Problem with Bodoni fonts: ATM? Font?
Echo the Wonder Tube
Hi! I'm working at a startup company without any sort of legacy docs
in our Pubs department. Marketing purchased Bodoni for body text
items and Futura heading items. To be consistent throughout the
company and build a "corporate identity", we've tried these out in our
tech documents.
The problem is that these fonts (the Bodoni especially) look just God
awful. They looked really bad on-screen: laddered, chunky, and just
awful. Printed, the Bodoni has thick verticals, giving the page an Op
Art appearance, blending text and bar codes into the same space.
These fonts are managed by ATM 4.0 on NT 4.0 Workstation and we're
using them with Frame 5.5.2. I can't find any updates to ATM 4.0 on
the Adobe Web site, so I assume I've got the best and latest standard
ATM installation.
Does anyone have any ideas on this? I've messed around with the
"Smooth edges on screen fonts" option in the Plus tab of the Display
settings. This *changes* things, but certainly doesn't make them look
any better: the font display in Frame becomes so heavy that you can't
tell bolded text from plain text.
I also tried creating PDF files, one with our existing Times New Roman
style and one with Bodoni. This looks fairly OK, even though it's
still not something I'd want to use as my work display font. But
we're not sure if what's showing up in the PDF files is even Bodoni!
I'm really desperate for some kind of solution. Is the problem NT's
awful font handling capabilities? Can this be rectified by using ATM
4.0 Deluxe instead of the standard issue ATM? Coul it just be that
Bodoni's a crappy looking font for on-screen display?
PS: There's one thing that we found that's kinda weird. Try going
into the Printers control panel and display Properties for the Acrobat
PDFWriter, then go to the PDFWriter tab, and click the Fonts button to
go to the Acrobat PDFWriter Font Embedding dialog. You can set it to
embed all fonts into the PDF or to embed only certain ones. You can
also restrict the embeddable fonts by type (or "subset"): Type1 or
TrueType. Type1 is greyed out for our machines. Why the hell would
*Adobe* have problems dealing with Type1 fonts: Adobe's own damn font
technology!?
OK, thanks for ANY useful input you may have! You can e-mail me
(remove SPAM-IS-SHITE from my e-mail address) or post here. All
privately posted replies will be summarized and reposted, unless you
request otherwise.
Thanks!
D. Wright
> in our Pubs department. Marketing purchased Bodoni for body text
> items and Futura heading items. To be consistent throughout the
Ack! Here's a solution: fire your marketing division. Bodoni was never
meant to be used for body text, the stroke contrast being too high for the
eye to read easily. And certainly using Times New Roman was no way to
forge a unique corporate identity in the first place.
I personally am not into it, but if you are looking for a body text face
with the legibility of an oldstyle/transitional but some Bodoni-like
features, use URW Palladio.
The problem of displaying high-contrast and either subtly or highly
serifed fonts onscreen (i.e. at low resolution) is not one any version of
ATM or any other antialiasing tool will solve... there just aren't enough
pixels to do it well. For web site creation, the solution is to use your
corporate font in a logo and perhaps in headings, but leave the viewer to
read body text in her own default font, which, if she is smart, she will
have chosen for onscreen legibility.
Rodney Sauer
Echo the Wonder Tube wrote:
> Hi! I'm working at a startup company without any sort of legacy docs
> in our Pubs department. Marketing purchased Bodoni for body text
> items and Futura heading items. To be consistent throughout the
> company and build a "corporate identity", we've tried these out in our
>
> tech documents.
One problem with Bodoni is that since IBM uses a version of it, people
buy it for corporate look-alike documents. Unfortunately, standard Adobe
Bodoni is not very good as a text face. IBM uses a different version
(Berthold Bodoni, I think) which is a much better font, still not much
good for on-screen use, though. ITC recently put out a series of
Bodonis, different fonts for different type sizes, and that or the
Berthold version are better. Or avoid the font for all but advertising
and brochure copy, where it will be printed to an imagesetter to glossy
paper, it does look good when treated with extra care.
