Fontforge 開發者採訪（2007年5月）─ 中英對照版
OSP, Interview with George Williams, Fontforge developer, July 8th, 2007.
http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/blog/typo/i-think-the-ideas-behind-it-are-beautiful-in-my-mind.
Copyleft: This is a free work, you can copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the Free Art License http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/
Interview with George Williams, Fontforge developer
「（略⋯）我想其後的概念對我來說就是美的表現 - 其實我也覺得使用介面滿美的。我不確定世上其他人是怎麼想的，但那就是我所要的，因而覺得美。」喬治．威廉斯，2007年5月。
OSP: We‘re doing these interviews, as we’re working as designers on OpenSource
OSP：我們是以開源界設計師的身份來做相關的採訪。
G: OK
喬治：了解。
OSP: With OpenSource tools, as typographers, but often when we speak to developers they say “well, tell me what you want,” or they see our interest in what they are doing as a kind of feature request or bug report
OSP：有了開源工具後，人們成了字文編排師，但通常我們去找開發者時，他們會說：「好，你想要什麼？」，或者把我們有意請他們做的事情當作一種功能請求，或是臭蟲回報。
G: (laughs) Yes
喬治：（笑）對。
OSP: Of course it’s clear that that’s the way it often works, but for us it’s also interesting to think about these tools as really tools, as ways of shaping work, to try and understand how they are made or who is making them. It can help us make other things. So this is actually what we want to talk about. To try and understand a bit about how you’ve been working on FontForge. Because that’s the project you’re working on.
OSP：當然這種方式確實有用。但對我們而言，把這類工具用真實工具的態度來看待，也就是形塑作品的方法，然後去摸索、去瞭解作品的製作過程，或那是誰的作品等，是件很有趣的事情。它們能幫助我們製作出其他東西。所以這就是我們想要談的，試圖瞭解一些有關你在處理 FontForge 上的事情，因為那是你在做的專案。
G: OK
喬治：好。
OSP: And how that connects to other ideas of tools or tools’ shape that you make. These kind of things. So maybe first it’s good to talk about what it is that you make.
OSP：那這樣的看法又與你製作工具時的其他想法，或工具雛型有怎樣的關連？就是這一類的東西。我看先來聊聊你做的東西好了。
G: OK. Well… FontForge is a font editor.
喬治：好。嗯⋯ FontForge 是字型編輯器。
I started playing with fonts when I bought my first Macintosh, back in the early 80s (actually it was the mid-80s) and my father studied textual bibliography and looked at the ways the printing technology of the Renaissance affected the publication of Shakespeare’s works. And what that meant about the errors in the compositions we see in the copies we have left from the Renaissance. So my father was very interested in Renaissance printing (and has written books on this subject) and somehow that meant that I was interested in fonts.
我在買了第一臺蘋果麥金塔後開始玩字型，大概 1980 年代早期（實際上是 1980 年代中期），而我爸是在研究文獻學（textual bibliography）的，還有文藝復興時期的印刷技術如何影響莎士比亞的著作出版。以及我們從文藝復興所留下的印刷品上所看到的編輯錯誤又代表什麼。因此我的父親對文藝復興印刷很有興趣（而且還出書），所以某些程度上意味我對字型有興趣。
I’m not quite sure how that connection happened, but it did. So I was interested in fonts. And there was this program that came out in the 80s called Fontographer which allowed you to create PostScript and later TrueType fonts. And I loved it. And I made lots of calligraphic fonts with it.
我不是很確定之間的連結怎麼來的，但就是這樣，我對字型有了興趣。1980 年代當時有個叫 Fontographer 的程式出來，讓你製作 PostScript 字型，後來還能做 TrueType 字型，我很愛。我用它做了很多書法 (譯註：西洋書法) 字型。
OSP: You were… like 20?
OSP：那時你大概⋯ 20 歲？
G: I was 20~30. Lets see, I was born in 1959, so in the 80s I was in my 20s mostly. And then Fontographer was bought up by MacroMedia who had no interest in it. They wanted FreeHand which was done by the same company. So they dropped Fon… well they continued to sell Fontographer but they didn’t update it. And then OpenType came out and Unicode came out and it (Fontographer) didn’t do this right and it didn’t do that right… And I started making my own fonts, and I used Fontographer to provide the basis, and I started writing scripts that would add accents to latin letters and so on. And figured out the Type1 format so that I could decompose it — decompose the Fontographer output so that I could add my own things to it. And then Fontographer didn’t do Type0 PostScript fonts, so I figured that out.
