I wonder sometimes what would be the oldest extant word based on technology no longer in use. Taping an interview? Dialing someone? https://twitter.com/hels/status/679059633949011970 …
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Replying to @mwichary
Font is a good one, late 17th century. Still used for selling type, but several generations of obsolete tech later. In general there are a lot of words from printing, which makes sense, considering that printers preserved the written word, so their terminology survived.
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Replying to @kimaboe
But font feels like it doesn’t count because fonts still exist. They’re just a different/more modern version of the same idea. But I bet there must have been a device used for typesetting that’s no longer there, immortalized in some term…
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Replying to @mwichary
Oh, for sure, Adobe software is full of them, 'leading', 'slug' and 'kerning' comes to mind.
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It is arguable that fonts still exist, typeface licences surely do, but even files to store the typeface design are disappearing fairly rapidly now. Modern design tools don't require (or even work with) files, only usage rights through a cloud-subscription.
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Oh, I think I disagree! Whether it’s a floppy disk or a cloud license, you still chose a font from the menu somewhere. (It might be a generalization similar to a photo/music album, but it doesn’t feel as clean. Fonts always felt somewhat more abstract, I think.)
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Replying to @mwichary
Perhaps it is me being a letterpress printer that means I think of ‘a font’ as a physical thing :)
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