team enters the Oval Office]
"Ok, Mr President, there are the emergency switches, that's the big red button, this button kills an underpaid worker somewhere in the US, and this is your computer, left behind by ex Vice President Dick Cheney."
"Let's take a looksee... Hm. Looks like he's got 3 trojan horses, two copies of Gator, more viruses than you can shake a redneck at, and a dozen porn dialers. And in the trash I see..."
[Jaws drop in amazement]
"...Everything"
"Everything"
[Cheney walks into the room]
"Hi guys, I just came for my... What?"
"The department of Homeland Security was the secret funder of SCO?"
"I um, err. Yes. I mean, no. No. Of course not. We wouldn't, uh..."
"Kim Jong-Il recieved nuclear weapons in exchange for running the Republican Party's vote solicitation call center?"
"No! How dare you attack our patriotism! All of those documents were in English Standard Measurements. They'd never figure out anything useful."
"All public school textbooks are supplied by Haliburton?"
"Their publishing arm gave the best price in a no-bid contract war, with full editorial control to the administration. America's minds need faith-based guidence to excel in a world market."
"You approved Gigli?"
"I was young! I needed the money! How...?"
"You never emptied your trash."
"What do I look like, a janitor? I pay someone good sub-minimum wages to do that."
"No, I mean you never emptied your trash. On your computer."
"You have to? I Uh... Err... Oh.
Poopies.
Hey-what's-that-over-there!?"
[Cheney slams his hand down on the big red button, and runs for his life]
The ______ Agenda
I CANNOT TOLERATE SERIFS. I think they should be banned from the known universe. Only to be discovered by archeologists in the distant future.
Sans Serif fonts are soooooooo much easier to read!
-Pete
> ZM"Qoo [...] try it using Wingdings
Unfortunately the '"' is scissors instead of box cutters. Where is the darn boxcutter character!
"Bluto's right, psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now, we could fight 'em with conventional weapons, but that could take years, and cost millions of lives. No, in this case, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."
"All decent men are ashamed of the government they live under." -- Mencken
I think Congress should have approved a national language the first time they voted on it. Then we'd all be speaking German!
Of course, I'm kidding. A national language is not needed. Businesses will continue to cater to their customers in whatever language they want to to get business. The IRS will continue to publish forms in as many languages as is needed to get people to pay up. Schools will continue to do what they have to to educate our children. Fine by me.
I've lived in a country with thee national languages and never had a problem. The US doesn't need to look any more racist and nationalist than we already do.
The only thing worse than an OS zealot is a font snob.
Times New Roman.
...)
I just can't fucking believe how blatant and, frankly, overt the New World Order is being about things.
Gotta love 'em. Theres nothing else to do. ')
(... shouldn't they at least have given a starving typographer the chance to bid for the problem, i dunno
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
See, it all makes sense now! "New Times Roman".
"New Times" == "Changing Times" == "New World Order"
And what kind of "Order"? Roman law, the law of Empire, the end of the Republic, the... the...
Well, at least they didn't choose Comic Sans. I'd hate to think what kind of world that font would be ushering in.
Read, L
*GAG*
> How about comics about fonts!
That is not a comic. Some kid just learned how to use Photoshop and his Wacom tablet (and not well, mind you). The title of the comic, however, is brutally appropriate -- it would definitely be a mercy killing to get rid of the author & artist.
It is not funny, is not well done at all, the drawing is sickening (except the hair, which is alright)... It doesn't even make any damned sense! Why the FUCK would a copier rip your arm off, and what does said copier ripping your arm off have ANYTHING to do with fonts?
Maybe it's in reference to the memo, as when I get some memos I would like to rip my own arm off & beat myself to death with it.
> Is this the US Government in action?!
What a slyly disguised troll. Oh, wait, it wasn't -- disguised. Come on, I can accept insults to the government, but the link has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING YOU SAID, except he mentioned the word "font" twice.
Oh, and if you moderators feel like modding me down, look at the link first -- My never-to-be-born first son can do better.