喬治：我差不多二、三十歲吧。我算一下喔，我 1959 年出生，所以 1980 年代大約是我二十多歲。那時 Fontographer 被 MacroMedia 收購，但 MacroMedia 卻對它一點興趣也沒有；他們想要的是同公司的產品 FreeHand，所以他們丟下了 Fon⋯ 好啦，他們是有繼續賣 Fontogragher 啦，但是沒在更新。接著 OpenType 推出，Unicode 也推出，而它 (Fontographer) 這沒做好、那也沒做好⋯ 然後我開始動手做自己的字體，先用 Fontographer 做出基礎，再開始寫指令稿把重音記號加到拉丁字母上等等。接著去搞懂 Type 1 格式，這樣才能將把它解構 — 就是拆解 Fontographer 的輸出，然後加上自己的東西。還有 Fontographer 也不能製作 Type0 PostScript 字體，所以我也把它搞出來了。
And about this time, the little company I was working for, a tiny little startup — we wrote a web html editor — where you could sit at your desk and edit pages on the web — it was before FrontPage, but similar to FrontPage. And we were bought by AOL and then we were destroyed by AOL, but we had stock options from AOL and they went through the roof. So… in the late 90s I quit.
同時間，我工作的小公司剛開始起步 — 我們寫了一個網頁 html 編輯器 — 你們可以坐在電腦桌前編輯網頁 — 它比 FrontPage 更早出現，但類似 FrontPage。後來我們被 AOL 收購，然後摧毀。不過我們有 AOL 的股票選擇權，接下來他們的股價衝到了天頂。所以⋯ 1990 年代後期我就不幹了。
And I didn’t have to work.
而且我也不必再工作了。
And I went off to Madagascar for a while to see if I wanted to be a primatologist. And… I didn’t. There were too many leaches in the rainforest.
我跑去馬達加斯加一陣子，去探索我是否適合當靈長類學家。嗯⋯ 我確實不適合。雨林裡有太多水蛭了。
OSP: (laughs)
OSP：(偷笑)
G: So I came back, and I wrote a font editor instead.
喬治：所以我回來了，改寫字體編輯器。
And I put it up on the web and in ‘late 99, and within a month someone gave me a bug report and was using it.
1999 年底我把它放到網路上，一個月內就有人給我臭蟲回報，也開始有人用。
OSP: (laughs) So it took a month
OSP：（笑）所以花了一個月
G: Well, you know, there was no advertisement, it was just there, and someone found it and that was neat!
喬治：嗯，你知道的，我沒有廣告，就放在那裡，然後就有人找到它，那感覺很妙！
OSP: (laughs)
OSP：（笑）
G: And that was called PfaEdit (because when it began it only did PostScript) and I… it just grew. And then — I don’t know — three, four, five years ago someone pointed out that PfaEdit wasn’t really appropriate any more, so I asked various users what would be a good name and a French guy said “How ’bout FontForge?” So. It became FontForge then. — That’s a much better name than PfaEdit.
喬治：剛開始叫 PfaEdit（因為一開始只能處理 PostScript），然後我⋯ 它就長大了。接著 — 我忘了過多久 — 可能是三、或四、五年前吧，有人指出 PfaEdit 這名字已經不貼切了，所以我問了幾位使用者有沒有什麼比較好的名稱，有一個法國人說「那叫 FontForge 如何？」於是那時起就叫 FontForge 了。— 實在比 PfaEdit 好太多了。
OSP: (laughs)
OSP：（笑）
G: Used it ever since.
喬治：後來就用它了。
OSP: But your background… you talked about your father studying…
OSP：不過你的背景⋯ 你談到你父親在研究⋯
G: I grew up in a household where Shakespeare was quoted at me every day, and he was an English teacher, still is an English teacher, well, obviously retired but he still occasionally teaches, and has been working for about 30 years on one of those versions of Shakespeare where you have two lines of Shakespeare text at the top and the rest of the page is footnotes.
喬治：我在一個每天都有人引用莎士比亞著作的家庭長大，他是個英文老師，現在還是，嗯，他確實已經退休了，但有機會偶爾還是會教；他已經研究那種上面兩行寫莎士比亞原文，下面全部寫滿註解的書三十多年了。
And I went completely differently and became a mathematician and computer scientist and worked in those areas for almost 20 years and then went off and tried to do my own things.
我和他完全不同，成為一位數學家兼電腦科學家，在這些領域上投入大概 20 年的時間，接著離開並嘗試做自己想做的事。
OSP: So how did you become a mathematician?
OSP：你是怎樣變成數學家的？
G: (pause) I just liked it.
喬治：（停頓）我就是喜歡。
OSP: (laughs) “just liked it”
OSP：（笑）「就是喜歡」
G: I was good at it. I got pushed ahead in high school. It just never occurred to me that I’d do anything else — until I met a computer. And then I still did maths because I didn’t think computers were — appropriate — or — I was a snob. How about that.
喬治：我很擅長數學，在高中時代名列前茅。我一直不知道要做什麼 — 直到我遇到電腦。𣎴過那之後我還是有在碰數學，因為電腦不是⋯ 那麼適合，或者說⋯ 我其實是個自負的人。聽起來怎樣？
OSP: (laughs)
OSP：（笑）
G: But I spent all my time working on computers as I went through university. And then got my first job at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and shortly thereafter the shuttle blew up and we had some (JPL is part of NASA) — some of our experiments — my little group — flew on the shuttle and some of them flew on an airplane which went over the US took special radar pictures of the US. We also took special radar pictures of the world from the shuttle (SIR-A, SIR-B, SIR-C). And then our airplane burned up. And JPL was not a very happy place to work after that.
