Why the need for a new font?

by Splash 16 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Simon

  Possibly to do with copyright, also maybe to do with a not-invented-here syndrome where they imagine they must be better than everyone else at everything.

  That includes font-design which is a very specialist subject and I doubt something that they are really world leaders at.

  But it makes them feel special being able to claim more ownership over it (next you know they'll have formulated their own special ink) and of course the faithful will lap it up and go round quoting it as though it's meaningful in some way "you know the brothers even created their own special font to make our bible even more special !?! How blessed we must be ..."
• 

  Finkelstein

  Its a spirit directed font from god exclusively.

  Praise Jah !
• 

  jgnat

  At least Rutherford stopped short of reinventing the (pagan) calendar. Imagine the confusion trying to book a return visit....
• 

  Simon

  Actually, a fairer reason may be having something that is a balance of being readable when printer (which usually mean a serif font) and something that looks nice on an electronic device and smaller sizes (sans serif). It seems likea half-way between the two but there are already optimal fonts for both and it doesn't really have to be the same.

  When I read a book in print and then some of it on Kindle I don't freak out if the fonts are different - the main thing I'm usually focused on is the meaning of the text, not the exact shape of the letters.

  They are maybe focusing on the wrong thing, possibly to distract attention from more important matters.
• 

  Apognophos

  Well, the Society isn't focusing on this. The subject occupied all of two or three sentences during the 3.5+ hour AGM. It's the posters here that are focusing on it
• 

  wannabefree

  Possibly, just possibly, it is because you never know when Satan or demons might be embedded in worldly fonts.
• 

  Caminante

  1) We aren't talking about 'Western' sets of glyphs, but Latin typefaces that include all the Latin characters, accents, ligatures for all languages that use Latin characters (including Vietnamese, Lahu, as well as Amerindian languages and African languages that use Latin script). The basic font files use one-byte encoding, MEPS has a Unicode conversion algorithm that translates Unicode/UTF-8 input (that might include precomposed accented characters) into the glyph sequence generated for PostScript output.

  2) When talking about Latin fonts, MEPS used two different sets of fonts. The newer ones (those used mostly today) were purchased from URW (apparently the full URW TypeWorks collection released in 1994), and those have names starting with WtU followed by the font name (WtUStoneSerItcTMed) and started to be used in 1996. The older ones are the result of Watchtower's own digitization process in the early days of MEPS. Most of them have commercial counterparts, but some glyphs are pretty much different and the type production departament of the Watchtower has done a pretty neat job.

  3) The fonts used for the Bible are not the same in every language. English uses WtHelvetica for sans-serif type and WtIon (a slightly lighter version of WtIonic, the font used to compose the Daily Text booklet) for serif type, but most other languages have WtRegalII (the font used in forms and talk outlines), few exceptions use WtEgyptian (German, Greek, Portugese, Slovak), WtUBookmanItcTLig (Polish), WtCenturySchoolbook (Vietnamese), WtUStoneSerItcTMed (Turkish) and even spotted a WtGaramondNew in the Czech edition. Probably by having this new set of fonts they want to use a modern set of typefaces to further distinguish this new revision and use the same fonts in every language.