For on-line or on-screen documentation, try using Futura as the text
face and Bodoni as display...
> I also tried creating PDF files, one with our existing Times New Roman
>
> style and one with Bodoni. This looks fairly OK, even though it's
> still not something I'd want to use as my work display font. But
> we're not sure if what's showing up in the PDF files is even Bodoni!
It should be easy to tell if it's Bodoni by printing it. Type in a word
in large size, including the lower-case "g" and capital "R" and see if
they are the same as the Bodoni you get direct from FrameMaker. These
letters are fairly different between Times Roman, Bodoni, and the
"default" font that Acrobat uses.
--
Rodney Sauer
rod...@rddconsultants.com
RDD Consultants, Inc. (Technical composition, illustration)
Pianist and Director of the Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra
http://www.csn.net:80/~stermitz/dance/MA_Home.html
Nightman
Echo the Wonder Tube wrote:
>
> Hi! I'm working at a startup company without any sort of legacy docs
> in our Pubs department. Marketing purchased Bodoni for body text
As iterated already: A phenomenally BAD choice. If you want something
angular and formal looking, but still readable, try a version of
Baskerville. And another question: which version of Bodoni & which
foundry was this?
> items and Futura heading items. To be consistent throughout the
Frankly, that seems like a very odd pairing to me--a heavy square font &
a thin very sharp & diagonal font? I suppose I might change my mind if I
had samples in front of me but I think its a weird, ugly choice.
> The problem is that these fonts (the Bodoni especially) look just God
> awful. They looked really bad on-screen: laddered, chunky, and just
That seems odd. Futura may be a weird font but I'd expect any good
quality issue of it to look decent as far as display quality, which
leads me to ask...
> These fonts are managed by ATM 4.0 on NT 4.0 Workstation and we're
> using them with Frame 5.5.2. I can't find any updates to ATM 4.0 on
> the Adobe Web site, so I assume I've got the best and latest standard
> ATM installation.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas on this? I've messed around with the
> "Smooth edges on screen fonts" option in the Plus tab of the Display
PLUS tab? that's basically for screen display of TrueType fonts, isn't
it? What about the smooth edges onscreen of ATM? Or is that not
supported for NT? ATM deluxe is "deluxe" because it can manage
installation of truetype fonts as well as act as an overall font
organizer -- not because it was functionally "better" as far as I know.
Try increasing your font cache size (double it), making sure that font
smoothing is turned on in ATM and for heaven's sake ... reboot windows
afterward!
> 4.0 Deluxe instead of the standard issue ATM? Coul it just be that
> Bodoni's a crappy looking font for on-screen display?
So is the desire primarily for on-screen use or for printed matter?
Becuase if it's for onscreen display you'd better get the best
screen-display fonts you can. Adobe offers some fonts adjusted just for
this:
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/webtype/main.html
Myriad Web is even something like Futura ... certainly it and Minion
make a better pair than Futura & Bodoni!
> TrueType. Type1 is greyed out for our machines. Why the hell would
> *Adobe* have problems dealing with Type1 fonts: Adobe's own damn font
> technology!?
Sounds like you've got postscript problems. Are you sure your ATM
installed correctly? That you're using an NT version not a 95 version?
It almost sounds like the postscript support is disabled on your system.
I know this will make no logical sense, since you're having so many
difficulties, try installing an imaginary postscript printer & seeing if
anything changes.
Nightman
David Lemon
In article <35292c08....@nntp.best.com>,
rher...@relevanceSPAM-IS-SHITE.net (Echo the Wonder Tube) wrote:
> The problem is that these fonts (the Bodoni especially) look just God
> awful. They looked really bad on-screen: laddered, chunky, and just
> awful. Printed, the Bodoni has thick verticals, giving the page an Op
> Art appearance, blending text and bar codes into the same space.
A slight twist on what several others have already noted: Bodoni needs
careful handling to work well (Giambattista did it quite nicely). There
are a variety of interpretations of the Bodoni design available; the two
that probably work best for text are Berthold's Bodoni Book and ITC's
Bodoni 12. The others out there have their points, but generally work
better at larger sizes.
