11 Feb
2021
11 Feb
'21
12:42 p.m.
there was actually a weird fuss about the Merganthaler typesetter.
Ken figured out how the fonts were encoded and so we had the raw outline data for
all the fonts (they were gorgeous!). this enabled us to add in special characters like
the peter weinberger face.
ken wanted to do the right thing and tried to license the fonts from Merganthaler,
but we had endless discussions where Ken would say “we know how the fonts are encoded,
can we license them?” and the sales person would say “no you can’t; they’re secret”,
and so on. we’d even show them the peter face but to no avail. so we kinda flew
under the radar for that (but we tried!).
the typesetter itself was entertaining; if i recall correctly, the software ran on a 8in
floppy
and Ken wrote a B compiler/run time system for the computer inside.
andrew