I'm amused and depressed by this post...we can sent hundreds of thousands of troops to liberate a country several times the size of Texas in a very short time
If you're talking about Iraq, it is only about 60% the size of Texas. If you're talking about Afganistan you're closer but it's still not as big as Texas is. So what country are you talking about?
Well, after reading through the article, reading all comments at 3+ and grinning at some jokes I still wonder - so what?
So a company/state/whatever decided that from now on they'll use a different typeface? So what? Who cares, except the little grey men in the gouverment? Why is this "News For Nerds?" Why is this "Stuff that Matters"?
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
I'm sure glad they put "more modern" in quotes, as Times New Roman was introduced in 1932!
Generally, we agree that the Postmodern period began sometime after the 2nd World War. So this makes Times New Roman a very Modern font.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
Interesting Idea howwever you forgot one thing. Uppercase was chosen for a reason. Not because it was distiguishable but because it was linear. if you don't understand what I mean look at the letters "g" "p" these two letters hang down below a line. So in the case of a liscence plate you would have to shirink the size of the letter to accomidate this change. Shrinking the font will make the liscence plater harder to read. But I do Understand what you are saying the "D" "0" and "O" do look very similar.
Contrary to popular belief, Times New Roman at size 14 takes up less space then Courier New at size 12. It's the proportional font width that reduces the length of documents. Hell, different fonts of the same size aren't necessarily the same size when displayed or printed. Don't compare apples to oranges.
My other sig is a Porsche.
Too justify their jobs and the amount of work they do, beaurocrats can probably increase the font to 15 point without much notice. This makes the document longer, ensuring job security by showing how much work they do. Consultants, pay attention here! You can make more money, with less work.
What high school, college or university student hasn't heard of this trick before?
So that would be approximately (14/12)^2 more trees brutally slain right... Give or take a forest.
And here I thought the government was only worried about killing people, now trees to?
WILL NOONE THINK OF THE SEEDLINGS!
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Yechh. Now we are only 50 years behind the "times" instead of 75.
16 point "Spooky" font
Naa... it's all in 14-point NSA Redacted Font, with random unredacted words just to peak your curiousity.
We have XXXX XXX alert X XXXX a XXXXXXXX XXX Laden XXXXXXX XX transgendered XXX XXXXX X to XXXXX XXX XXXX giraffes. Advise XXX XXXXX XX XXXXXX the XXXXX XXXX and XXXXXXXX.
I'm surprised you bring that up to ding BV fonts. What you say about BV Sans is true, but BV Sans Mono is simply, absolutely the best monospace font ever. It was clearly designed with the assistance of programmers.
:-).
If you can tell all of the following apart, you have a good font (and it's probably BV Sans Mono
|I!i1loO0({}).,`'"-_:;
I'm using it to type this comment right now.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
My mind goes numb just thinking of a conference room full of Gov't types arguing the merits of their "pet" fonts.
Be bringing the BIG coffee cup to that one.
"..... and next Bob will be doing a PowerPoint presentation on the exciting history of Lucinda 12, go ahead Bob......"
[head smacks table]
Ultra Top Secret - White
I believe the font problem is actually Apple's fault.
WYSIWYG was a big selling point of the Mac (remember, this was the era of DOS WordPerfect). The standard Mac screen resolution (though not, to the best of my knowledge, ever guaranteed by Apple) was 72 DPI. TextSize() was specified as taking the font size in number of *points*, not pixels.
When Microsoft ripped off a good deal of Apple work, they happened to use a similar API (using points at *all* for onscreen work). However, *unlike* Apple, they did not have control over the hardware in the wild.
The rest is just sordid history. Apple spent an absolutely stupid amount of time trying to hack around differences in onscreen/printed format with Display Postscript and a complicated imaging model as Classic Mac OS started to get old.
The point-based font rendering worked roughly on the Mac because, even though the entire non-font onscreen rendering scheme was pixel based, there was (at least originally) a 1:1 correspondence. On Windows, the API *also* used pixel-based positioning (*except* for a few random things like dialogs), but didn't have the corespondence.
To be honest, GTK+ is the first sane widget set I'd used. Instead of specifying pixels positions (which, unfortunately, can still be done), the widget library handles positioning most things -- you just pack widgets in where you'd like them, something like HTML. It's the first vaguely sane step to allow different screen resolutions.
May we never see th
Quick! Someone tell CmdrTaco. ;-)
If Steve Jobs was President is would've been chicago.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Isn't that a pretty commonly used font on all platforms? Not every Mac has TNR on it, and I'll never put IE there, even if it means getting it.
On
Is there a place on the web that panders to my lust for violence?
You're on it...right now.
...when we worked together on a project. She wrote up most of the documentation, then I copied it into LaTeX. She was stunned when she saw the two printed outputs side by side. There's Word, looking like someone held a transparent piece of paper to the screen and did a tracing, and LaTeX, looking... well, as its stated goal, beautiful.
She just stared at them for a while, and said, "Now I know why you despise Word so much. This is gorgeous." and never brought up Office again. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
And it never ceases to amaze -me- how that arrogance permeates our society. I'll have you know I am an American and I love my country, and that's why I fear for my country when I see it heading down the same path of previous great empires. The question is: will the arrogant sods like you pull your heads of the sand in time to help save her? Or will you continue to close your eyes and cover your ears to reality until there's nothing left?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
According to Steve Martin in The New Yorker (June 9, 1997) the Times New Roman font experienced a dearth of periods. One hopes that this issue has been addressed, lest the US Gov't go to war over the vital commodity.
from now on the official language of the United States will be Swedish, and everyone will have to change their underwear every half an hour. Of course, we must all wear our underwear on the outside, so the government will be able to check...
Just thought I'd point out that the Declaration of Independance was set in Caslon, by the rebellious colonies' premier typsetter.
At one point in old versions of Windows, you could type "NYC Q77" (New York City, and the flight number) and it would come up with a skull, a Star of David, some other evil symbol that I don't recall, a plane and two tower-like objects... :P
That is quite literally the most pathetic excuse for humor I've ever seen.
!hoD
> you read it deeply enough to retain that the word "font"
/., so that does not bother me.
No shit. I was reading it in the context of "font" being the subject, so of fucking course I would remember that. OTOH, I wasn't reading in the contxet of "arm" or "memo," so I do not know how many times it was mentioned. It's not that I was studying it intensely, but that I was trying to figure out if you had a point. Obviously not.
> These are minutes that you'll never get back and a memory you can never erase.
Well, I would have been reading some other nearly-as-stupid thing on
> Welcome to comedy, the joke is you.
1) That Comic was not comedy
2) That post was not comedy
3) There is no joke to speak of except the artist's lack of skill and your attempts to move the punchline outside of the comic itself -- You Fail.
4) No, you still are not funny.
Nice answers to my questions.. So what makes me an arrogant sod?
This guy is way out there
I have no idea why X, Microsoft, and you all seem to think points are important, especially when every other graphics call measures stuff in pixels.
It's because "Times Roman 12 pt rendered at 144 dpi" and "Times Roman 24 pt rendered at 72 dpi" have different character shapes. It's not a resolution issue--the character shapes themselves are different. Fonts don't just scale. Just knowing the pixel size simply isn't enough--you are going to get the wrong font if you just ask for pixel size.
If FLTK doesn't use both screen resolution and point size for font selection then FLTK is seriously broken and will give many people the wrong fonts--they'll usually still roughly look right, but they won't be exactly right.
I wish it weren't so complicated, but that's how fonts work. And fonts work that way because human eyes work that way. And it is elementary computer graphics stuff.
So what country are you talking about?
:-)
The one with the weapons of mass destruction of course.
The tower like objects were actually computer keyboards.
Seriously, try it in write.exe set to wingdings and increase the font size.
It does seem a bunch of people all came to the same mistaken conclusion that people wanted to see fonts the same physical size on all screens, but for some reason were uninterested in seeing any other graphics be the same physical size.
No, they simply understood that the semantically meaningful piece of information is whether a font is 12pt or 24pt. A 24pt font is wrong for running text even if its pixels happen to fit into the rectangle you want to fit them in. An MS Word or OpenOffice document using a 24pt font when viewed at 50% isn't the same as an MS Word or OpenOffice document using a 12pt font when viewed at 100%.
