Meta: Ironic how the website does not render correctly in Google Chrome on Android. I feel that web design has become rather complicated these days, but surely it's not an impossible task to make websites work for more than one device?
This is the reason why front end developers command so much money. The amount of work required to keep a website without breaking every year or two is ridiculous. And every time you want to update a dependency that's at least a full day of work. Compare that to backend software written in Cobol or Fortran that is still supporting critical infrastructure and services like manufacturing and finance with little to no modifications to the codebase in decades, except for maybe APIs to interface with modern applications and UIs, and these APIs don't change much either.
ios safari here, I could not read a single word everything was left justified and blocked by a white gutter. Lol, will not trust their readability opinions.
> Monotype fonts, which have been specially adapted to these recommendations, carry the name affix, "1450".
None of those commas should be present, and they significantly change the meaning of the sentence. With them (especially the first), it means that all Monotype fonts have been specially adapted to these recommendations and carry The Name Affix, which is “1450”. The commas serve equivalently to parentheses: “Monotype fonts (which have been specially adapted to these recommendations) carry the name affix ("1450").”
What they meant was: “Monotype fonts which have been specially adapted to these recommendations carry the name affix "1450".” That is: the subset of Monotype fonts so adapted are identified by the presence of the “1450” name affix.
A remark like this would normally be off-topic on HN, but I mention it because (a) the line threw me, for a couple of readings, and I only resolved it because I know Monotype fonts have been round much longer than this DIN 1450 thing and by inference from the next sentence; and (b) correct language usage is at least as important as font when it comes to “barrier-free reading”.
Some of the other commas in the article are also wrong in the same and similar ways. I’m curious whether there might be something about comma usage or sentence structure in the native language of the author, which I’m guessing isn’t English. (There are a few other mildly unusual or clumsy word choices and sentence structures, and a few minor errors. Given the context, probably German.)
It's fairly obviously primarily targetting a German market. There are no French and Spanish versions, and I suspect that the English version is there as the fallback for whatever international market there is.
> Essential clauses modify key words and are important to the main point of a sentence. Nonessential clauses provide superfluous information that, while interesting, does not change the main point of a sentence. Nonessential clauses are offset by punctuation such as commas or parentheses to indicate the clause as an aside.
With the commas, it is a nonessential clause, which means the meaning should stay the same if it is removed. And that would turn the sentence into this:
> Monotype fonts carry the name affix "1450".
But that isn't the meaning of the sentence. It's not true that Monotype fonts (all of them, in general) have "1450" in their names. Only the ones that follow the recommendation do.
> Some of the other commas in the article are also wrong in the same and similar ways. I’m curious whether there might be something about comma usage or sentence structure in the native language of the author, which I’m guessing isn’t English. (There are a few other mildly unusual or clumsy word choices and sentence structures, and a few minor errors.)
Yes this translation from German. The comma fits the way German grammar recommends it. Some other clues: DIN is a German standard organization and the company advertising this new font is a German Ltd (GmbH).
> “Monotype fonts which have been specially adapted to these recommendations carry the name affix "1450".”
Even this isn't wholly clear. They should have said:
> “Monotype fonts that have been specially adapted to these recommendations carry the name affix "1450".”
The word “that” defines the subject of the sentence; the word “which” describes the already-defined subject. This is a rule of thumb usually expressed as: “‘that’ defines; ‘which’ describes”.
If we're going to be pedantic about language use (and it appears that we are): "cf" is short for the Latin for "compare [with]". To me, that only makes sense when the reference is something very analogous, e.g. you're talking about caramelising onions and you cite an article about caramelising carrots. Most of the time it's used, including this time, it would be more appropriate to just say "see also".
They're using the words "Monotype Fonts" as a type shop, a brand, a company...I forget which but I set type decades ago and remember the name. They're not referring to 'monotype fonts' as a type of font, like serif or sans serif.
Even worse, when reading this sentence in the comments, I thought it was referring to monospace coding fonts, which happen to share the same "legibility features" as required by DIN 1450 (tailed l, dotted 0, etc.)
As this sentence immediately follows a paragraph introducing the new standard, I would probably go with something like "The affix '1450' is used to designate those monotype fonts which have been specially adapted to these recommendations."
Now I am wondering if the different rules for verb placement in German and English contribute to the difficulty of punctuating translations unambiguously.
What you're seeing here is absolutely English written by a German. In German, restrictive clauses are separated by commas. This language feature seeps into English written by Germans by means of interference.
"Blue Highway is a sans-serif design inspired by the FHWA Series of Standard Alphabets, popularly known as Highway Gothic, from the United States Department of Transportation."
Strictly speaking, Blue Highway, like Expressway, Interstate, Traffic, Overpass, and several others, is inspired by the U.S. federal standard. Although a font expert with a magnifying glass is probably required to spot some of the differences, I suspect. (-:
One of the important differences seems to be more open shapes on such as c, e, 6 and 9. This is a major improvement; I’ve never understood why so many fonts curl around so far as they do, because it definitely harms distinctions.
