I've been thinking recently about typefaces -- the four to eight readers of this blog may have noticed that the font used in the body text of these posts has changed. I've also been thinking about best practices for mathematical typesetting, for my next paper. I might write a more serious post on this topic another time.
While researching the topic, I ran into a few interesting articles:
- Adam Townsend has written a nice article about choosing a font for mathematics writing at Chalkdust Magazine.
- Dan Rhatigan wrote an interesting master's thesis about mathematical typesetting -- one of the pleasures of reading these sorts of documents is that they are almost invariably beautifully typeset -- Dan's thesis is no exception.
- In sadder news, I just found out that the venerable type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones (now Hoefler & Co.) has split up in what this article refers to as "the legal equivalent of a knife fight in the street." My CV is typeset in Hoefler Text; the Rhatigan thesis above is typeset in Whitney, also created by the firm. Frere-Jones alleged that Hoefler promised him a 50-50 partnership and then delayed giving him equity for 13 years, even after Frere-Jones transferred ownership of valuable typefaces to the firm for a nominal sum of $10. You can see Hoefler and Frere-Jones, enjoying happier times, in the clip below (from the hit documentary Helvetica).
Hoefler and Frere-Jones in the film Helvetica. Credit: Helvetica (documentary) Directed by Gary Hustwit.