喬治：但我去大學之後就把時間都花在電腦上了。後來我得到人生第一分工作，在 JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) 上班，不過不久之後太空梭升空爆炸了；我們 (JPL 是 NASA 的一部分) ⋯ 有些實驗 — 我們的小組裡 — 有些是操控太空梭，有些是操控飛機，飛機是那種在美國上空飛來飛去拍攝特殊雷達照片的飛機；我們也從太空梭（SIR-A, SIR-B, SIR-C）拍攝那種特殊的雷達照片。後來我們的飛機燒掉了。而且 JPL 在那之後也不是個能夠開心工作的地方。
So then I went to a little company with some college friends of mine, that they’d started, created compilers and debuggers — do you know what those are?
所以後來我去了我大學朋友開的小公司，他們剛開始是做編譯器與除錯器的 — 你懂那是在幹什麼的嗎？
OSP: Mm-hmm.
OSP：嗯哼。
G: And I worked a long time on that, and then the internet came out and found another little company with some friends — and worked on HTML.
喬治：我做了很長一段時間，然後網際網路出來了，就和一些朋友開了間小公司 — 開始弄 HTML。
OSP: So when, before we moved, I was curious about, I wanted you to talk about a Shakespearian influence on your interest in fonts. But on the other hand you talk about working in a company where you did HTML editors at the time you actually started, I think. So do you think that is somehow present… the web is somehow present in your — in how FontForge works? or how fonts work or how you think about fonts?
OSP：所以是什麼時候，在我們繼續之前，嗯我很好奇喔，能不能請你講一下莎士比亞對你的字體興趣有怎樣的影響。另一方面你前面談到你到新公司做 HTML 編輯器的時候，我想正是你實際開始的時候。所以你是否認為有關⋯ 網路是否多少對你的 — FontForge 作品有怎樣的影響？或是說對字體有怎樣的影響？或是你對字體有什麼看法？
G: I don’t think the web had much to do with my — well, that’s not true. OK, when I was working on the HTML editor, at the time, mid-90s, there weren’t any Unicode fonts, and so part of the reason I was writing all these scripts to add accents and get Type0 support in PostScript (which is what you need for a Unicode font) was because I needed a Unicode font for our HTML product.
喬治：我不認為網路有對我的⋯ 喔，也不是這樣說。好吧，當我在做 HTML 編輯器的時候，大概1990年代中期，是還没有 Unicode 字體的，所以我之所以寫那些指令稿，例如加入重音符號，並且在 PostScript 中加入 Type0 支援（Unicode 字體的需求），原因之一就是我們的 HTML 產品也需要 Unicode 字體。
To that extent — yes-s-s-s.
就這樣來說⋯確實啦。
It had an effect. Aside from that, not really.
是有影響。不過撇開那點不看，不算真的有。
The web has certainly allowed me to distribute it. Without the web I doubt anyone would know — I wouldn’t have any idea how to “market” it. If that’s the right word for something that doesn’t get paid for. And certainly the web has provided a convenient infrastructure to do the documentation in.
網路確實讓我能散布這個作品。没了網路，我懷疑不會有人知道 — 我完全不懂要怎樣去「行銷」，我不清楚沒付錢是不是也能用這個詞來表達。而確實網路也提供了方便的基礎架構去做文件。
But — as for font design itself — that (the web) has certainly not affected me.
但，就字體設計本身來說，網路根本沒有影響到我。
Maybe with this creative commons talk that Jon Phillips was giving, there may be, at some point, a button that you can press to upload your fonts to the Open Font Library — but I haven’t gotten there yet, so I don’t want to promise that.
也許 Jon Phillips 的創用CC (Creative Commons) 演講，可能在某種程度上讓我想放個按鈕，按一下就能上傳你的字體到 Open Font Library 上 — 但我還沒做到那裡，所以我不能保證。
OSP: (laughs) But no, indeed there was– hearing you speak about cchost, that’s the–
OSP：（笑）但不，實際上有⋯ 聽你說過 cchost，那是—
G: Mm-hmm.
喬治：嗯哼。
OSP: software we are talking about?
OSP：我們現在在談的軟體嗎？
G: That’s what the Open Font Library uses, yes.
喬治：那是 Open Font Library 所採用的軟體，是的。
OSP: Yeah. And a connection to FontForge could change the way, not only how you distribute fonts, but also how you design fonts.
OSP：好。如果能和 FontForge 連結可能會帶來改變，那就不只是字體的散布方式而已，也會影響字體的設計方式。
G: It — it might. I don’t know … I don’t have a view of the future.
喬治：也許吧，我不知道⋯ 我無法預知未來。
I guess to some extent, obviously font design has been affected by requiring it (the font) to be displayed on a small screen with a low resolution display. And there are all kinds of hacks in modern fonts formats for dealing with low resolution stuff. PostScript calls them hints and TrueType calls them instructions. They are different approaches to the same thing. But that, that certainly has affected font design in the last — well since PostScript came out.
