By Yannis Haralambous
Translated by P. Scott Horne
First Edition
September 2007
Pages: 1037
ISBN 10: 0-596-10242-9 |
ISBN 13: 9780596102425
(Average of 2 Customer Reviews)
This reference is a fascinating and complete guide to using fonts and typography on the Web and across a variety of operating systems and application software. Fonts & Encodings shows you how to take full advantage of the incredible number of typographic options available, with advanced material that covers everything from designing glyphs to developing software that creates and processes fonts.
Full Description
The era of ASCII characters on green screens is long gone, and industry leaders such as Apple, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle have adopted the Unicode Worldwide Character Standard. Yet, many software applications and web sites still use a host of standards, including PostScript, TrueType, TeX/Omega, SVG, Fontlab, FontForge, Metafont, Panose, and OpenType. This book explores each option in depth, and provides background behind the processes that comprise today's "digital space for writing":
- Part I introduces Unicode, with a brief history of codes and encodings including ASCII. Learn about the morass of the data that accompanies each Unicode character, and how Unicode deals with normalization, the bidirectional algorithm, and the handling of East Asian characters.
- Part II discusses font management, including installation, tools for activation/deactivation, and font choices for three different systems: Windows, the Mac OS, and the X Window System (Unix).
- Part III deals with the technical use of fonts in two specific cases: the TeX typesetting system (and its successor, W, which the author co-developed) and web pages.
- Part IV describes methods for classifying fonts: Vox, Alessandrini, and Panose-1, which is used by Windows and the CSS standard. Learn about existing tools for creating (or modifying) fonts, including FontLab and FontForge, and become familiar with OpenType properties and AAT fonts.
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Book details
First Edition: September 2007
ISBN: 0-596-10242-9
Pages: 1037
Average Customer Reviews: (Based on 2 Reviews)
Featured customer reviews
Great reference, but some bits are no longer up-to-date, January 14 2008
Yannis Haralambous is well known in the TeX community, not only for his work on Omega, a proposed successor to TeX, but also for his numerous contributions as a developer of fonts for various languages. It only seems fitting that Yannis has undertaken the task of writing a comprehensive book on the topic of fonts and encodings.
This book is quite impressive, not only regarding its size, but also regarding the broad range of topics covered as well as the depth of the coverage and the level of detail. It covers everything you ever wanted to know about fonts and encodings, including the messy bits you don't really want to know.
Considering the size of the book, it is understandable that several years have passed from the time of writing the original manuscript in French to the publication of the English translation. Unfortunately, because of thi delays, some chapters are not as up-to-date as one could have wished.
While this is not much of a problem for most of the reference chapters about encodings or font file formats, it is very regrettable for the TeX community that the chapter about fonts in TeX has completely missed or overlooked some very important developments of the last few years, such as pdfTeX, the Latin Modern and TeX Gyre fonts, or XeTeX (which is a TeX engine that offers support for Unicode and OpenType fonts).
To be fair, one has to admit that the success and importance of these recent developments in the TeX world could not have been foreseen at the time of writing. Nevertheless, it could have been possible to include some additions and/or revisions by the time of the English translation of 2007.
It is rather unfortunate that the opportunity for updates was missed, which would have made the book even more useful and valuable for TeX users. Despite these shortcomings, the book remains a valuable resource for anyone deeply interested in font technology and encodings.
Backdate your computer knowledge, October 12 2007
I've learned quite a lot about "the way things are" in computing by reading the first 50 pages of this entertaining book. Haramlambous' work is translated by P. Scott Horne. I'm not sure what language the original work is in, but this is a very readable book that covers the fundamental tryst between fonts and encodings. Encodings help us understand characters while fonts make those characters familiar glyphs (letters and symbols).
Haramlambous has shed light on every corner of this problem. He starts with a refresher in type setting and a primer in the language of fonts. From there, he discusses the history of encodings including an illustrative expose comparing the punchcard and EBCDIC and how they share the same encoding scheme.
As a first edition, there are plenty of errata issues that need to be addressed, but this massive tome will be a long-lived reference in my library.
Media reviews
"I cannot think of a technical book that I have enjoyed more in the last decade than Yannis Haralambous’ new Fonts & Encodings from O’Reilly...It is somewhat surprising to me to find a technical book where I think it would be more productive to have the book in my library rather than try to locate the information on the WWW. The local technical bookstores nowadays have computer sections that are full of product manuals and certification courses: finding a book that even has a sense of history and enjoyment of the subject matter is water in the desert."
