11 Feb
2021
11 Feb
'21
5:55 p.m.
It's important to know the difference between a font and a typeface.
A typeface isn't protectable. That's the representation of the actual
letters on the printed page (or screen in our case). George was free
to scan the output of the phototypesetter.
The font is the process to make these (in modern days small programs
that generate the letters). This is what can be protected by copyright.
The name can be protected by trademark as well. HELVETICA is a
trademark (now) of Mergenthaler Linotype. Arial is a similar typeface
but that name is owned by Monotype.
Straying a little from the topic, a real Linotype machine is a joy to
behold. They have one at the Baltimore Museum of Science and Industry
that they still fire up weekly. What it does is integrate a keyboard
with the actual fonts (molds for molten lead) and casts a line of type
(hence the name) at a time. After it does so, the molds go back into
sorted hoppers for further use.
To answer the other question about George Toth at JHU. He was our
documetnation guy and went off to work for Airinc or something. I've
not heard from him in a long time. We continued to use his verset and
a versatec for a while with straight troff. I also hacked it to draw
on the framebuffers in BRL's graphics labs. Later more fonts became
available from the Berkeley vcat/vtroff. Ditroff allowed direct
selection of mutliple fonts as opposed to having to hack on the
"railmag" file (remember that guys?).
Standard troff voodoo, just put a power of two backslashes in front of
it until it works and if you still have problems add a \c.
-Ron