我認為某種程度上，字體設計明顯受到需要顯示在低解析度的小螢幕上而受到影響。現代字體格式中有許多 hack 都在處理低解析度的東西。PostScript 將這稱為字繪提示 hint，而 TrueType 稱它為字繪指示 instruction。它們的作法不同，但都在做同一件事。不過，那確實大大影響了最近⋯ 好，從 PostScript 出現之後的字體設計。
The web itself? I don’t think that has yet been a significant influence on font design, but then — I’m no longer a designer. I discovered I was much better at designing font editors than at designing fonts.
至於網路？我不認為那有對字體設計造成過什麼重大影響，不過⋯ 後來我也很久沒再設計字體了。我發現比起字體設計，我更在行的是字體編輯器設計。
So I’ve given up on that aspect of things.
所以我放棄了那一類的事。
OSP: Mm-K, because I’m curious about your making a division about being a designer, or being a font-editor-maker, because for me that same definition of maker, these two things might be very related.
OSP：嗯，因為我對你把作個設計師，和作個字體編輯器製作者分開來看很好奇；對我而言那都屬於自造者的範疇，這兩件事似乎滿有關聯的。
G: Well they are. And I only got in to doing it because the tools that were available to me were not adequate. But I have found since — that I’m not adequate at doing the design, there are many people who are better at designing — designing fonts, than I am. And I like to design fonts, but I have made some very ugly ones at times.
喬治：那樣說也沒錯。我之所以會進到這個領域是因為我能用的工具不合我用。但自從我發現⋯ 我不適合作設計，有很多人都更擅長設計— 比我更會設計字體。雖然我也喜歡設計字體，但我經常做出很醜的字體。
And so I think I will — I’ll do that occasionally, but that’s not where I’m going to make a mark.
所以我認為我會⋯ 偶爾會作字體，但那不是我能大放異彩的領域。
Mostly now —
現在大多⋯
I just don’t have the —
我想沒有⋯
The font editor itself takes up so much of time that I don’t have the energy, the enthusiasm, or anything like that to devote to another major creative project. And designing a font is a major creative project.
字體編輯器佔據我大多數的時間，所以我沒有精力、熱情，或那一類的東西，去投入需要大量創意的專案中。而設計字體就是一種創意本位的專案。
OSP: Well, can we talk about the major creative project of designing a font editor? I mean, because I’m curious how — how that is a creative project for you — how you look at that.
OSP：好， 那我們來談談設計字體編輯器這樣的創意本位專案好了。我的意思是，嗯，我很好奇喔 — 這樣的創意專案對你的關係 — 你是怎麼看的。
G: I look at it as a puzzle. And someone comes up to me with a problem, and I try and figure out how to solve it. And sometimes I don’t want to figure out how to solve it. But I feel I should anyway. And sometimes I don’t want to figure out how to solve it and I don’t.
喬治：我把它當作拼圖來看。當有人遇到問題來找我，我就試著解決。而我有時候會不想處理。但我總覺得無論如何都該處理才對。不過有時候我不是很想找出解決方案，就不碰了。
That’s one of the glories of being one’s own boss, you don’t have to do everything that you are asked.
這也是自己當老闆的美好之一，我不必都聽別人的。
But — to me — it’s just a problem. And it’s a fascinating problem. But why is it fascinating? — That’s just me. No one else, probably, finds it fascinating. Or — the guys who design FontLab probably also find it fascinating, there are two or three other font design programs in the world. And they would also find it fascinating.
但，對我來說，那不過就是問題，而且還是很吸引人的問題。可是為什麼會吸引人？那就是我。或許沒別人，就只有我覺得吸引人吧。或是，那些設計 FontLab 的人也會覺得問題很吸引人；這世上還有其他兩、三套字體設計程式，他們可能也會覺得吸引人吧。
OSP: Can you give an example of something you would find fascinating?
OSP：你可以解釋一下哪裡吸引人嗎？
G: Well. Dave Crossland who was sitting behind me at the end was talking to me today — he sat down — we started talking after lunch but on the way up the stairs — at first he was complaining that FontForge isn’t written with a standard widget set. So it looks different from everything else. And yes, it does. And I don’t care. Because this isn’t something which interests me.
喬治：好。像今天最後坐在我後面的 Dave Crossland 跑來找我講話，他坐了下來，我們在午餐後開始聊；一開始他一直在抱怨 FontForge 怎麼不是用標準 widget set 寫的，結果讓它看起來跟其他程式都很不一樣。確實是這樣沒錯。但我不在乎，我對那一點興趣也沒有。
On the other hand he was saying that what he also wanted was a paragraph level display of the font. So that as he made changes in the font he could see a ripple effect in the paragraph.
另外，他說他也想要能以段落來顯示字型。這樣他對字型做的修改，就能在段落中看見後續效果。
Now I have a thing which does a word level display, but it doesn’t do multi-lines. (or it does multi-lines if you are doing Japanese (vertical writing mode) but it doesn’t do multi-columns then. So it’s either one vertical row or one horizontal row of glyphs.