Applications are selecting fonts from a two-dimensional space when they select by point size; it's just that, historically, people happened to view documents only at 100% (machines were slow in the early 1980's) and that the toolkit implicitly assumed that you wanted screen resolution. But that assumption is no longer warranted. Like so many other things, X11 got this right from the start.
Quite awhile ago I fixed fltk to take the font size in pixels.
Then it sounds like you broke it. Any toolkit that only lets applications select fonts using a single parameter is incomplete and outdated. Font specifications require two size-related paramters: size and resolution. You can specify size in pixels or in points, but the pixel size is pretty meaningless, so people usually go for points.
Sounds like there are too many old people that are in denial about their need for reading glasses!
second, neither Q33 or Q77 are flight numbers of anything. flight numbers are NUMBERS
I wish someone would make a good website to dispel myths like this. Oh well, better not get my snopes up.
I think you just realized the real motive. The ink lobby has "donated to the president". Everyone knows how expensive ink cartridges are(or laser). Open Open Office (pun intended) and type something. You will see that the end number of pages is the same, but that Times New Roman 14 uses wider parts of letters (total width same including spacing). You will need to open it up to see what I mean. This will cost the governement millions paying for these extra cartridges. Fear the Ink Lobby!
Mod Wisely.
not sure if i should laugh or cry at the inane-ness. sigh...
And here I thought Microsoft Sans Serif was making inroads....
"Don't matter how New Age you get, old age is gonna kick your ass." - Utah Phillips
Because we apparently are entering into the New Roman Times. Surely any other font would fail to capture the feel of the new empire in the same way. For more information about the new empire, please see New American Century, which uses Times New Roman extensively.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Is there a reasonably straight-forward way to control the placement of "blobs" (charts, pictures, tables, etc.) in the flow of text in (La)TeX? I looked through the TeXbook some for an answer, but didn't manage to find anything. (I'm not a TeX expert by any means, just a chemistry major who wants to make pretty reports.) Should I look at the LaTeX layer for this? Some sort of gui like LyX? Thanks in advance to anyone with insights on this...
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Now why did I go and enroll for a Masters program next fall again?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
See? Chronic masturbation *does* lead to blindness!
And for classified documents, Wingdings.
Sorry.
Well, to be far, the poster wrote "we can sent" which might be taken to mean we have the ability to do so, not that we have. ;)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Single or multi-coloured text ?
But can you have information without configuration?
That's very perceptive of you Mr Stapleton and rather unexpected in a G Major
... the average US civil servant is getting older
Which is fine until Microsoft decided to modify the base metrics on Ariel. All my spreadsheets that I had carefully sized to fit on a single sheet of printer paper suddenly started using two sheets after my customers downloade some patches to Windows. Buried in the usual welter of security patches was an "upgrade" to several of the system fonts. I discovered this nasty little surprise when my customers started calling for tech support. That unilateral font change on Microsoft's part cost me several days to clean up the mess.
This is yet another attack on our sacred American government by those atheistical Frogs.
Liberate Paris Now!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The New Testament was written at least 100 years after Jesus died.
Are you familiar at all with the history of ancient Judea? Lets just say that they fought whole wars against hellenized Jews who spoke Greek. The traditional Jews won, and Hanukkah is the resulting holiday which commemorates the slaughter of the hellenized Jews.
This extremist attitude towards gentile culture ultimately led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by Emperor Vespatian. Decades of turmoil followed until the Jews revolted again in 132 AD. Emperor Hadrian simply eradicated the population of Jersualem, and prohibited all Jewish customs,language, culture, and laws. Roman culture was then imposed on the region and Judea ceased to exist until 1948.
Thus, when the bible was being written in 100 AD, it was not going to be written in any language of the Jews.
