Contents page

Index (83KB)

fontology


fontology: [XEROX PARC] n. The body of knowledge dealing with the
   construction and use of new fonts (e.g., for window systems and
   typesetting software).  It has been said that fontology
   recapitulates file-ogeny.

[Unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not merely a joke. On the Macintosh, for example, System 7 has to go through contortions to compensate for an earlier design error that created a whole different set of abstractions for fonts parallel to `files' and `folders' --- ESR]