現在我有字詞級的顯示功能，但還不支援多列。(或如果你做的是日文字型 (直書模式) 的話有多行支援，但還沒有多欄支援。所以目前就只支援橫列或直行顯示字圖。)
And I do also have a paragraph level display, but it is static. You bring it up and it takes the current snapshot of the font and it generates a real truetype font and pass it off to the X windows rasterizer — passes it off to the standard linux toolchain (freetype) as that static font and asks that toolchain to display text.
其實我也是有段落級顯示功能，但是靜態的。你啟動這個功能後，它會對目前的字型做快照並生成真正的 truetype 字型，再傳給 X 視窗柵格處理器 (X windows rasterizer) — 以靜態字型方式傳給標準 linux 工具鏈 (freetype)，並要求工具鏈顯示那段文字。
So what he’s saying is “OK, do that, but update the font that you pass off every now and then.” And “Yeah, that’d be interesting to do. That’s an interesting project to work on.” Much more interesting than changing my widget set which is just a lot of work and tedious. Because there is nothing to think about. It’s just “OK, I’ve got to use this widget instead of my widget.” My widget does exactly what I want — because I designed it that way — how do I make this thing, which I didn’t design, which I don’t know anything about, do exactly what I want?
所以對於他的想法，我覺得「OK，就做吧，但是要隨時不斷更新字體。」然後，「嗯，那確實很有趣。那是個有趣的主題。」比起修改我的 widget set 還要有趣多了，畢竟那是用一堆苦工與枯燥乏味做出來的。我的 widget 能精準完成我想要做的事情 — 畢竟我本來就是要設計成這樣的 — 你想想看我該如何用這個不是我設計、而且我也不懂的東西，去完成我實際想要完成的事情？
And — that’s dull.
而且 — 那樣很蠢。
For me.
至少對我而言。
OSP: Yeah, well.
OSP：歐，這樣啊。
G: Dave, on the other hand, is very hopeful that he’ll find some poor fool who’ll take that on as a wonderful opportunity. And if he does, that would be great, because not having a standard widget set is one of the biggest complaints people have. Because FontForge doesn’t look like anything else. And people say “Well the grey background –” It used to have a grey background, now it has a white background “is very scary.”
喬治：另一方面來看，Dave 對找到一些把這件事視為美好機會的可憐蠢蛋覺得很有希望。如果他成功了，也是好事一件，因為沒採用標準 widget set 確實是最多人抱怨的。因為 FontForge 看起來不像其他程式一樣。然後大家都說「啊那個灰色背景 –『它之前是灰色背景，但現在改用白色背景了』看起來很恐怖」。
I thought it was normal to have a grey background, but uh… that’s why we now have a white background. A white background may be equally scary, but no one has complained about it yet.
其實我覺得用灰色背景很正常，但是嗯…那也是為什麼我們現在用白色背景的原因。白色背景應該一樣可怕，但卻沒有人再抱怨。
OSP: Try red.
試試紅色。
G: I tried light blue and cream. One of them I was told gave people migraines — I don’t remember specifically what the comment was about the light blue, but
喬治：我試過亮藍色和奶油黃色。其中有個顏色有人告訴我說看了令人頭痛 — 我不記得對亮藍色的反應是什麼，但是
(someone from InkScape): Make it configurable.
（InkScape 的某人）：讓組態可以調整。
G: Oh, it is configurable, but no one configures it.
喬治：噢，其實組態可以調整，只是沒人調整罷了。
(InkScaper): Yeah, I know.
（InkScaper）嗯，我瞭解。
G: So…
喬治：所以…
OSP: So, you talked about spending a lot of time on this project, how does that work, you get up in the morning and start working on FontForge? or…
OSP：所以，你說你花了一堆時間在這個專案上，那是怎樣的情況，你一早爬起來就在處理 FontForge 嗎？還是…
G: Well, I do many things. Some mornings, yes, I get up in the morning and I start working on FontForge and I cook breakfast in the background and eat breakfast and work on FontForge. Some mornings I get up at 4 in the morning and go out running for a couple of hours and come back home and sort of collapse and eat a little bit and go off to yoga class and do a pilates class and do another yoga class and then go to my pottery class, and go to the farmers’ market and come home and I haven’t worked on FontForge at all.
喬治：ㄜ，我做很多事。有些早上，是，我會早上爬起來，然後開始處理 FontForge 還有順便做早餐、吃早餐、同時處理 FontForge。有些早上我會 4 點起床，外出跑步幾個小時，回到家有點累，吃一點東西，再離開去上瑜伽課，做一點皮拉提斯以及瑜伽後，再跑去上我的陶藝課，然後去農夫市集並回家，一整天都沒有處理 FontForge。
So it varies according to the day.
所以不見得，要看哪一天。
But yes I…
但是，我確實…
There was a period where I was spending 40, 50 hours a week working on FontForge, I don’t spend that much time on it now, it’s more like 20 hours, though the last month I got all excited about the release that I put out last Tuesday — today is Sunday. And so I was working really hard — probably got up to — oh — 30 hours some of that time. I was really excited about the change. All kinds of things were different — I put in python scripting, which people had been asking for — well, I’m glad I’ve done it, but it was actually kind of boring, that bit — the stuff that came before was — fascinating.