The Holy Lands changed very radically between the time Jesus was supposedly born and when the first gospels were written. Further, Jews were quite hostile to Roman and Greek culture and in Jerusalem itself neither would have been used by Jews except perhaps after 132.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Who own the rights on Times New Roman? Is that a copyright infringement to use it under an "alternative" operating system? Will someone be allowed to use Linux to compose official government documents?
Where is the link to send anthrax?
An administrative office in the US gov't decided to use a different font. Not only is this not news, but for them to frame it as "US Bans old font" is downright misleading and dispicable. Pretty much every office I've ever worked for has had a standard font. The Dept. of State decided to change fonts--and to a much more eye-pleasing one, I might add. Nobody is going to jail for using Courier Font in the USA. Not even a fine. This is basically just a "TPS Report" saying how they're gonna do the cover sheets from now on... new font. No big fucking deal. The USA has not banned any fonts. If you work for the Dept of State, start using Times new Roman. Shoulda been using it years ago anyway. Of course, if the title of the story had been "State Department Chooses New Font" the editors would have laughed the reporter out of the office... so it had to be more dramatic. "US bans..." ... yeh we've banned lots of stupid things that shouldn't be banned, but fonts are not yet one of them.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
This is all a conspiracy against ascii-art, as Microsoft is trying to wrest control of communications away from dialup BBS systems, the kinda frequented by those evil hackers.
With courier, we could view our ascii art in peace, but modern variable-spaced fonts don't allow us to effectively express our war plans, such as the ones shown below:
Lameness filter encountered. Post shortened.
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The Attorney General's office will now be using Fraktur as its official font.
would have been 'Operation American Lubrication'
Maybe my computer is broken, but it looks like this entire site is writen in times new roman
Computer Modern Roman 11. A fine font, and a fine font.
so I use the same font. It's freaking HUGE.
But maybe GWB and company will notice when they say "this intelligence is unreliable".
The revolution will NOT be televised.
God, I can't believe that none of the 12 pedants who replied to you could be bothered to correct your mistake.
If the govt was really serious about open communication they would have used Bitstream Vera Serif....most /.rs should know why!!!
I use quadruple rot13. Damn near unbreakable, I say!
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Fallacy. 10 Point fallacy.
No, only diplomatic notes. It says so in the article.
That should be your first clue.
No. The U.S. clearly values a uniform, professional and modern appearance in its diplomatic correspondence. The article indicates that pressure for this change had been coming from many directions. In general, the government achieves economy by carefully standardizing. Failure to standardize is usually a false economy.
Times New Roman is one of the most common typefaces in business correspondence. It's available on Windows PCs. The U.S. wanted to appear modern and businesslike, not clever and arty.
Rumor has it that the new U.S. Budget Proposal was written entirely in Comic Sans.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Actually, it isn't...it's just that Windoze displays all fonts larger than other operating systems. A frequent problem when designing web pages that will also be viewed by Mac and *nix users.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Times Roman 14pt: " a crisper, cleaner, more modern look"
Whose secretary made this decision?
RTFM; please, I beg you.
What font did they use for the memo?
So the order stating, "DO NOT ATTACK IRAQ" was incorrectly OCRd as "DONUT ATTACK IRAQ" explaining the large amount of Krispy Kremes dumped on Kabul that one time.
When I was 9 years old Times New Roman was one of my favorite fonts. Along with wingdings.
But now that I've been using computers for a long time I much prefer Sans Serifs like Helvetica or Arial! They are so much easier to read and don't look so gothic.
Although I did find this:
"According to most studies, sans serif fonts are more difficult to read. For this reason, they are used most often for short text components such as headlines or captions."
I wonder who conducts these studies. Do you find Times New Roman easier to read?
To counter the US dominance shown through the font size 14. China, EU, India and Russia have first time agreed jointly to counter the US dominance by agreeing to use font size 16. The US is reported to be contemplating to do a pre-emptive strike by increasing it font-size. However, details of the new size are classified.
That's in line with what I was remembering: in the early first century middle, the "lingua franca" was Aramaic. Jews would be speaking Hebrew amongst themselves, but would almost definately know at least 1 other language for dealing with gentiles.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Heh, that "other evil symbol" is a thumbs-up.
Repeal the DMCA!