> ...
> Does anyone have any ideas on this? I've messed around with the
> "Smooth edges on screen fonts" option in the Plus tab of the Display
> settings. ...Type1 is greyed out for our machines. Why the hell would
> *Adobe* have problems dealing with Type1 fonts: Adobe's own damn font
> technology!?
These two comments point to a technical problem, distinct from the
esthetic problem you've already heard about: You're not using Type 1. When
NT4 was released there was no ATM available for it, so Microsoft set up a
Type 1 font "installer" which quietly turns your fonts into TrueType.
Although it does a plausible job, no automatically generated font is going
to display as well as a well-made one, format notwithstanding. Since you
have ATM 4, you don't need this nonsense. Remove the fonts, and install
them only through ATM, and you should notice a significant difference.
- David Lemon
type nerd
Brick quiz whangs jumpy veldt fox.
Lisa Leone
In article <typenerd-070...@oak-usr3-42-234.dialup.slip.net>
type...@slip.net (David Lemon) writes:
> the two
> that probably work best for text are Berthold's Bodoni Book and ITC's
> Bodoni 12
Carnegie Mellon uses Bauer Bodoni for everything and I've always
thought it looked quite nice at a variety of sizes. However, someone
told me that it was a custom font and cannot be used by others. I don't
know.
____________________________________________________________
Lisa Leone
Technical Writer, Gordian
http://www.gordian.com
Charles Hedrick
rher...@relevanceSPAM-IS-SHITE.net (Echo the Wonder Tube) writes:
>Hi! I'm working at a startup company without any sort of legacy docs
>in our Pubs department. Marketing purchased Bodoni for body text
>items and Futura heading items. To be consistent throughout the
>company and build a "corporate identity", we've tried these out in our
>tech documents.
>The problem is that these fonts (the Bodoni especially) look just God
>awful. They looked really bad on-screen: laddered, chunky, and just
>awful. Printed, the Bodoni has thick verticals, giving the page an Op
>Art appearance, blending text and bar codes into the same space.
There's about a dozen different versions of Bodoni. Some have the
property you describe. Some don't. I doubt it's ATM. What exact
font do you have? Can you get away with moving from one Bodoni to
another Bodoni? If so, look at www.itcfonts.com and get a copy of ITC
Bodoni 12. That seems to be the best Bodoni for text. There's
another variant for display, I believe ITC Bodoni 72, and a third
variant for very small type. If you go with ITC Bodoni you'll want to
get all of the variants that apply to your document style.
There are a couple of other versions that are close (Berthold Bodoni
Old Face, and I believe a version from FontFont), but most Bodoni's
have the exaggerated contrast you describe. I believe they're
appropriate for display, not text.
IBM's corporate font is Berthold Bodoni Antiqua. A number of computer
companies seem to think it would be a nice idea to copy that. Not
quite the approach I'd take for "corporate identity", since at least
to me it suggests a certain lack of originality.
Thomas...@sietec.de
D. Wright wrote:
: Ack! Here's a solution: fire your marketing division. Bodoni was never
: meant to be used for body text, the stroke contrast being too high for the
: eye to read easily.
"Nightman" wrote:
: As iterated already: A phenomenally BAD choice. If
These people who condemn Bodoni for text usage in so highly convinced
words must have quite low-resolution printers. I love Bodoni as a text
typeface, I even used it (Bauer Bodoni) for my Ph.D. thesis.
There are some really good books printed in Bodoni and it is a delight
to read them. It is certainly nonsense to stamp it badly readable.
You should use a 600 dpi resolution printer though, to render the fine
serifs well.
Thomas Wolff
to...@computer.org
D. Wright
> D. Wright wrote:
> : Ack! Here's a solution: fire your marketing division. Bodoni was never
> : meant to be used for body text, the stroke contrast being too high for the
> : eye to read easily.
>
> These people who condemn Bodoni for text usage in so highly convinced
> words must have quite low-resolution printers. I love Bodoni as a text
My mail was very clear as to Bodoni's problem: the very high stroke
contrast distracts the eye from the text. I use, by the way, a 1200dpi
printer.