有一段時間我每週會花上 40、50 個小時在 FontForge 上，現在沒花那麼多時間了，大概 20 小時左右，不過上個月我對於新發行版很興奮，也就是上週二發行的版本 — 今天是禮拜日。所以我花了滿多時間 — 大概快要 — 噢 — 有時會到 30 小時吧。我真的覺得這次的修改很棒。有些東西不大一樣了 — 我放了 python scripting 進去，也是大家一直詢問的 — 好吧，我很高興我終於完成了，但真的有點無聊 — 之前在做的事情比較 — 吸引人。
OSP: Like?
OSP：怎麼說？
G: I — are you familiar with the OpenType spec? No. OK. The way you… the way you specify ligatures and kerning in OpenType can be looked at at several different levels. And the way OpenType wants you to look at it, I felt, was unnecessarily complicated. So I didn’t look at it at that level. And then after about 5 years of looking at it that way I discovered that the reason I thought it was unnecessarily complicated was because I was only used to Latin or Cyrillic or Greek text, and for Latin, Cyrillic or Greek, it probably is unnecessarily complicated. But for Indic scripts it is not unnecessarily complicated, and you need all those things. So I ripped out all of the code for specifying strange glyph conversions. You know in Arabic a character looks different at the beginning of a word and so on? So that’s also handled in this area. And I ripped all that stuff out and redid it in the way that OpenType wanted it to be done and not the somewhat simplified but not sufficiently powerful method that I’d been using up until then.
喬治：我 — 你對 OpenType 規格有熟嗎？沒有。好吧。用 OpenType 指定連字或字距微調的方法可以從許多不同層面來看。而 OpenType 希望你使用的查看方式，就我來說，覺得不必搞得這樣複雜。所以我沒有就那層面來看。然後大約過了 5 年，我發現之所以覺得查看方式不必那樣複雜是因為我只有用到拉丁文、西里爾文或希臘文的文字；而對於拉丁文、西里爾文或希臘文來說，可能不必那樣複雜。至於印度文字，雖然不必那樣複雜，但你還是會需要所有要求的東西。所以我拿掉所有指定特殊字符轉換的程式碼。你知道阿拉伯文中，同個字元在字詞的開頭之類的地方卻有不同的字符寫法嗎？所以這個領域中也有處理這件事。然後我把我之前的做法全部拿掉，改用 OpenType 希望的處理方式，而不是我在那之前一直使用的簡化過、但不足以處理相關事物的方法。
And that I found, quite fascinating.
而我覺得，這還滿吸引人的。
And once I’d done that, it opened up all kinds of little things that I could change that made the font editor itself bettitor. Better. Bettitor?
而我完成之後，它開啟各種我能讓字體編輯器本身變得更 bettitor 的所有小事情的可能性。Better。Bettitor？
OSP: (laughs) That’s almost Dutch.
OSP：（笑）那好像是荷蘭語。
G: And so after I’d done that the display I talked about which could show a word — I realized that I should redo that to take advantage of what I had done. And so I redid that, and it’s now, it’s now much more usable. It now shows — at least I hope it shows — more of what people want to see when they are working with these transformations that apply to the font, there’s now a list of the various transformations, that can be enabled at any time and then it goes through and does them — whereas before it just sort of — well it did kerning, and if you asked it to it would substitute this glyph so you could see what it would look like — but it was all sort of — half-baked.
喬治：在那件事之後，我開始弄我剛剛談到的可以顯示字詞的查看功能 — 我體認到我應該要重新來過才能利用我先前完成的優勢。所以我也重做了，而現在它變得更好用了。它現在會顯示 — 至少我希望它能顯示 — 大家想要看到他們對字型處理這些變換時的效果，現在有一個列有各種變換方式的清單，可以隨時啟用，然後程式會走過並完成 — 而之前它是有點 — ㄝ，它的確能處理字距微調，如果你要求的話，它能替換掉這個字符，這樣就能看出看起來會怎樣 — 但是還有點 — 像只烘焙到一半的狀態。
It wasn’t very elegant.
還不是很優雅。
And — it’s much better now, and I’m quite proud of that.
不過 — 現在還是好多了，我還算滿滿意的。
It may crash — but it’s much better.
它還是可能會當掉 — 但好多了。
OSP: So you bring up half-baked, and when we met we talked about bread baking.
OSP：你談到烘焙到一半，然後我們剛碰面的時候我們剛好談到麵包烘焙。
G: Oh, yes.
喬治：噢，對啊。
OSP: And the pleasure of handling a material when you know it well. Maybe make reliable bread — meaning that it comes out always the same way, but by your connection to the material you somehow — well — it’s a pleasure to do that. So, since you’ve said that, and we then went on talking about pottery — how clay might be of the same — give the same kind of pleasure. I’ve been trying to think — how does FontForge have that? Does it have that and where would you find it or how is the…
OSP：還有就是當你很瞭解材料時去處理材料的喜悅感。也許製作出可靠的麵包 — 意思是烤出來都一樣，但是由於你對材料的連結，你某種程度上 — 嗯 — 很開心去那樣做。所以，因為你之前有談到那，我們又接著談到陶藝 — 粘土應該也一樣 — 都會有同一種的喜悅感。我就在想 — FontForge 又有怎樣的相似點呢？會有那樣的感覺嗎？你從那裡發現的？或是它怎麼…
G: I like to make things. I like to make things that — in some strange definition are beautiful. I’m not sure how that applies to making bread, but my pots — I think I make beautiful pots. And I really like the glazing I put onto them.
