Re: superior numerals

["Melissa O'Neill" <oneill@cs.sfu.ca>]

Allin writes:
> What's the definition of a "titling numeral"?  I'm not familiar
> with the term.

Good definitions of typographical terms, as well as a host of excellent
typographical background and advice can be found in Robert Bringhurt's
_Elements of Typographic Style_.

In Bringhurt's definitions:

    Titling figures --	Figures designed to match the uppercase letters in
       		        size and color.
       Text figures --	Figures designed to match the lowercase letters in
       		        size and color. Most text figures are ascending
			and descending forms.
     Lining figures --	Figures of even height. Usually synonymous with
			titling figures, but some lining figures are
			smaller than uppercase letters.
    Hanging figures --	Text figures.
    Ranging figures --	[...] Synonymous with lining figures. [...]
  Lowercase figures --	Text figures.
   Oldstyle figures --	A poor but common synonym for text figures.

> Do you know of any "historical" examples of the latter (i.e. for
> footnote markers)?  I haven't seen any myself -- always either symbols
> or small lining numerals.

No, but then I'm not an expert on typographic history.

I wrote:
>> As someone else pointed out, Karl Berry (at my request) has now
>> extended his fontname scheme with the codes `0' and `1' for inferior
>> and superior character sets respectively.

... leading Allin to query:
> Where in the scheme do they go?  Could you give an example of a
> full Berry name using this facility?  Thanks.

In the same way as you use `9' to mean `expertized', i.e. in theory it
is easy and obvious but in practice it may be complex. Let's take a
simple case of Y&Y's LY1 encoding. If a basic font was be, say, ptmr8y,
a superscript version would be ptmr1y and a subscript version would be
ptmr0y.

In complex cases, one might want to distinguish between a subscript font
with lining figures and one with hanging figures. Similarly, while 1t
would surely mean `superior with some kind of TeX encoding' whether it
would be Cork (akin to 8t) or OT1 (akin to 7t) would be something to
ponder -- OT1 I'd guess with 1d meaning `superscript, Cork encoded, with
hanging figures', 1e meaning `superscript, Cork encoded, with lining
figures' and 1o meaning `superscript, OT1 encoded, with hanging figures'.

Hope this helps,

    Melissa.

P.S. My own fonts use my own private encoding, for which I use `p' as
the designator, so my fonts are of the form `pkpr1p1000' (since I need
the design size too).