Talk:Vox-ATypI classification

Initial Phase

i'm in the process of porting this article over from the French version of wikipedia. Please do not delete! pablohoney 00:29, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
i'm done with my preliminary translation of this page from french. i am NOT a french speaker, so if anyone who does speak french and has some grasp on typography would like to edit any of my choices of translation, particularly in terminology, please feel free. pablohoney 04:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

References needed

Someone added 'Classicals', 'Modern' and 'Calligraphics' to the article, but as far as I know, these do not belong to the VOX-ATypI classification system. None of the books I own that describe the VOX-ATypI classification have them. Please provide proper references for these additions, or the article needs to be reverted back to before they were added. Typehigh (talk) 01:33, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This categorization was already in the article, in a later section called "Grouping into Families". I just applied this existing information to the heading method. Ashre (talk) 00:36, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I did check that, but must have overlooked it. Well, nevermind then. Still can't find those groups in any of the books I have though, but I guess it is in other books then. Typehigh (talk) 17:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Humanist

I don't know anything about typography, but I came to this page trying to figure out what was meant by a "humanist" typeface. It is listed twice on this page, in different categories. The ambiguity might be worth a mention in the article. 137.71.23.54 (talk) 19:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, the Classical Humanist fonts are serif and the Modernist Lineal Humanist fonts are sans serif. —Angr (talk) 08:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Realist and transitional come in for double use too, outside of this article. I'm making some edits in an attempt to clear this up.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:54, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization

The capitalization of typeface class names in this article is rather random. I'm going to uncapitalize the following:

blackletter, calligraphic, classical, copperplate, exotic, fracture, geometric, glyphic, graphic, grotesque, humanes, humanist, humanist, humanistic, incise, incised, italic, lineal, linear, linéales, manuaire, manual, mechanical, mechanistic, modern, mécanes, neo-grotesque, realist, script, scripte, slab serif, transitional, uncial

While capitalizing these, because they come from proper nouns:

Aldine, Carolingian, Didone, Garalde, Latin, Non-Latin

I'm unsure about Egyptienne, Egyptian, and Gaelic. Somebody editing before me has gone to long lengths to ensure that egyptian doesn't get capitalized, so I will leave it alone, but I don't understand why - and what does that mean for Egyptienne and Gaelic (both currently capitalized)? Oh, and Venetian? It seems conventional not to capitalize roman in "roman type". "Gothic" should probably have a capital, though..?  Card Zero  (talk) 18:56, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm the one who added the note about egyptian; it was intended more for people using automated editing tools to check for capitalization than for people who are actually thinking about it. Still, I see that the ref cited itself writes egyptian lowercase. The Complete Manual of Typography by James Felici spells gothic lowercase, but capitalizes Aldine, Garalde, and Latin. I doubt Gaelic as a typeface class is well enough established yet to be lowercase. I don't know about the others. —Angr (talk) 21:30, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, hi. I had a look at what snippets google books would let me view, and found four typography books spelling gothic lowercase, with one dissenter, "Type and Typefaces", J. Ben Lieberman, 1978, capitalizing both "Gothics" and "Humanistics". So, that one can go in lower case. Hope some robot isn't going to come along later and undo all this.

Edit: You know, I'm becoming inclined to think Egyptian does take a capital letter in the context of typefaces. Linotype does it here (under "Glypha") and here, while not capitalizing "roman type" (but capitalizing "Roman cities"). Various type design books [1] capitalize Egyptian too, though some (1 in 15?) don't. (Would be good if I knew the titles of half a dozen of the most authoritative typography books, so I could check them and ignore the rest.)  Card Zero  (talk) 22:25, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

The closest thing to an authoritative typography book I know of is The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst, who writes egyptian small (but only uses it in the index; in the text he just refers to "slab serifs"). He also writes didone and garalde small. —Angr (talk) 00:01, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

That article says see also: Anatomy of a Typeface, and at typophile.com both books are part of a "triumvirate" [2] along with a book by Walter Tracy. Some potential for a best-out-of-three situation here. (Heh, bet it turns out each author does it differently.)  Card Zero  (talk) 00:25, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I would use capitals throughout. -- Evertype·✆ 21:12, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you think it's normal in the culture of typography to capitalize them all? Even "roman type", despite "roman numerals" (as it says in the proper adjective article) being written in lowercase?  Card Zero  (talk) 22:11, 14 January 2011 (UTC)