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Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Apr 03, 2026

@onpaperwings @jesserewing @glennf I’ll second that. I have a collection of friends’ PhD theses printed by Lulu, and the quality is good. There is a range of options for paper weight and finish, and for binding.

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@xotypeco Yes, this is a communication or customer education issue, but it comes from thinking about cost instead of thinking about value. The usage rights licensing model for creative work derives fees based on the (potential or realised) value to the customer. If a customer is thinking in terms of having paid for a *thing* (e.g. the font they download), they’re not thinking about paying for different ways of using that thing and the multiplcation of value they derive from those uses. Usage rights licensing is specifically a response to ease of reproduction: the more easily reproduced something is — and copying a digital file is about as easy as it can get — the less material or inherent value the thing itself has. But the *use* of the thing may have huge value.

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@xotypeco I first ran across these kinds of reactions in the context of photography and illustration licensing (which is, of course, the model from which font licensing derives). People who had never licensed artwork before had trouble understanding why they had to pay more for additional uses or additional types of use. They’d paid to use a photograph in a magazine ad with a specific circulation: why did they have to pay again to use the same photograph in a brochure or on their new website?

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@justvanrossum @timahrens @letterror As Erik wrote above re. a 4-master 2-triangle square, there are two ways of placing the triangles, so I’ve been presuming that the triangulation is explicit at the tool level and not automated based on shortest distance. I am also presuming that axes are normalised, so every two dimensional designspace is actually a square, every three dimensional designspace is actually a cube, and every four dimensional designspace is actually a mindfuck.😁

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@letterror @timahrens @justvanrossum Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at, I think. Just’s animated visualisation really nicely shows how stretching a complex web of axes in one dimension alters the distances between intersections within that web. But that’s not what happens when one changes the unit scale of a variable font axis. The design space isn’t being stretched. You’re just changing the resolution of that axis. The design space is bounded by the glyphs not by the numeric length of the axes connecting them. You only change the shape of the design space if you change the glyphs or their relative locations (e.g. redefining an axies extreme or the relative location of an intersection, either in the masters source or via avar).

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@justvanrossum @letterror @timahrens Variable font engineers at work:

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@timahrens ‘as different point pairs are considered “close to each other”‘ Meaning rounding happens differently in any area/volume/banzai* between the axes, yes? *Yeah, I just used banzai as a generic term for any multidimensional space.

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@timahrens @letterror So, to go back to your earlier statement regarding the weight axis: ‘Had they decided that 40 is regular and 70 is bold then our interpolated fonts would look differently.’ Would they? We’d still have axis extrema glyph designs that are conceptually and nominally regular and bold. And (user facing value) of 500 or 50 on the different scales would be the same relative distance between those extremes, resulting in the same interpolation result. The only difference between the axes is their resolution. In the one axis the user can address ten times as many integer locations as in the other.

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@timahrens @letterror Are you actually ‘scaling’ the axis, though? Unless you are also scaling the outlines, metrics, etc. it seems to me that all you are actually doing is increasing or decreasing the resolution of the axis, i.e. changing the number of addressable intervals on the axis. So if an axis between two otherwise unchanged design locations is 1000 units or 10 units, the axis isn’t any longer or shorter, because its length is determined by the glyphs at either end. The distance between them can be subdivided into more or fewer units, which is determining what is addressable on that axis and in the space between it and other axes (presuming only integers are addressable), but isn’t changing the outline interpolation at relative commonly addressable positions.

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Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Mar 18, 2026

@timahrens @letterror The interpolations should remain identical at the scaled intervals along that axis, but changing the axis scale is also adding or removing intervals, and that unavoidably affects the addressable design space between the axes. That’s already the case in OTvar compatible design spaces, so is the problem significantly different in the kind of non-orthogonal design space Erik is illustrating? Or are you pointng to this as a general problem of multi-axis design spaces?

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Dec 27, 2025

@wtrmt@mastodon.social @simoncozens@typo.social Oh, it was Papyrus the font that I gave as a prompt. The background texture was just ChatGPT being extra literal.

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Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · Dec 26, 2025

@wtrmt@mastodon.social @simoncozens@typo.social First, this made me wonder what the Bangla script would look like in the style of Papyrus. And then, because it is 2025, it made me wonder what ChatGPT would think the Bangla script would look like in the style of Papyrus.😜 Of course, the result is exactly what one would imagine. I love how even the gaps in AI’s understanding of what non-European writing systems look like are utterly predictable.

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Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · May 06, 2025

@davidsudweeks @tphinney @timahrens At the character level, the text is still a period followed by an ellipsis, not a series of periods.

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · May 05, 2025

@iorsh @tphinney @timahrens The result would be the same: four evenly spaced dots. One could get fancy and contextually kern the dot spacing depending on whether the sequence is preceded by a letter... or by a . . . space.

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Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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Tiro Typeworks

@TiroTypeworks@typo.social

Official account of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital type foundry founded in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills, specialising in custom fonts for multilingual publishing and computing. # Typography # TypeDesign # Fonts # Unicode # WritingSystems # Linguistics # Palaeography # Calligraphy # fedi22

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@TiroTypeworks@typo.social · May 05, 2025

@tphinney @timahrens Better to decompose the ellipsis into a sequence of three period glyphs, and then kern them appropriately. This has the benefit of enabling tracking adjustments for users who prefer tighter or narrower spacing.

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