Google Font API

Cafe --

I'm in the throes of switching my website over to tableless layouts, 
so that I can post new material relating to our previous discussion of 
plate metals (and stenciling ... and the controversy over who 
"invented" European letterpress plus rolling-press printing, etc.) 
and, in researching new Web design options, was delighted to discover 
that our very own Dave Crossland has a featured typeface in the Google 
Font Directory!

Cantarell:

http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Cantarell

<VBG>

My next big discovery was that the Google Font Directory includes a 
family of historic Fell types!

http://code.google.com/webfonts/list?family=IM+Fell

Once again, <VBG>.

(Some of you may remember that I had a falling out several years back 
with the Hoeffler type foundry over their licensing agreement, with 
its ridiculous restrictions on use of their Fell types -- no embedding 
in PDFs, etc. I assumed this meant that I'd never be typesetting 
anything, ever, in Fell, and am *so* happy to learn that I now have 
other options! ;-)

I thought I would play around with the Fell Web fonts over the next 
couple of weeks, having decided to typeset my collection of 
early-modern recipes for printer's ink in IM Fell. This collection of 
early texts concludes with an 1838 medical case study documenting the 
severe occupational hazards of printing (newspapers, of all things!) 
with gold ink, which I assume will be compelling enough to tempt at 
least some of you to read long, dense Web pages set in unfamiliar 
historic type. ;-)

I'm not sure how the Fell types will work over the Web, but it will be 
fun to experiment, and I'll let everyone know when I finally get the 
ink recipes posted ... and in turn, you can all let me know how much 
you like/dislike the new typography.

But, before I move on to my Fell type experiment, I want to raise an 
issue about the new Web fonts in general, and some problems with their 
display in browsers running under Windows XP (my personal computer setup).

Nor am I the only one to have noticed this. A couple of people posting 
comments to Google (about the new Web fonts) have similar complaints. 
E.g., "ruve" wrote at

http://www.google.com/moderator/#15/e=66ca&t=66ca.40&o=80
(viewed 24 July 2010)

	"Would be great if you fix your fonts with adequate TrueType
	hinting. Right now all of Google's web fonts look bad (no
	anti-aliasing) on all browsers under Vista & Win 7 (large
	enough market share) this makes them practically unusable for
	the moment."

& another comment by "RC" at

http://www.google.com/moderator/#15/e=66ca&t=66ca.40&o=120
(viewed 24 July 2010)

reads

	"I noticed some fonts were not smooth around the edges. I'm
	using the ClearType display setting. I turned off ClearType
	(changed to Standard) and your fonts appeared much nicer. Is
	there a conflict between Google Fonts and ClearType?"

I'm not sure if the problem is simply a matter of inadequate TrueType 
hinting, or even ClearType technology, though.

FWIW, I recently ran a series of experiments for a website I'm 
developing, and even some of Microsoft's 6 ClearType fonts (Cambria, 
Calibri, Candara, Constantia, Corbel, and Consolas) look dreadful in 
non-MS browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari). I finally settled on 
Cambria for body text (defaulting to Trebuchet for body text, and to 
Georgia Italic for heads, for all those on iPods & Smart Phones etc. 
who don't have Cambria on their systems), but I had to make a lot of 
design trade-offs in so doing, which I would have preferred not to, of 
course.

Of note, I also experimented extensively with the DejaVu fonts, 
figuring that many folks might have these on their systems, too, if 
they use OpenOffice software, etc. The end result: these looked so 
terrible in *all* of my browsers (including MSIE, which usually 
displays type much better than the others) that I removed all DejaVu 
fonts from my "font-family" lists of substitutes. Hence, I was quite 
surprised to find that several people asked for DejaVu fonts to be 
included in Google's directory of Web fonts, with one person even 
commenting that DejaVu fonts are

	"integrated in almost every Linux Distribution, clearly to
	read and in my opinion the best font ever =)"

This has certainly not been my experience.

... Anyway, to return to the Google Font API, and more specifically, 
Dave's Cantarell: I have posted screen shots of the specimen page for 
Dave's Cantarell, as displayed in 5 different browsers on my system, 
so that you can all see for yourselves how badly the type degrades for 
some of us.

1. For Firefox, ver. 3.6.6 (running under Windows XP)
http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/Cantarelle_Firefox.png

2. For Google Chrome, ver. 4.1.249.1036 (41514) (running under Windows XP)
http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/Cantarelle_Chrome.png

3. For Opera, ver. 10.01 (running under Windows XP)
http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/Cantarelle_Opera.png

4. For Safari, ver. 4.0.5 (531.22.7) (running under Windows XP)
http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/Cantarelle_Safari.png

5. For MSIE, ver. 7.0.5730.13 (running under Windows XP)
http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/Cantarelle_MSIE.png

If anyone knows a work-around for this problem (that doesn't involve 
users having to tweak obscure display settings on their systems ... or 
switch to an Apple computer ;-), I would love to hear it, so that I 
can expand my Web design choices beyond Georgia, Verdana, Trebuchet 
and Courier.

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
[email protected]

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