Web Browsing with Espy- Jonathan
Ploudre
June 29, 2000
A few weeks ago I wrote a series of articles about fonts. In
A History of Font Technologies, I
looked at the four major trends in Mac fonts: bitmapped, PostScript,
TrueType, and anti-aliasing. Next in Macintosh
System Fonts, I looked at the fonts that Apple has shipped with
the Mac OS with an emphasis on a hidden bitmap font called Espy. I
suggested that you consider using Espy for everything. In my third
article, Using the Espy Font, I discussed
why Espy is such a great font and how you might use it on your
system. This article discusses how to use Espy for your Web
browser. Nuts and Bolts of a Bitmap FontOnce you've used Espy on your computer, you'll understand my
desire for Espy everywhere. It's a beautiful, approachable font.
Because it is a bitmap font, it looks great at the sizes it was
designed for. Espy Sans comes in five sizes: 9, 10, 12, 14, and 16
point. Espy Serif only comes in four; it doesn't have a 9 point. These different sizes of Espy are more than just bigger or smaller
fonts. As the fonts get bigger they also get a little bolder on one
side. The bold fonts become very dark when you get up to 16 point.
You can see the family resemblance in the Espy fonts at different
sizes, but each font has its own unique identity. Marty Pfeiffer, the shareware author who makes a TrueType version
of Espy, also make a multiple master font called Jubal
Sans. Multiple Master Fonts is an Adobe technology that lets you
morph fonts. An example might clear up what I mean. Say you had a
multiple master version of Palatino based on its plain, bold, italic
and bold italic fonts. The multiple master would have two axes:
weight (plain versus bold) and italics (plain versus italics). With
those extremes designed in, you can make an instance of the font that
is 20% bold and 46% italic, if that's what you want. Marty's TrueType version of Espy is a shareware solution to the
problem that plagues all bitmapped fonts like Espy: jaggies. For
example, if your Mac wants 11 point Espy (which doesn't exist), it
uses a simple algorithm to create an 11 point screen font. The
resulting font has jagged characters that are difficult to read. Have you ever noticed that when you go to a "Size" menu in
SimpleText or your word processor that all the sizes are outlined?
This is a holdover from System 6 and its bitmapped fonts. When using
bitmapped fonts, you need feedback to know if you have the size that
you want. If your Mac has that size font installed, it outlines the
font so you know it will look good. If it isn't outlined, then your
Mac is going to use its simple algorithms -- and you can be
reasonably sure that the result will look bad. Since TrueType fonts
scale to any size, the size menu usually has all the sizes
outlined. Using ResEdit, I came up with free alternative solution to the
jaggies problem. I modified the Espy fonts so that they substitute
available fonts for unavailable sizes. So if your system asks for 11
point, my version of Espy gives it the 10 point font. The system
thinks the font is installed so it doesn't try to scale it and it
looks fine. Your Mac has to be restarted for this to work
correctly. My edited Espy works with sizes from 7
point to 36 point, but there still are only five real sizes. If you
downloaded Espy when you read my second article, you'll need to get
this new version. Because Espy Serif does not have a 9 point font, it's a bit of a
problem. I felt like I needed a tiny serif font, so I made one. I
took New York 9 and used ResEdit to make an Espy Serif 9. I adjusted
around 100 pixels in the font to give New York the Espy character.
It's not perfect, but it has no glaring flaws for standard use. Espy BrowsingI spend a lot of time web browsing. That's the reason I went
through the trouble of editing Espy. Now if a webmaster decides to
use 13 point, my Mac displays it fine. Or if a page designed for
Windows requests a 7 point font, my Espy replaces it with a small but
readable 9 point. Espy is a friendly font, and it is great to be able
to browse with it as my standard font. Various Browsers give you different amounts of control over your
fonts. In Netscape Navigator 4.x, you can change your fonts by going
to the Appearance/Fonts panel of the preferences. It allows you to
make Espy your default font. On that same panel you can tell
Navigator to ignore all other fonts if you want to browse in only one
font. That's not ideal, since most of the time you want both serif
fonts and sans serif fonts. In iCab 2.0 you have a bit more control. In the browser heading of
the preferences, you can set a font for headings and text. A rule of
thumb is that serif fonts are better for reading long passages like
text and sans serif fonts are better for headings. That holds true
with iCab, which looks great browsing with Espy Serif for text and
Espy Sans for headings. Naturally, graphic designers and font lovers
will argue any rule of thumb. Low End Mac's webmaster Dan Knight has
an article about Cascading Style
Sheets where he says he prefers the sans serif font Verdana for
computer screens. Internet Explorer 5.0 has the potential to offer the most control
over your fonts, but I don't think it qualifies as a low end browser,
since it requires a PowerPC (earlier versions work with 68K Macs).
Internet Explorer has an option to allow you to designate your own
style sheet for use when browsing. The idea is that you could decide
how to format each tag in the HTML of web pages. That is a lot of
control, but iCab's solution is easier and more compatible. As Dan
Knight mentions in his article, the more you try to control your
fonts (either as a web user or a webmaster), the more you run into
problems. So I hope you'll give Espy a try. If you haven't downloaded it,
why not check it out and decide what you think about it? After all,
Espy is the favorite font of thousands of Mac users, and it's hard to
imagine that many Mac users being wrong. Vocabulary Note: I have been throwing around the word "font" very
loosely in these articles because that is how the word is used on the
Macintosh. Actually Espy is a typeface, which is a group of fonts. A
font has a particular size and style. The fonts for the Espy typeface
can divided two ways. First, Espy has plain and bold fonts which is
pretty standard for a typeface. Second, and this is unusual among
typefaces, Espy has serif and sans serif fonts. Letters in a serif
font have little marks on the ends of a stroke while letters in a
Sans serif font go without. 
- <this article available in a printer-friendly
format>
The first thing that Jonathan
Ploudre did when he got his own Mac IIsi in 1991 was to make a
custom icon for the computer and give it a name. Ever since then he
has been trying to make Macs as fast and friendly as possible.
Comments, opinions, and ideas about this or other Back & Forth
columns are gladly accepted. Articles by Jonathan PloudreElsewhere on Low End Mac- Born Again: It Works!,
Dan Knight, Online Tech Journal, 8/23. Yes, you can run Mac OS 8.1
on some 68030-based Macs.
- QuickCam + PowerBook =
Webcam, Manuel Mejia Jr., Mac Daniel, 8/23. How to set up an
older Mac (in this case, a PowerBook 145) with a QuickCam and use
it as a webcam.
- Troubleshooting FileMaker
Pro, Dan Knight, 8/23. How to prevent and recover from data
errors in FileMaker Pro.
- An Old Friend, Somewhere in
Boxes, My First Mac, 8/22. "My first computer was the Quadra
660AV. It was the first computer I had ever owned."
- Quest for a User-friendly
Hub, Joshua McKinney, My Turn, 8/22. If USB is supposed to be
plug and play, why do so many hubs make that difficult?
- When to buy new, Dan Knight,
Mac Musings, 8/21. The publisher of Low End Mac admits that it
sometimes makes more sense to get a new computer then keep
upgrading an old one.
- Making Macs listen and
obey, Evan Kleiman, Mac Daniel, 8/21. A brief introduction to
using Speech Recognition to control your Mac.
- Screens of plastic could be
fantastic, Charles W. Moore, Miscellaneous Ramblings, 8/21.
New technologies could make flat panel displays far less
costly.
- New @ Low End
Mac: Receive email information on new articles.
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