Recently, I wrote what I thought would be a blockbuster expose' in regards to the Jarte Word Processor and how I thought I had found an Achilles Heel in an otherwise superb program. I second guessed myself in the morning and removed it completely. Thinking was that with a little fiddlin' and research, I could circumvent and discover where I was going wrong in using Jarte.


At issue was the methodology of those of us who horde information when doing research. It sufficeth to say there is alot of copy and paste going on in the quest for info on any given subject or interest... its-hah-we-do (sounds like plagerism on a Dr. Evil scale) Unfortunately, there are included hyperlinks in so much of the info-stuff gathered - the links are either pertainent or visual distraction.


When copying and pasting into a Jarte document, the linked words remain link color and underlined just as in MS Wordpad. If you were to click on them however, - nothing happens - as in Wordpad - they are not recognized as hyperlinks by the program. That's o.k. because I really don't want or need them. It would be nice if I could use Wordpad or Jarte - it's supercedant like a web-based clean editor and be able to copy and paste into other web-based platforms but wishin is for chumps - High hopin' is for fools! It is only when I try to get rid of the color and underline that the whole thing in Jarte kinda breaks down.

Adobe Font Folio 11.0 - Full


So I contacted Jarte as I could not figure out any way around the whole 'not being able to do stuff in their program' scenario. I should have known better - web-based is web-based etc... but I wanted to at least aleviate myself of obnoxious (often blue and underlined) hyperlink text in my accumulated datastream. I recieved an email directly back from Bob Flora - Owner of Carolina Road Software and author of Jarte.

I love it when an owner is minding the store!

He gave me some tips on some things I am trying to do with his program Jarte.

In regard to formatting/removing hyperlinks or making them consistent with the rest of the document - Bob Flora informed me that the best way to accomplish this was to right click on a section of text which had the desired formatting - the pop-up/drop down menu appears - choose 'Format Brush' and then with a selection of the targeted text to be changed, everything would take care of itself.

It did not.

I would include a somewhat tutorial graphic here but it would just be embarrassing.

I was still left with the underline of the hyperlink and no matter how black the text was, I could'nt get rid of the underline.

I really am being a jerk... a knitpicker. This Jarte program is phenomenal in every other regard - unless I find somthing else wrong with it Arlington, Virginia - My Peeps!

Until I do (inevitably), I will concentrate efforts on the AIO (all In One) solution as promised - I "knows my onions" on this and you'll be suprised at the findings! Also, - Coming Soon On My Arlington Examiner Column: "A Glyph in Time".

Would'nt you like to have the kind of confidence in design you are looking for? No matter the project - be it a technical publication, brochure or simple flyer, - you deserve being equipt the best, the latest and most important design element of all!

Adobe Font Folio

Jarte's Achilles Heel? Just a Persian Flaw

Jarte Lover that I am, I none the less have discovered what I consider to be a tiny flaw in the application. Jarte is designed to be a manyfold improvement over the MS Wordpad program, all the while using it's platform engine to exact those purposes of it's calling. Frankly, - it's a tall order.

In terms of effeciency, MS Wordpad has always been the OS included bees knees. It has been used as a quick note pad or clean editor for everything from emails, blogs, html/web development/content - even official full documents for print.

By comparison Jarte improves on many MS Wordpad functions and then goes on to add features and utilities mere, workload inundated mortals never even think of. There is always a trade off and invariably it is at the fundamental level.

Perhaps I'm nick-picking but for those working with the editing and compiling of multiple documents, a quick 'out' from the increasingly included hyperlinks contained within many documents needs to be just that.

Jarte handles the underlined hyperlink differently and seemingly - not at all in comparison to MS Wordpad. Using Jarte,the highlighted link is just that and not much after.

Click for Larger


In MS Wordpad, You simply highlight the underlined text and then click on the underline icon atop on the text menu bar. A quick change of color ( text color palette) takes care of the rest in smooth, one - two clicking.


