Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
- Subject: Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 16:57:20 +0100
To understand the evolution of text processing it is helpful to look at
text archiving and at unit systems, because together these two
parameters define the economy of text repurposing and text copyfitting.
The rise of the Mac was caused by its role in text processing in 1984
rather than its role in color processing in 1994, because text
processing has always come before color processing in the printing
industry.
In the 1960s when offset lithographic presses for jobbing printing
began to make inroads on letterpress printing, the IBM Selectric
Composer was released. The typefaces were based on a 4 unit system,
that is, letterforms had four widths.
This primitive system, released in 1966, allowed users to provide
camera ready copy for page assembly. There was no text archiving as the
original was the page and not a punch tape or electronic media.
Composers were still current in the 1970s.
In 1965 Rudolf-Hell GmbH in Kiel introduced the first computer
composing system which imaged handmade bitmaps by means of a CRT. The
first system was sold to the P&T services in Denmark.
Early hot metal composing systems such as the Monotype Supercaster used
punch tape, and the last were only pensioned in the mid-1970s, but the
transition to computer composing allowed keyboarding to be repurposed
far more flexibly.
Unit systems also improved so that glyphs did not have to be deformed
and could be packed economically into the line without loss of
legibility. The 1884 Monotype and Linotype systems were 18 unit to the
em, and by the 1970s composing systems were 90 units to the em and
1200+ scan line resolution.
By the late 1970s professional language providers had two choices,
either the Xerox 860 or the IBM System 80. Both were 8.5" single floppy
systems with daisywheel printers that could in principle use primitive
proportional type and deliver camera ready pages. The Xerox 860 had a
graphic display and the IBM System 80 had a fixed matrix display. These
systems cost from DKK 120,000 - 200,000 at the time.
The advantage with these sturdy systems was that if you used only soft
hyphens and soft line wraps, and followed specific rules when setting
up tables, the character string could be repurposed directly on the
composing computer through a conversion table, without the cost of
keyboarding which would invariably introduce typos as the trade
typographers were craftsmen and not trained linguists.
From the professional point of view the early personal computers were
unprofessional. The Apple II only supported uppercase, for instance.
The Commodores, the Ataris and whatever else were just. You were better
off with a refurbished IBM Selectric Composer or the IBM daisywheel
printers that replaced them in around 1980. At least you could deliver
camera ready pages.
In 1982 IBM introduced the Personal Computer with a Chaplin campaign
worldwide and by fall 1985 a dual drive 360 Kb IBM PC/G could be had
for DKK 25,000 including b/g fixed matrix monitor. You then also needed
DOS 2.10, WordPerfect 3.1 and a NEC SpinWriter daisywheel printer as a
dot matrix was not good enough quality. So the package ran to DKK
45,000.
DOS 2.10 had no concept of code pages (character sets), so WordPerfect
3.1 supported a list of printers at application level, but WordPerfect
had no concept of how to get f F, x X and e E for character generator
in the monitor hardware to match the DIP switches on the NEC
SpinWriter. As Danish legislation favours the customer, 40 hours of on
site support cost nothing -:).
The PostScipt-based Apple Macintosh and Apple LaserWriter followed by
the Linotype Linotronic in 1986 made the Macintosh the standard because
it allowed for a simpler repurposing of keyboarded text as much as for
page descriptions based on Adobe Type 1 font technology which were
portable across low resolution and high resolution imaging devices.
Type 1 introduced a 1000 to the em unit system (not to be outdone
TrueType introduced a 2048 to the emb unit system).
Today, the problem for the Macintosh as professional language and
typography platform is a bit like the problem for professional language
providers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that is, the character
encoding situation is chaotic. Twenty years ago this was only a
headache for the language provider and the print service provider who
had to work out how to get the right glyphs on the printed page, but
today it is _also_ a problem for the print buyer as "print" now
includes screen-based delivery of PDF.
Thanks,
Henrik
(The Xerox 860, released in 1972, was the paradigm on which WYSIWYG was
based. It was a nice system with a portrait single page monitor. I
spent a night keyboarding Chess by Abba on it to help out someone. The
office used IBM System 80 alongside WordPerfect and then Word (which
first appeared for the Mac, like Excel).)
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