喬治：我喜歡動手做些東西。我喜歡做那種 — 就某些奇怪定義來說屬於美好的東西。我不是很確定是否能套到做麵包上，不過我的陶壺 — 我想我有作出一些漂亮的陶壺。我還滿喜歡我上的釉色。
It’s harder to say that a font editor is beautiful. But I think the ideas behind it are beautiful in my mind — and in some sense I find the user interface beautiful. I’m not sure that anyone else in the world does, because it’s what I want, but I think it’s beautiful.
很難去說字體編輯器能不能算美。不過我想背後的概念在我的心中算美 — 其實我也覺得使用介面滿美的。我不是很確定這世界上其他人是怎麼想的，但那是我想要的樣子，所以我覺得美。
And there’s a satisfaction in making something — in making something that’s beautiful.
而那就是對於製作東西的滿足感 — 作出出美好的東西。
And there’s a satisfaction too (as far as the bread goes) in making something I need. I eat my own bread — that’s all the bread I eat (except for those few days when I get lazy and don’t get to make bread that day and have to put it off until the next day and have to eat something that day — but that doesn’t happen very often).
製作我所需要的東西也會有滿足感（就像做麵包）。我吃我自己做的麵包 — 我只吃自己做的麵包（除了我很懶又不想做麵包的幾天，只好延後隔天做，但又必須吃些什麼東西的日子之外 — 但那不是很常發生）。
So it’s just — I like making beautiful things.
所以就只是 — 我喜歡自造出美好的東西。
OSP: OK, thank you.
OSP：OK，謝謝你。
G: Mm-hmm.
喬治：嗯哼。
OSP: That was very nice, thank you very much.
OSP：真好，非常感謝你。
G: Thank you. I have pictures of my pots if you’d like to see them?
喬治：謝謝你。我這邊有幾張我的陶壺作品相片，你想要看看嗎？
OSP: Yes, I would very much like to see them.
OSP：好啊，我迫不及待想要看看。
http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/blog/typo/i-think-the-ideas-behind-it-are-beautiful-in-my-mind.
Copyleft: This is a free work, you can copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the Free Art License http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/
Interview with George Williams, Fontforge developer
Fontforge 開發者 George Williams 的採訪
(…) I think the ideas behind it are beautiful in my mind — and in some sense I find the user interface beautiful. I’m not sure that anyone else in the world does, because it’s what I want, but I think it’s beautiful. (George Williams, May 2007)「（略⋯）我想其後的概念對我來說就是美的表現 - 其實我也覺得使用介面滿美的。我不確定世上其他人是怎麼想的，但那就是我所要的，因而覺得美。」喬治．威廉斯，2007年5月。
訪問內容
OSP: We‘re doing these interviews, as we’re working as designers on OpenSource
OSP：我們是以開源界設計師的身份來做相關的採訪。
G: OK
喬治：了解。
OSP: With OpenSource tools, as typographers, but often when we speak to developers they say “well, tell me what you want,” or they see our interest in what they are doing as a kind of feature request or bug report
OSP：有了開源工具後，人們成了字文編排師，但通常我們去找開發者時，他們會說：「好，你想要什麼？」，或者把我們有意請他們做的事情當作一種功能請求，或是臭蟲回報。
G: (laughs) Yes
喬治：（笑）對。
OSP: Of course it’s clear that that’s the way it often works, but for us it’s also interesting to think about these tools as really tools, as ways of shaping work, to try and understand how they are made or who is making them. It can help us make other things. So this is actually what we want to talk about. To try and understand a bit about how you’ve been working on FontForge. Because that’s the project you’re working on.
OSP：當然這種方式確實有用。但對我們而言，把這類工具用真實工具的態度來看待，也就是形塑作品的方法，然後去摸索、去瞭解作品的製作過程，或那是誰的作品等，是件很有趣的事情。它們能幫助我們製作出其他東西。所以這就是我們想要談的，試圖瞭解一些有關你在處理 FontForge 上的事情，因為那是你在做的專案。
G: OK
喬治：好。
OSP: And how that connects to other ideas of tools or tools’ shape that you make. These kind of things. So maybe first it’s good to talk about what it is that you make.
OSP：那這樣的看法又與你製作工具時的其他想法，或工具雛型有怎樣的關連？就是這一類的東西。我看先來聊聊你做的東西好了。
G: OK. Well… FontForge is a font editor.
喬治：好。嗯⋯ FontForge 是字型編輯器。
I started playing with fonts when I bought my first Macintosh, back in the early 80s (actually it was the mid-80s) and my father studied textual bibliography and looked at the ways the printing technology of the Renaissance affected the publication of Shakespeare’s works. And what that meant about the errors in the compositions we see in the copies we have left from the Renaissance. So my father was very interested in Renaissance printing (and has written books on this subject) and somehow that meant that I was interested in fonts.