I do not mean to imply there is no good use of Bodoni. As a headline face
it is wonderful precisely because it is distracting. And several posters
after me pointed out variants on the Bodoni design (e.g. Bodoni Book)
exist which have been redesigned for better legibility.
The moral of this story is: a beautiful, well-designed font is not
necessarily a good body text face. I am pretty strict, and would go so
far as to say that a "modern" should never be employed for body text. But
even if you do not go this far, you should keep in mind that legibility is
more important than aesthetics in this context.
> There are some really good books printed in Bodoni and it is a delight
Really? I would be delighted to have a citation. I collect examples of
beautiful typography (e.g. The New Yorker, The Economist, and -- with
respect to font selection -- Hofstadter's Goedel Escher Bach book) and
would be much impressed to see a successful use of Bodoni in body text.
Richard M. Alderson III
In article <Pine.OSF.3.96b.9804...@saul2.u.washington.edu>
"D. Wright" <ich...@u.washington.edu> writes:
>The moral of this story is: a beautiful, well-designed font is not necessarily
>a good body text face. I am pretty strict, and would go so far as to say that
>a "modern" should never be employed for body text. But even if you do not go
>this far, you should keep in mind that legibility is more important than
>aesthetics in this context.
Giambattista Bodoni, as I understand it, was designing text faces, as was
Firmin Didot. I've seen very good printing done with moderns.
>> There are some really good books printed in Bodoni and it is a delight
>Really? I would be delighted to have a citation. I collect examples of
>beautiful typography (e.g. The New Yorker, The Economist, and -- with respect
>to font selection -- Hofstadter's Goedel Escher Bach book) and would be much
>impressed to see a successful use of Bodoni in body text.
See if you can get hold of the Hoefler Type Foundry's _Muse #1_, which is an
excellent piece of typography, done in Hoefler's Didot fonts. Or get hold of
any early 20th century math book--very often done in a modern. I can't, of
course, guarantee that they will be Bodoni fonts, but they look crisp and clean
in a way that mathematics seems to call for. (After all, Computer Modern was
based on Monotype Modern 8A--of which I have a showing by a college-town print
shop from the 1940s.)
--
Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
what not.
--J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_
Thomas...@sietec.de
In article <Pine.OSF.3.96b.9804...@saul2.u.washington.edu>
"D. Wright" <ich...@u.washington.edu> writes:
: >The moral of this story is: a beautiful, well-designed font is not necessarily
: >a good body text face. I am pretty strict, and would go so far as to say that
: >a "modern" should never be employed for body text. But even if you do not go
: >this far, you should keep in mind that legibility is more important than
: >aesthetics in this context.
Certainly, and that's what I feel of Bodoni (if printed with quality), which
is why I used it for my thesis.
alde...@netcom.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
: Giambattista Bodoni, as I understand it, was designing text faces, as was
: Firmin Didot. I've seen very good printing done with moderns.
I'm pleased to hear I'm not the only one who noticed such books.
I wrote:
: >> There are some really good books printed in Bodoni and it is a delight
: >Really? I would be delighted to have a citation. I collect examples of
: >beautiful typography (e.g. The New Yorker, The Economist, and -- with respect
: >to font selection -- Hofstadter's Goedel Escher Bach book) and would be much
: >impressed to see a successful use of Bodoni in body text.
Sorry, I forgot to browse my bookshelf at home again. I only remember one
Bodoni printed book which I own. It is a biography of Vita Sackville-West
(don't recall the author, though). Mine is in German and I don't know if the
English version is in Bodoni as well.
alde...@netcom.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
: See if you can get hold of the Hoefler Type Foundry's _Muse #1_, which is an
Christopher Lollini
Folks,
I'm working on a doc revision in Frame 5.5 and am having difficulty
aligning the rev bars related to text within an anchored frame with the
rev bars related to the body text. Is there an easy fix for this, or is
this just a Frame quirk?
Chris