Talk:Fixed-width typeface
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Word choice of "typeface" vs. "font"
[edit]Technically, "fixed-width font" and "fixed-width typeface" describe two separate, but related, concepts. For pragmatic reasons in this particular situation, I have prioritized the organizational distinction with regard to the notion of "typeface" instead of "font" because the aspect or quality of being "fixed-width" is something innate in the design of the glyphs themselves. I say innate because it is something that directly influences the design process of the visual forms throughout the glyph set.
Unfortunately, describing and discussing the various definitions and distinctions between "typeface", "font-family", and "font" is like traversing a path down a deep, winding rabbit hole with many diverging and re-converging tunnels of typographic history and nuance. As a very loose pair of definitions, I will say that a typeface is the design, and a font is a specific implementation of that typeface. "Palatino" is a typeface. A set of metal movable type for "10 point Palatino Medium Italic" is a font. A TrueType file for "Palatino Medium Italic" is a font.
As a hypothetical thought experiment, consider the following two scenarios. Without changing, scaling, or otherwise distorting the visual forms of the glyphs themselves, (I) create a fixed-width font out of a variable-width (proportional) typeface and (II) create a variable-width font out of a fixed-width typeface.
(I) A fixed-width font of a variable-width typeface can be accomplished by simply adding horizontal padding (space) on either side as required until the widths of each "character block" is uniform. Typesetting text using this proportional typeface implemented as fixed-width font would have a visual result one might describe as "text set in a proportional typeface with ugly kerning between characters".
(II) A variable-width font of a fixed-width typeface can be accomplished in many ways. One of the simplest ways, for many (but not all) fixed-width typefaces, would be just to use uniform padding between each character glyph; since, even in something as uniform as a monospaced typeface, often the glyphs themselves will have slightly varying width. So, while the padding is uniform, the variability of glyph widths would result in characters of varying widths. The resulting font created would be aesthetically reasonable, but would no longer be a fixed-width font in the expected sense of discrete horizontal space occupation in typesetting. Text typeset in the resulting font would not exhibit the discrete positioning and alignment of text as expected and required to properly qualify as being a "fixed-width" font. However, the visual character forms would still be recognized as being "fixed-width" in a certain aesthetic sense, even though the positional aspect of the typeset characters wouldn't.
The point being that, to be "fixed-width" is a quality very strongly tied to the design (the typeface). Granted, the character widths in an given implementation (a font) will "make or break" that font from being "fixed-width" or not with regard to typesetting. But, I would also say that "fixed-width" is an intent specified by and designed in the typeface. I would say that as a principal category, we want to group together fixed-width typefaces and not fixed-width fonts. Any failure of proper spacing behavior in a fixed-width font (an implementation) is something which should be noted, and is definitely of interest, but viewed as simply an error of implementation in opposition of intent.