To my comments, in part:
Of the numerals, the only one which might fit on a
rectangle of thinner dimensions is the "1", and I suspect that the
historical type founders put the 1 on the same width body as the other
numerals.
David replied:
Then it would have printed as fixed-width when used inline. If it
took up less space in print, they had to have one that *wasn't* as
wide as the other numbers. Either they had two different 1s, or they
packed lead (there's a name for that which escapes me; leding only
refers to vertical inline spacing, no?) in between to space the 1s
that needed to be wider.
There is, though a third choice: that some fonts had fixed width "1"s,
while others had proportional width "1"s, and if the typographer setting
up the page knew that there would be a need to maintain a strict
vertical alignment of columns, he chose a face where the "1" was the
same width as the other digits. As I noted, a number of faces
(according to the typeface references I consulted, _do_ have a fixed
width "1".
As I gave more thought to this problem, attempting to consider it as I
imagine a typographer would have done, I realize that the number of
cases the 1 has to be the same width is really somewhat small. It is
not necessary, for example, in a table of contents, or in an index, or
in many other types of tables. In fact, it is only necessary in
circumstances where there is a need to add a column, such as in an
accounting table.
Inserting strips of lead to maintain orizontal spacing is called
"tracking", as I recall.
As to the issue of a "256 character restriction", I'm going to not that
you will not convince me that doubling the number of available items is
a "restriction" <vbg>, but that's a semantic issue more than anything
else. As far as the 96 characters available in a 128 character set
being adequate only in a monolingual text, though, it seems to me that
96 characters is adequate for a machine to be used in English, and
perhaps German and Latin where there are generally accepted alternatives
for umlauts, dipthongs, and the ß. For most other European languages,
though, 96 characters is insufficient only if the set is being used only
in a single language; French for example needs several versions of "e",
unless there are accepted typographical substitutions for â or é.
But I am less interested in pursuing this, than I am in other aspects of
Fonts relative to Finale, for which I will begin a new thread.
ns
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