On Jarte's end there exists a slight Persian Flaw as this execution cannot be accomplished as easily. In the HTML mode Jarte seems more than capable but for quick and effortless copy/paste/edit mode it leaves somewhat of an an empty
space.


Click for Larger


That which Jarte lacks in easy hyperlink erasure it makes up for with many of it's other great features. In a pinch, you can still use MS Wordpad.

Type as Mood in Clarendon

It seems we are constantly faced with the particular design challenge of needing to convey a message or feeling in a way which will capture and hold attention. Most designers have a book of tricks, - a list of techniques they have mused upon and wanted to try or those they have already used and found to be effective (old standbys).

When working with type alone or dynamically, one has the boundless progenations of history to draw from in both gaining ideas and devining inspiration. Elements within the design rely upon each other to create cohesiveness or contrast in the overall strategy.

Clarendon, Virginia sits in the heart of Arlington. It is unquestionably one of the most unique locals to walk around and get design ideas. In what can only be described as a goulash or medly, a clash or interesting truce between different periods and their styles. Despite the renovation and intense trends toward planned renewal, Clarendon is a perfect place to walk around and see not just the sights but the - signs.

Neon abound. Hand painted and written. The former home of Arlington's 'Little Saigon' still boasts the honor and many elements remain.

An office building development rises in back of the beginning of Clarendon's Little Saigon beginning atthe 3100 block of Wilson Blvd in Clarendon. The office complex is complete today. As is the melange of periods...


Clarendon Virginia is a Metrorail stop. It's so easy to take a short ride up the escalators and into the center of it's most interesting proclivity. It is also a nightlife hotspot. I recommend taking a stroll for inspiration - take a camera!

Jarte Tabs Are Tops!

Jarte is the super- powered word processor based upon the MS wordpad engine. It's enhancements over basic word processors are nearly too many to list. But I will attempt to begin doing so here.

One ultimo-cool Jarte feature is the tabs atop the page workspace! I have yet to max it out (though I have'nt actually tried). You can see all the documents you are working on using Jarte at a glance and by full file name. You can switch from document to document simply by hovering the mouse over the document tab you want to view!



The switch is seamless. In this case, I am writing keyword sensitive content for let's say... a closet organization system website. I have the keywords to be used and the document I am writing beside each other at a click so I can quickly access the keywords to be used...

and again this is just one of the amazing and completely free features of Jarte!

The Redesign of the Typeface 'Kis Antigua'

Blog Entry by Jürgen Siebert - for fontblog.de
Published on 6, April 2009
Translation from German by Matt Taylor copyright 2010.

There is much speculation upon the re-publications of typefaces, Today I would very much like to revisit the font family Kis Antiqua of Hildegard Korger throw, which appeared now with Elsner Flake. For the Redesign Erhard emperor is responsible, to who I owe the following.

The return digitized version of the Antiqua Kis, which by the way decreases/goes back on Tótfalusi Kis Miklós (1650-1702), was developed and provided with new side dressing. Hildegard Korger, Professor Emeritus at the University for Diagram and Book Art, Leipzig (and there the former teacher of Erhard emperor), which was critically influential of this work.

The Kis family now covers six members: Antiqua and italic variations are available in the text design in each case as Regular and Semibold cut, the Regular, Regular Italic and Headline Design.

Between 1986 and 1990 Typoart Kis development appears with new side dressing in the current Headline cut.
The figure assortment of the new Kis is extensive. It contains apart from the standard character set in all six writings:
• Capitals (with associated currency and punctuation marks)
• numerous ligatures (also the long s and its ligatures)
• Verse aluminum, minuscule and majuscule with proportional instance and tabular side dressing,
• Nomenclature gates - Denominations and their fixed breaks (with proportional and tabular side dressing as well as associated currency and punctuation marks)
• Superior and Inferior with the fixed breaks built up from it (with tabular side dressing on horizontal lines as well as associated currency and punctuation marks)
Number sets (wider in form and side embellishment particularly added)
• Operational sign (while stationary the minuscule numbers adapted and with tabular extention leading in by an en).
•The two lean italic ones offer beyond that(Swashes). These are for nalstalgic purposes.

Adobe Font Folio 11.0 - Full Adobe Font Folio 11 Adobe® Font Folio® 11 software includes more than 2,300 fonts from the Adobe Type Library in OpenType® format, which provides enhanced linguistic support, advanced typographic features, and true cross-platform compatibility. Get a configuration that’s just right for your workgroup with your choice of a 5-, 10-, or 20-computer license.

In all three italic samples additionally the gg and gy ligatures are available. moreover, there are unique forms of all six faces to some figures.
e.g. the most important currency symbols apart from the necessary narrow execution offer both em and en units , which is aligned with the euro-symbol substantially broader and better.

A further feature is the French influence on capital letters, which are clearly larger and higher than those for the mixture set.

In the extensive assortment of the accent characters in each of the six designs, importance was attached on it, the accents are pronounced and clearly versal so to flow with Capital and lowercase differently i.e. in each case in the size and sometimes also in the form. ( nearly regardless of instance of usage)

The kerning of the Kis font family is a bit on the tight side. One example is in the Regular text being cut after the end of the sentence, comma and in the instance of further punctuation marks, a reduced word distance follows. Also before all Versals the word distance is smaller, particularly before T, V and W, as would normally go beyond that before some numbers.

The six writings of the Kis Antiqua are offered for for Apple Macintosh as well as PC TrueType format with extended Latin indication outlines for opentype pro. Besides code-PAGE-referred allocations, they are available in the format opentype and TrueType in west and central European.
Adobe Font Folio 11.0 - Full

AIO (All In One)

Images and text are two different communications. The expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" and In like kind "the movie was nothing like the book". Images and text are both information. They are recieved into our brain as representations or tidbits of information and are succinctly compiled and processed as such - seemlessly. - It's why we don't walk into walls. (generally).

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Somewhere between the drawings on the Cave of the Trois-Frères and the inscriptions on the Trajan Column there lies partial evidence of an early inclination towards higher pattern recognition connate to an ability to reason.

A company called Adobe, as commercially prolific and intrinsic to government and national defense as it is today, basically began as an electronic font development company.PostScript - a way of describing how things will appear in print was Adobe's main technology and in tandem with Apple Computer's use of it was catalyzing of the desktop publishing revolution. Adobe Type Manager, the PageMaker aquisition

and the Adobe Marketshare flagship Photoshop are examples of the suite approach taken by Adobe in developing a comprehensive all-In-One solution now known as InDesign CS
'Creative Suite'. Font Folio 11
Adobe's success is due almost entirely to VISION - the realization of visual dynamic/neccesity in acquiring and communicating information.

An upstart company called Quark began more ostensively as a purely page layout/design software company.

The approach taken by Quark was perhaps a bit more utilitarian. It was an interesting and measured response to Aldus PageMaker and the Apple/Postscript driven DPR although perhaps even more an answer to the PC revolution in general. QuarkXPress for a long time enjoyed the lion's share of kudos and cash from typesetting and printing professionals due mostly to it's empowerment through simplicity of working in boxes.

Adobe Font Folio 11.0 - Full Adobe Font Folio 11 Adobe® Font Folio® 11 software includes more than 2,300 fonts from the Adobe Type Library in OpenType® format, which provides enhanced linguistic support, advanced typographic features, and true cross-platform compatibility. Get a configuration that’s just right for your workgroup with your choice of a 5-, 10-, or 20-computer license.

From earliest times (the illuminated manuscript for example) Books and documents were layed out on a 'box within box' type system. Our paper sizes and even web pages use this today. Quark maintained the classical structure and thinking then advanced from there following up consistently with sharp new versions which still place the art of typography in very high esteem. QuarkXpress is no stranger to images and graphics. It utilizes the acclaimed Pantone Color Matching System to give ultimate controls to the user.

The inviting of third parties to develop cool new features which enhance the main QuarkXpress schema was a major move -in both marketing, artistic and historical terms. It is the theme now running throughout openscource and ...

GIMP. GIMP stands for 'GNU Image Manipulation Program' It is just as the name implies - a mainly image manipulation program. It began as a college project at the University of California, Berkley. Like all Gimp uses layers,vector/graphic lines and the ability to import (and through freely available third-party plugins) export to the major file formats in use today across the digital/internet spectrum.
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Gimp is a free openscource response to photoshop with an intent to be more versitile just as Quarkxpress was a response to PageMaker with gearings going towards the latest image and graphic rendering and manipulation The program is capable of using Opentype fonts for display.

As we see today, there were many different musings on the part of major software technology companies as they looked towards the future of the digital revolution, which when combined with marketing pressures and strategies have brought us to a place and point in the state of the art where output and imput environment - is EVERYTHING!!!
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The Operating System plays no small role in this. Enters and all the while, a little company called the Microsoft Corporation.

Talk about utilitarian!

None the less despite Microsoft's early success as IBM minion and their subsequent, clever marketing/maneuvering gyrations and bumpy navigations from that point, Microsoft managed to focus on being the best, most efficient and user friendly computer operating system on the planet.
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Through a synthesis or sometimes seemingly a 'reverse osmosis' of buying/aquiring and genuine innovation, Microsoft sought to provide only the most pertainent capabilities to the average pc user. A full fledged program (at that time)called Paint was as basic as one could get and yet was a commensurate reply to Apple offerings at the time.
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In the spirit of QuarkXpress's XTensions and the applied freeware/GNU response of GIMP to photoshop, Microsoft funded a project based upon their .NET programming backdrop called Paint.NET.
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Paint.NET began began also as a college Student project at Washington State University. As GIMP was a freeware attempt at equalling Photoshop capabilities, Paint.NET was an attempt at accentuating the capabilities of Microsoft's rudimentary Paint program using the .net platform.

Like Jarte improves word processing over WordPad, people like Paint.NET because it
succeeds in the area of image and graphic rendering and manipulation over and above MSPaint -(as it was intended to). It is a powerful vehicle for web graphics and is full of cool plugin image/graphic manipulation endowments as well as importing and saving options (such as PSD -PhotoShop Document) as well as it's own version of saving as layers(PDN). Like GIMP Paint.NET has a strong user community but despite it's third party development capabilities it currently falls short of any full featured document or quality print capabilities (comparatively).

Paint.NET is based on Raster (bitmap) graphics with inclusion of object-oriented features where as GIMP is Vector Graphics driven and althogh postumously, - fully object oriented. There are a number of effects/plugins included in Paint.net which when used appropriately relieve the fundamental disadvantages of the bitmap conundrum.

Next Article: AIO - 'Depth of a Salesman'.
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Informationes' de Pantose

Many years ago I had the privilege of seeing Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest , at Arena Stage's, Fichandler Stage, the famous theater-in-the-round in Arlington,Virginia. The play was mesmerizing and always stayed in mind as it was a unique title for a production - comedy or no.

Mentioned in previous articles there are a number of differences between free TrueType fonts and the fonts ones you pay for. Despite the number of differences the main one come down to an important number. - It's called a Panose number. and this is no comedy.

A Panose Number is a ten digit number, with each digit containing a value between 0 and 15. - hexadecimal numbers (0-9, A-F). These hexadecimal numbers are enclosed into the operating system table as the (Rich Font Description) which is a language assigned as part of a True Type font. The main purpose of it's invention was to speed up printers - minimizing the number of fonts required to be held in memory.

Very many applications point to Panose numbers to substitute fonts needing repair or altogether missing from your documents. If a font builder does not reset the numbers when building a new font, those numbers are set to 0000000000, (Nil) - In other words - the font contains no Panose information and cannot be used in replacing missing fonts or those in need of repair. If that is the case with a particular font, the default to step in on the dance is usually Arial, Courier,Times New Roman. or one the administrator has specified.

One may shimmey their hands together creating friction while gazing at the wonderful lines of a particular font or for that matter an entire website full of wonderous offerings - all the while we envision their useage in a planned composition or project.

But I got to say the Ney/No my Brothers and Sisters!

As you know (in windows XP for example) when we click the 'AB' Icon at the top of the installed fonts management window, we can see how all fonts compare in terms of similarity.
That information is crucial in determining which font will do the trick. It's also very valuable when deciding which fonts to get rid of (spring cleaning for the fontoholics).

If you have a long list of fonts which remain stacked up at the bottom below those with their pedigree info, you will doubtlessly become less interactive with them and eventually weighted down by their lack of communication with you.

Many fonts may be gems from the past However they are mainly intrisic to your creative future in terms of their direct utility.

The Pantose information System classifies typefaces based upon their visual differentia, It was a longtime in crafting and over the years has come to serve an important role across the digital spectrum. Whether seeking out a free TrueType, font or even one you want to pay for, make sure it comes with it's nitty-gritty. Your life and creative flow will be a whole lot easier!

Why Not Jarte?

Why Not Jarte?
I recently decided to test Jarte for a test drive. Jarte is a light yet powerful word processor built on the stable Microsoft wordpad engine. It is designed to be as simple and straight forward as wordpad while simultaneously giving the user enhanced Word capabilities.

These include:

Tabbed document windows for easy access to your open documents
Larger buttons for the most commonly used functions
Instant dictionary and thesaurus word lookup (integrates with free WordWeb)
Spell check and text search tools that do not park themselves on top of the text you are trying to edit
Single click bookmarking that make bookmarks both useful and usable
Instant access to the documents and folders you designate as your favorites
Instant access to the fonts you designate as your favorites
Use of the mouse scroll wheel button to copy and paste text.

The interface is cool! I liked the skin and icons instantly!

Perhaps Jarte's most prominent features are it's customizable quickbar and shortcut keys. In addition to it's Split View mode and Word Count in the status bar, the Jarte word processor sets the user up for the best chance of smooth workflow and increased productivity. - It's a Productivity MACHINE!

As I was checking out some of it's other cool features, fontaphile that I am, I stumbled onto yet another cool feature at the bottom of the text drop down menu.


Fonts Online - FREE FONTS!!!
It is a link to a good font website called MyFonts.com. MyFonts is a time tested resource for free and purchasable fonts and font families. You can customize the sample by adding your own text and most fonts families have at least on member offered for free so I kinda went shopping.

I was hit instantly by 3 fonts in particular.
Vertrina sang to me like a siren.

Mimix Kid caught my attention but I was'nt really sold on it's overall usability...


until I saw that it had the endorsement of this smart ass little kid -

and that's good enough for me!


The most likely suspect for downloading was this beautiful, all purpose gem called Mentone.

Exquisite! Here is the info on it:

Mentone is a new general purpose typeface, an attempt at extending the line of the great sans-serifs of the previous century, Frutiger - Stone Sans - Myriad.
The font has round corners and subtle chamfers, which are all but invisible at text sizes, but add an upbeat, irreverent expression at display sizes.
The typeface is named after the beautiful bayside suburb of Melbourne, Australia, where the designer lives. More…
This new version (2.01) was spaced and kerned by Igino Marini of iKern.
The semibold cuts are now free!
Mentone Light
Mentone Light Italic
Mentone Regular
Mentone Italic
Mentone Semi Bold
Mentone Semi Bold Italic
Mentone Bold
Mentone Bold Italic
GLYPH COVERAGE
Basic Latin/English, West European Diacritics, Euro, Ligatures, Central Europe, Baltic, Turkish, Dingbats and Symbols.
Unfortunately No Panose Information Available (as is the case with most free fonts - eh!)

I downloaded Mentone Light and If I want to, I can take the whole kit and kaboodle with me into another program on another computer because Jarte has Install to USB Drive!

Infinitely cool!

Check out Jarte from Carolina Road Software