Typographie (was: Re: Comparison of philosophical languages)

En réponse à Danny Wier <dawier@...>:

>
> Ever wonder why the French word for "font" (as in TrueType, OpenType,
> PostScript) is |police|? ~Danny~
>
Well, couldn't find an etymology, but it could be related to "police" where
English uses "policy", as in insurances (the Hachette dictionary implies so by
grouping those two meanings together, but doesn't give an etymology). For what
is worth, I looked a little bit at the French terminology for typography, and
found out it was not completely identical to the English one. For instance,
French also has the term "fonte", but this one is not completely synonym
with "police". Some terms:

"famille": family. Same meaning in French and English.
"graisse": bold face. The "Light", "Bold" or "Black" after the name of the
font ;)) .
"style" or "type": ditto in English. "Roman", "Slanted" or "Italic" are
examples of styles.
"chasse": "width". Like "bold face" refers to the size of the lines, "width"
refers to the size of the white in between the lines. Those are things
like "Narrow" or "Large".
"caractère": "font" (well, not exactly. It's more equivalent
to "characteritic"). A "caractère" is a group of characters sharing the
same "style" and "graisse". As such, it doesn't refer to one single font but to
a group of fonts which differ only by width (two fonts of the same "caractère"
may differ by one being "Narrow" and the other "Large"). Note that the
English "character" is more exactly "caractère d'imprimerie", or
simply "caractère", but typographs seem not to mind the ambiguity. The
term "fonte" is synonymous to "caractère", even if it's also often used as
synonymous to "police", incorrectly here.
"police": "font". A "police" is a group of characters sharing the
same "style", "graisse" and "chasse", and thus the exact equivalent to "font".

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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