-- Rick Jelliffe, xml.com
"I have been super-interested in fonts and typography for most of my life...So I approached "Fonts & Encoding" with the sense that I already knew much of what there was to know about fonts. Boy was I wrong! It would be fair to say I was just blown away by the wealth of technical detail that Haralambous has put into the book...I can't think of another book I've seen to compare this to. Certainly within the area of font implementation, there's nothing else like it that I'm aware of. Overall, I rate this an exceptional achievement."
-- Russ Kay, Senior Reviews Editor at ComputerWorld
"Fonts & Encodings by Yannis Haralambous is about as complete a book as you will find on any computer topic, bar none. Rarely are expectations exceeded when it comes to anything in life, but this book goes way way way beyond what any other fonts/encodings book has done in the past. Packing 1000+ pages of content into this text, the author discusses all the relevant topics as hand, from history to font creation and specification to math involved in creating these typefaces we use every day... truly to infinity and beyond!!! If you are a developer or user of fonts and want to learn more about the history of how difficult and non-trivial even the most basic characters were to get on your browser window, this book is for you. If you need this pertinent information and are in the business of creating fonts yourself, this book is for you. If you are just interested in the topic of one of the most basic computer technologies, this book is (you guessed it) for you!!! With 14 chapters and 6 appendices, this book truly puts the U in Unicode and is a must read for anyone that wants to learn more about this exciting topic!!"
-- Daniel McKinnon, Amazon.com
"There has never been a book like this before, a complete examination of font systems and their encodings...Anyone who has a serious interest in font technology and the technical uses of type should own a copy of this monumental book. (Reprinted with
permission from The Kleper Report on Digital Publishing, copyright 2007, Graphic Dimensions, Lauderdale by the Sea, FL.)"
-- Michael Kleper, The Kleper Report
"Until now, there has been no central reference that developers could turn to for help. Each new font (PostScript, TrueType, OpenType, etc.) required starting anew and learning the peculiarities from scratch . But a new 1000-page book by Yannis Haralambous, entitled Fonts & Encodings has just appeared and it's the first real tie-line to sanity in the jungle of glyphs. It explains fonts, formats, and encodings in tremendous detail; along with elaborate discussions of tools. It is the defining book for technical users of fonts...This is the book to get if you ever have to do anything with fonts. It'll give you hope; real hope."
-- Andrew Binstock, Binstock on Software
"Fonts & Encodings is a very interesting book, in that it contains a lot of information that is not easily found anywhere else. It deals with fonts from a historical aspect, such as with regard to typesetting, but also gets into the algorithms, and software that can create fonts. It contains a lot of good examples, as well as a lot of information on working with fonts. It has a good tutorial on Unicode, and its history as well. It is meant to be a bridge between old traditions, and new technologies, and I think that it fares on that point very well. If you have an interest in fonts, and how they work; perhaps to begin to create them, then Fonts & Encodings is a good framework in which to begin."
-- T. Michael Testi, Blogcritics Magazine
"In this most excellent book, the reader is offered a certain number of tools to confront various problems with fonts. Here, the author does not concern himself with all aspects of the electronic document, just those pertaining to characters and glyphs that diirectly and inevitably affect encodings and fonts."
-- John Vacca, Amazon.com
"...it is the best single source I have seen of practical information about typography and its many encoding systems. Highly recommended a library acquisition. "
-- Major Keary, Book News
"Leafing through the pages I find myself thinking that it's such a shame I didn't have this book all those years ago when we started writing my company's font engine. It's a very dense book, but doesn't feel like it. The clear and meaningful descriptions of concepts and the amount of detail is excellent. I can't think of anything that could be added and, equally important, anything that should be taken away. Well worth diving into if you're in any way involved in using fonts. "
-- David Thomas, Edinburgh Perl Mongers
"If you have even the most remote interest in typography and want to look at the incredible nuts and bolts behind this fascinating technology, this book really is the reference to come to."
-- Robert Pritchett, MacCompanion
"I found this book to answer every single one, plus so many more, of my million questions on the subject. Mr. Haralambous can only astound the reader with his amazing ability to make information so much fun. Bravo; can’t wait for the next O'Reilly resourcebook!"
-- Alain B. Renaud, TCM Reviews
"Fonts & Encodings is a priceless resource. Far from being “just” a technical reference, it clearly and concisely explains every aspect of using, editing, and creating digital fonts — including exactly how to use font editors and conversion utilities...Trust us: if you care about fonts, look into this book. Besides being authoritative and exhaustively complete, it’s a joy to read."
-- Jay Nelson, Design Tools Monthly