They’ve introduced dotted zero in Neue Frutiger 1450, which I presume means DIN 1450 specifies some such thing. This confuses me, because the ambiguity it introduces with 8 is much worse (for frequency of relevance) than the ambiguity it resolves with O (capital o). Coding monospaces can benefit from dotted or slashed zeroes, and variable-stroke-width serifs can get quite a nice thin slash which makes it clearly neither 8 nor O, but in uniform-stroke-width sans-serifs designed for general-purpose language usage, I’ve just never understood why anyone would do it. It’s obviously worse.
I work in GMP manufacturing of drugs now (every word and letter has to be copied and transcribed over and over perfectly through the whole process) and it has really revealed to me how bizarre the English alphabet is from a getting text right standpoint. Is that a 0 or O on this copy of a copy of some text or handwriting I’m reading? Is it an l or I or 1? Is that a 7? Hard to know since putting the horizontal tick mark in the middle of the 7 isn’t allowed there. This font makes some good changes I wish were implemented everywhere.
I find it hilarious that after clicking on a link about "barrier free reading" on my phone, I'm taken to a page with 3 sections: the left section is entirely blank, the right section has about 8 words in an enormous font, and the bottom section has the left half of a cookie permission pop-up.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 97.6 ms ] threadhttps://www.fontshop.com/families/neue-helvetica/buy
Idk. Font pricing always felt wrong -- but then again, it is incredibly painstaking and specialized work to design one.
None of those commas should be present, and they significantly change the meaning of the sentence. With them (especially the first), it means that all Monotype fonts have been specially adapted to these recommendations and carry The Name Affix, which is “1450”. The commas serve equivalently to parentheses: “Monotype fonts (which have been specially adapted to these recommendations) carry the name affix ("1450").”
What they meant was: “Monotype fonts which have been specially adapted to these recommendations carry the name affix "1450".” That is: the subset of Monotype fonts so adapted are identified by the presence of the “1450” name affix.
A remark like this would normally be off-topic on HN, but I mention it because (a) the line threw me, for a couple of readings, and I only resolved it because I know Monotype fonts have been round much longer than this DIN 1450 thing and by inference from the next sentence; and (b) correct language usage is at least as important as font when it comes to “barrier-free reading”.
Some of the other commas in the article are also wrong in the same and similar ways. I’m curious whether there might be something about comma usage or sentence structure in the native language of the author, which I’m guessing isn’t English. (There are a few other mildly unusual or clumsy word choices and sentence structures, and a few minor errors. Given the context, probably German.)
The German language version has fewer commas:
* https://www.linotype.com/de/6990/din-1450.html
I wonder how badly Hacker News would have coped with a submission in German. (-:
https://www.germanveryeasy.com/comma
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/usage-of-essen... :
> Essential clauses modify key words and are important to the main point of a sentence. Nonessential clauses provide superfluous information that, while interesting, does not change the main point of a sentence. Nonessential clauses are offset by punctuation such as commas or parentheses to indicate the clause as an aside.
With the commas, it is a nonessential clause, which means the meaning should stay the same if it is removed. And that would turn the sentence into this:
> Monotype fonts carry the name affix "1450".
But that isn't the meaning of the sentence. It's not true that Monotype fonts (all of them, in general) have "1450" in their names. Only the ones that follow the recommendation do.
Yes this translation from German. The comma fits the way German grammar recommends it. Some other clues: DIN is a German standard organization and the company advertising this new font is a German Ltd (GmbH).
:)
Even this isn't wholly clear. They should have said:
> “Monotype fonts that have been specially adapted to these recommendations carry the name affix "1450".”
The word “that” defines the subject of the sentence; the word “which” describes the already-defined subject. This is a rule of thumb usually expressed as: “‘that’ defines; ‘which’ describes”.
Seriously tho, does it really matter that much? There are native English speakers who write worse than that.
Now I am wondering if the different rules for verb placement in German and English contribute to the difficulty of punctuating translations unambiguously.
https://www.dafont.com/blue-highway.font
"Blue Highway is a sans-serif design inspired by the FHWA Series of Standard Alphabets, popularly known as Highway Gothic, from the United States Department of Transportation."
* https://typodermicfonts.com/expressway/
* https://www.fonts4free.net/traffic-11027-font.html
* https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/Overpass
They’ve introduced dotted zero in Neue Frutiger 1450, which I presume means DIN 1450 specifies some such thing. This confuses me, because the ambiguity it introduces with 8 is much worse (for frequency of relevance) than the ambiguity it resolves with O (capital o). Coding monospaces can benefit from dotted or slashed zeroes, and variable-stroke-width serifs can get quite a nice thin slash which makes it clearly neither 8 nor O, but in uniform-stroke-width sans-serifs designed for general-purpose language usage, I’ve just never understood why anyone would do it. It’s obviously worse.
Meanwhile in the real world, Inter is still widely rising, with lots of OpenType variations and variable weights.
https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont
The Bigelow & Holmes Go fonts claim DIN 1450 conformance.
* https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts