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View Full Version : Free sans family: Kaffeesatz

ktinkel
03-25-2006, 09:09 AM
Yanone Kaffeesatz (http://www.yanone.de/schriftgestaltung/kaffeesatz/) is a well-made four-weight — thin, light, regular, and bold — narrow sans available free under a Creative Commons license (which doesn’t mean you cannot contribute via PayPal if you like and use it).

It is OpenType format and includes a few discretionary ligatures and special characters. The font and a small PDF specimen sheet can be downloaded at the link above.

The site is pretty, and there are other fonts as well as photos and a blog.
Michael Rowley
03-25-2006, 11:45 AM
KT:

Kaffeesatz is rather nice. The non-lining figures makes me think of the four types of arabic numerals: non-lining mono-width & variable width and lining monowidth & variable width. In the normal Type 1 & TrueType fonts without extended character tables you usually get mono-with lining numerals (with Georgia a notable exception), but many OpenFont fonts give you either lining mono-width or non-lining varable width, and some give you all four. However, unless you have an OpenType savvy program such as InDesign, there's no easy way to choose.
iamback
03-27-2006, 05:39 AM
Yanone Kaffeesatz (http://www.yanone.de/schriftgestaltung/kaffeesatz/) is a well-made four-weight — thin, light, regular, and bold — narrow sans available free under a Creative Commons licenseNice! Thanks for pointing it out.
Michael Rowley
03-28-2006, 02:04 PM
Marjolein:

There seems to be a problem with the naming of the font files. ATM Deluxe would only instal the bold and a second font, which turned out to be Kaffeesatz Light. On checking, I found that all four files had only the 'Typeface name', Kaffesatz. It may be a problem with ATM Deluxe only (it's out of date).
iamback
03-28-2006, 08:03 PM
There seems to be a problem with the naming of the font files. ATM Deluxe would only instal the bold and a second font, which turned out to be Kaffeesatz Light. On checking, I found that all four files had only the 'Typeface name', Kaffesatz. It may be a problem with ATM Deluxe only (it's out of date).I just opened the ZIP file with WinZip (yes, I need a new program), and opened each of the files - they open normally. What I thought unusual was that the file names were long filenames, instead of the (for font files) still more usual 8.3 format. However, the typeface name inside the files is all 'Yanone Kaffeesatz'.

I have the free ATM (4.1) - but that isn't used for OTF files on my machine. Maybe your ATM Deluxe is expecting 8.3 file names? Or confused by the internal identical font names? I haven't tried installing yet. Wait...

I "installed" in a two-step process: unzip to my general fonts directory (not the system fonts directory) where I keep a copy of all my fonts); from there copy them (one by one) to the system fonts directory (which causes a progress dialog "installing...") then looked at the system fonts directory and there they are all four, with not just different file names but also different font names - effectively the file name without the OTF extension - that looks OK Character map only shows "Yanone Kaffeesatz" though - but it does that for all fonts consisting of different files (only one "Verdana", too, for instance)

I'll have to try to actually use them to see how it works...

Addition: I made a small minimal document in HomeSite to test:<html>
<head>
<style>
p {
font-family: "Yanone Kaffeesatz";
font-size: 300%;
}
.bold { font-weight: 700; }
.normal { font-weight: 400; }
.light { font-weight: 300; }
.thin { font-weight: 100; }
</style>
</head>

<body>
<p class="bold">The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog</p>
<p class="normal">The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog</p>
<p class="light">The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog</p>
<p class="thin">The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog</p>
</body>

</html>
With the 'Browse' tab, IE (5.01 in my case) is used for rendering (screenshot 1); using "installed" (in HS) browsers, I can show the test in other browsers - also OK in Opera (7.23 - screenshot 2) - but Netscape 6 and Mozilla 1.73 don't recognize the font (screenshot 3) and show the default font instead. Weird ...

BTW, this actually demonstrates that different (numeric) font weights do work - at least in IE and Opera - as long as there are corresponding font files for the different weights. :)
Michael Rowley
03-29-2006, 06:58 AM
Marjolein:

Maybe your ATM Deluxe is expecting 8.3 file names?

All font file names are 8.3, but these are not the same as the 'Typeface name' (called the 'Font family name' in Properties) or the 'PS name'. I assume the PS name is faulty in Yanine Kaffeesatz files, but I don't know that (there's a lot about font names that are a mystery to me).

ATM Deluxe deals with nearly all OpenType fonts satisfactorily, but I have had failures with Type 1 fonts that I had converted to TrueType-OpenType, although the font files looked all right. ATM Deluxe expects all font families to be represented as regular, italic, bold, and bold italic; a lot of Adobe's OTF fonts have more members than that, but ATM Deluxe recognizes them, thanks to Adobe's successful naming; but how the latter avoids the pitfalls is beyond me.
iamback
03-29-2006, 07:15 AM
Maybe your ATM Deluxe is expecting 8.3 file names?

All font file names are 8.3Nope - that's what I just explained: these aren't! So for instance "Yanone Kaffeesatz Bold" is contained in the file named "Yanone Kaffeesatz Bold.otf", and so on.

but these are not the same as the 'Typeface name' (called the 'Font family name' in Properties) or the 'PS name'.Indeed, generally they are not - but in this case they are! That's just what's so odd about them. And possibly the cause Mozilla & co doesn't recognize them.

I assume the PS name is faulty in Yanine Kaffeesatz files, but I don't know that (there's a lot about font names that are a mystery to me).All I've seen so far (until I saw these) is that the embedded name completely spells out the name and type/weight - but I don't know if there are actually riules for that.
Michael Rowley
03-29-2006, 11:57 AM
Marjolein:

Nope - that's what I just explained: these aren't!

No, you're quite right, they aren't. I have only just realized that the Yanone Kaffeesatz files at not TTF files (as I assumed), but OTF fonts. I had put them into my tt_fonts folder, when I should have put them into PSfonts. In that case, I had better tell ATM Deluxe to search for new fonts in the PSfonts folder.

I'll report later!

There's a useful discussion of font names in the file that goes with TransType Pro; I think it's free, i.e. you don't need to have bought TransType.
Michael Rowley
03-29-2006, 12:58 PM
No, ATM Deluxe won't 'find' more than Kaffeesatz (sic) and Kaffeesatz Bold, i.e. it can't distinguish between K. Regular, K. Light, and K. Thin. Does anyone have better luck with another font manager?