July 2008 Archives

Hebrew typography got an encouraging boost in the arm with the advent of Adone InDesign ME Creative Suite, known as "CS" (Adobe is up to CS3 already) and MicroSoft/Adobe OpenType font format. Now, the sky is the limit for excellent Hebrew Typography.

OpenType replaces all the strengths and advantages of Adobe PostScript and Apple/MicroSoft TrueType, plus adds many new and powerful aspects never realized before in typesetting.

This is because OpenType features powerful contextual analysis and replacement routines, making it a step above the flat two-dimensional typeface software of the past.

Just like mathematical vector-based outline typeface was light years ahead of the now defunct bitmap font technology (so much so that Adobe won a landmark ruling in US Federal Court to legally protect its PostScript fonts, which the US Copyright Office refused to apply to bitmap font technology, which was considered as "merely typeface data describing letter forms"),

so, too, OpenType typeface software technology is a quantum leap ahead compared to the limited Adobe PostScript and Apple/MicroSoft TrueType typeface software technology.

(I recall that I had a lengthy correspondence with the head of the US Copyright Office, spanning two years, from 1989 until 1991, regarding whether my applications to the Library of Congress' US Copyright Office in Washington, D.C., for various sets of Adobe PostScript fonts were acceptable or not. The US Copyright Office wanted me to add a disclaimer to my applications, because without such a disclaimer, this would set a major precedence and imply typeface software was in deed subject to US Copyright, if it was in the outline software format.

I refused to add the disclaimers, and argued that a typeface software program was similar to telling a story. Two people can tell the same story, but one person can choose slightly different words, with different intonations. Similarly, two typeface software programs can describe or render the same typeface design, but one program can contain differently placed bezier or vector control points. Hence, these two typeface software programs are not the same, and are subject to US Copyright laws, just as books containing words are "intellectual expressions", and subject to US Copyright laws.)

Until know, a Hebrew typeface contained Hebrew character glyphs, dagesh points, nikud vowel symbols, taamim cantorial marks, meteg accent marks, and other diacritic elements to indicated certain grammatical rules. OpenType paved the way to remove the skilled craftsmanship from the joint efforts of the operating system, the application program, and the knowledgeable Hebrew typesetter to the very font itself. From now on, a well-crafted OpenType Biblical Hebrew font would contain all this skilled craftsmanship, and be the result of the talented type designer.

In deed, this is a gigantic breakthrough in Hebrew typography.

Back a couple of decades, when Hebrew on computers was still a messy subject, I met Israel Seldowitz virtually. He had studied with Henri Friedlander, the great Israeli calligrapher and font designer (most famously, Hadassah), and come back to the States to start up a company to market fonts and font software. Here we are some two decades later, and that company, FontWorld, has been the sponsor of the Hebrew Type blog. Now we have captured Israel as a blogger. I will be moving this blog to a new design soooooooon (as I've been saying since I wiped out most of the customized design in an accident a couple of years ago), but not so soon that it made sense to wait any further before letting Israel start writing. His first post follows.

The Hebrew Typography pages are sponsored by FontWorld, featuring Middle Eastern editions of Adobe-ME software, including InDesign-ME, PhotoShop-ME, Acrobat Pro-ME, and the NEW Adobe Illustrator-ME. www.fontworld.com/arabic/adobeme.html.