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Re: Typesetting rules in physics

At 10:47 AM 11/18/98 -0500, Michael John Downes wrote:

>Does anyone have any idea how the convention developed that in
>mathematics changing R from normal weight to bold means also changing
>it from italic to upright? I hypothesize that bold italic fonts were
>simply less commonly available in compositors type cases in the era of
>lead typesetting, and the lack was resolved by the obvious
>substitution of bold upright.

Do we really know this?  Or is it that we have all been influenced by
Knuth who in CM mostly focused on regular, italic and bold as styles.

Just about all fonts in Type 1 or TrueType format come in all four styles
(and no, it's not because it is trivial to `manufacture' the fourth style).

Can we hear from someone who has been around the typesetting world
long enough to know whether bold italic was rare in any of the various
older technologies such as photo/film, mechanical typesetting machines etc.

Regards, Berthold.



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