From: Maxim Iorsh (iorsh_at_nonexisting.hamakor.org.il)
Date: Mon 31 May 2004 - 11:06:36 IDT
Hello!
First of all, thank you for the responses - while there is no absolute
consensus, which would release me from the necessity to make the decision, many
good points have been raised, and the whole picture is now much clearer. Below I
will try to summarize your comments and suggestions, together with my responses.
--Changing the size
1. A suggestion has been made to make two parallel sets of fonts: one to keep up
with the current size, and another one to keep up with Windows. Sadly, this is
something I can't do. The praised Windows has three different David fonts (you
guessed right - having three different sizes) and four Miriams. I'm afraid
that's too much. If I'm wrong in my stubbornness - somebody can create that
additional set, and that would be the same except that its maintenance wouldn't
be my headache.
2. There were numerous suggestions to match somehow automatically between Culmus
and Windows fonts, with regards to both names and size. I'd like to note that,
for example, the font "David" has the same name both here and there, and I
believe this would greatly complicate that automation - especially when we think
of transition both inside (change fonts when importing from Word) and outside
(changing fonts back when exporting to Word). My suggestion is that I change all
font names to include the suffix "CLM", what is quite a good practice in font
production. OOo has its heuristics, which can surely deal with this, and other
Linux application seem to standartize around fontconfig, which also allows such
a change to proceed smoothly. This way one will always know that "David CLM" is
Culmus, "David MF" is Masterfont, etc.
3. The numerical size of the Hebrew fonts doesn't seem to have any real basis.
In some sources I have old font sizes for typesetting machines are in
millimeters, and this makes size 12 a monstrous one. In addition, Windows fonts
themselves don't adhere to any standard common height. I prepared two files:
http://culmus.sf.net/davidsmall.pdf and http://culmus.sf.net/davidlarge.pdf,
which both present a text in size 12, which is the default for most
applications. Please take a look at both (or better print them on a paper, if
possible), and decide which one is better. The criterion, that the default font
must look good in standard office correspondence, without need to change, seems
to me very important. I perssonally like the small one, but maybe I represent a
minority.
4. As I already stressed, if there is a change - it will affect all fonts. In
the previous example I used size reduction of ~16% (size 12 turned to 10, 72 to
60, etc.). This change will not bring the perfect solution: Culmus fonts will
become *almost* like common Windows (~1-2% larger), and much smaller (~13-14%)
than Guttman's. But unfortunately this is something I can't avoid. It would be
impossible to stick forever to each burp Windows makes.
--Design considerations
5. Numerous people expressed concern about relation between Hebrew and Latin
glyphs. I'm going to make Latin glyphs, whenever present, scale according to the
Hebrew ones. Whoever wishes to create a highly mixed document, will have to
either accept the default Latin letters coming with the chosen Hebrew font, or
to hand-tune each foreign word. The vast majority of users either don't need
Latin letters at all inside Hebrew text, or the default choice will be fine for
them. Having given up the strict correspondence to Windows, it would now be
ridiculous to make each font correspond nicely to its Latin counterpart.
6. David font is now too dense - there is little distance between lines. I know
that, and intend to fix - see examples from the 3rd paragraph for the fixed
layout. In general, the rule will be like this: the distance between lines (with
ascenders/descenders and serifs ignored) will be equal to the height of the
letters.
To summarize, currently I think that changing the names of the fonts (David ->
David CLM, etc.) and reducing the default size (which will become like in
http://culmus.sf.net/davidsmall.pdf) will be a serious and irritating change,
but this is the way to solve all problems once and forever and avoid need of
further changes, which would be more and more difficult as the time passes by.
I would be glad to hear your comments, and I apologize for being absent during
the entire holidays.
Best regards,
Maxim.
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