
Welcome to GoodCityModern



GoodCityModern 1.0 Read Me

Naturally, you may be asking yourself, 'How did he create this font?' It
started late one night, restless... Glancing through some type books, I
stopped upon a reproduction of the Gutenberg typeface; thought, that would be
a great typeface to do in Fontographer. Thinking further, perhaps several
weeks in the library and several more at my Mac with Fontographer 3.0 and I
would be done. Hmm, things do not happen quite that way. Murphy's law was
determined to be bothersome. There were only fragments of pages to go by... My
Mac and scanner broke, requiring costly repairs. However, while visiting my
parents (near C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, New
York), I found a full character set to copy at the college library. Work could
commence.

The reproduction was small and the copier worse, but I managed. Studying the
page, I quickly realized several key points. One: Gutenberg designed the font
with a deep understanding of Latin grammar and spelling. He had kerning pairs
based on repeated letter usage throughout the Bible and kerned small words
into tight units (i.e., "our," "of," and "and"). Second: That he posited key
geometric guidelines to aid in creating the font. He was doing more than just
capturing the scribe-like strokes of his day, but in addition had a respect
for the metal and ink to be used in printing his Bible. This second point made
it possible to actually create the font; because of the smallness of the
reproduced letters, I had to re-create (for techies, 'reverse-engineer') them.
My loupe and the page became very close friends!

After some hand drawings to 'feel' the letter forms, I scanned the page at 150
dpi and made a bitmap font using Fontastic Plus(tm). Sometimes, I felt another
hand on my mouse while fat-bitting away late at night... Then, I typed Latin
text into Fontastic Plus' sample text edit window to see the typeface in
actual context. Next, using the bitmap font, a PostScript printer, and Apple's
print driver, I printed a page of characters at 200% enlargement with the
option 'smoothing' (to partly smooth out the jaggies) checked from Apple's
print driver. Thus, one could scale and smooth out a bitmap font -- without
fatbitting a lot. Finally, I cleaned up the scan in MacPaint(R).

I did preliminary versions in Fontographer 3.0.5 thru 3.1. As the in-house
tester for FreeHand 3.0, I was naturally thinking mostly in terms of FreeHand,
constantly experimenting with new ways to use it. At one point, I wondered
"how much of my font could I do in FreeHand?" So, I placed the scanned image
into FreeHand 3.0 to trace and refine -- using all its new features to
accomplish the task. For example, while Fontographer has layers, I preferred
the naming and ordering of the layers palette that FreeHand offered. Yes, bcp
by bcp, the font came alive. There were days I felt a presence in the room...

Once the character paths were done, I simply option-copied them from FreeHand
into Fontographer 3.2. Once paths are in Fontographer, one can create the
needed ligatures. Finally, after upgrading from Fontographer 3.2 to 3.3, I
created kerning pairs. Based on the same careful study Gutenberg did on Latin
letters, I needed to create 800 pairs! Now as of 5:15 pm, June 18, 1991, using
Fontographer 3.3, I was finished.

A few historical notes. The original typeface was created for Latin, not for
modern English; hence, the 'modern' in the name of my translation. I had to
create a full Roman set everyone can use. However, there is an exact Latin
version which is not done. The 'goodcity' part of its name comes from German:
guten-good, burg-city (or fortress), (actually, Earl Allen, a fellow Altsysian
coined the term: Thanks, Earl!) [Earl notes that he goofed on the translation
from German, mistakenly translating 'berg' as if it were spelled 'burg.' A
better translation would be GoodMountModern, since 'berg' should actually be
translated 'Mountain' rather than 'City,' as anyone who knows what an iceberg
is would have done. Apologies for the mistranslation, but Andrew has decided
to stick with the name for now.]

Enjoy and use in good health.

Andrew S. Meit Altsys Tester (and Stackhead) Altsys Corporation

If you have any comments you'd like to pass on to Andrew you can send them to
him at CompuServe: 76004,2071; MCI Mail: ALTSYS; America Online: Altsys;
AppleLink: D0590. If you'd prefer to call, the phone number is (214) 680-2060
and the FAX number is (214) 680-0537. Andrew appreciates any and all feedback
you can give him.



GoodCityModern 1.1 Read Me

Thank all of you for downloading my font. I never in my wildest dreams would
think so many people wanted this obscure, yet historical, font. To date, well
over 3500 people have retrieved or received GoodCityModern. I have received
letters, cards, and phone calls from all over the world. I am pleased that you
are pleased.

Ah, like software development, there is always the needed 1.1 after the first
version ships. Quite a lot has happened to GCM (GoodCityModern): lots of
tweaking of path points; corrected accented characters; improved some
character widths; a few new characters added. Enough about the software.

Since GCM's 1.0 release, I have been busy reading about Latin grammar. I
learned several things. The original kerned pairs that Gutenberg created (po,
pe, pp, etc...) are actually special abbreviations for Latin prefixes,
suffixes, and phrases. He attempted to carry over the medieval scribe's style
of spelling and 'shorthand' for fitting long words at the end of lines.

Some have complained that the spacing for GCM is uneven or too tight. Go look
at a Gutenberg Bible reproduction and see for yourself. It's far easier to
unkern a few pairs to one's liking than try to know which pairs should be
kerned. Until Apple releases the Line Layout Manager, there is no smart way to
duplicate how Gutenberg typeset his 42 line Bible.

Remember: Blessed is one who teaches another to scribe the Letters. Shalom.