我在買了第一臺蘋果麥金塔後開始玩字型，大概 1980 年代早期（實際上是 1980 年代中期），而我爸是在研究文獻學（textual bibliography）的，還有文藝復興時期的印刷技術如何影響莎士比亞的著作出版。以及我們從文藝復興所留下的印刷品上所看到的編輯錯誤又代表什麼。因此我的父親對文藝復興印刷很有興趣（而且還出書），所以某些程度上意味我對字型有興趣。
I’m not quite sure how that connection happened, but it did. So I was interested in fonts. And there was this program that came out in the 80s called Fontographer which allowed you to create PostScript and later TrueType fonts. And I loved it. And I made lots of calligraphic fonts with it.
我不是很確定之間的連結怎麼來的，但就是這樣，我對字型有了興趣。1980 年代當時有個叫 Fontographer 的程式出來，讓你製作 PostScript 字型，後來還能做 TrueType 字型，我很愛。我用它做了很多書法 (譯註：西洋書法) 字型。
OSP: You were… like 20?
OSP：那時你大概⋯ 20 歲？
G: I was 20~30. Lets see, I was born in 1959, so in the 80s I was in my 20s mostly. And then Fontographer was bought up by MacroMedia who had no interest in it. They wanted FreeHand which was done by the same company. So they dropped Fon… well they continued to sell Fontographer but they didn’t update it. And then OpenType came out and Unicode came out and it (Fontographer) didn’t do this right and it didn’t do that right… And I started making my own fonts, and I used Fontographer to provide the basis, and I started writing scripts that would add accents to latin letters and so on. And figured out the Type1 format so that I could decompose it — decompose the Fontographer output so that I could add my own things to it. And then Fontographer didn’t do Type0 PostScript fonts, so I figured that out.
喬治：我差不多二、三十歲吧。我算一下喔，我 1959 年出生，所以 1980 年代大約是我二十多歲。那時 Fontographer 被 MacroMedia 收購，但 MacroMedia 卻對它一點興趣也沒有；他們想要的是同公司的產品 FreeHand，所以他們丟下了 Fon⋯ 好啦，他們是有繼續賣 Fontogragher 啦，但是沒在更新。接著 OpenType 推出，Unicode 也推出，而它 (Fontographer) 這沒做好、那也沒做好⋯ 然後我開始動手做自己的字體，先用 Fontographer 做出基礎，再開始寫指令稿把重音記號加到拉丁字母上等等。接著去搞懂 Type 1 格式，這樣才能將把它解構 — 就是拆解 Fontographer 的輸出，然後加上自己的東西。還有 Fontographer 也不能製作 Type0 PostScript 字體，所以我也把它搞出來了。
And about this time, the little company I was working for, a tiny little startup — we wrote a web html editor — where you could sit at your desk and edit pages on the web — it was before FrontPage, but similar to FrontPage. And we were bought by AOL and then we were destroyed by AOL, but we had stock options from AOL and they went through the roof. So… in the late 90s I quit.
同時間，我工作的小公司剛開始起步 — 我們寫了一個網頁 html 編輯器 — 你們可以坐在電腦桌前編輯網頁 — 它比 FrontPage 更早出現，但類似 FrontPage。後來我們被 AOL 收購，然後摧毀。不過我們有 AOL 的股票選擇權，接下來他們的股價衝到了天頂。所以⋯ 1990 年代後期我就不幹了。
And I didn’t have to work.
而且我也不必再工作了。
And I went off to Madagascar for a while to see if I wanted to be a primatologist. And… I didn’t. There were too many leaches in the rainforest.
我跑去馬達加斯加一陣子，去探索我是否適合當靈長類學家。嗯⋯ 我確實不適合。雨林裡有太多水蛭了。
OSP: (laughs)
OSP：(偷笑)
G: So I came back, and I wrote a font editor instead.
喬治：所以我回來了，改寫字體編輯器。
And I put it up on the web and in ‘late 99, and within a month someone gave me a bug report and was using it.
1999 年底我把它放到網路上，一個月內就有人給我臭蟲回報，也開始有人用。
OSP: (laughs) So it took a month
OSP：（笑）所以花了一個月
G: Well, you know, there was no advertisement, it was just there, and someone found it and that was neat!
喬治：嗯，你知道的，我沒有廣告，就放在那裡，然後就有人找到它，那感覺很妙！
OSP: (laughs)
OSP：（笑）
G: And that was called PfaEdit (because when it began it only did PostScript) and I… it just grew. And then — I don’t know — three, four, five years ago someone pointed out that PfaEdit wasn’t really appropriate any more, so I asked various users what would be a good name and a French guy said “How ’bout FontForge?” So. It became FontForge then. — That’s a much better name than PfaEdit.
喬治：剛開始叫 PfaEdit（因為一開始只能處理 PostScript），然後我⋯ 它就長大了。接著 — 我忘了過多久 — 可能是三、或四、五年前吧，有人指出 PfaEdit 這名字已經不貼切了，所以我問了幾位使用者有沒有什麼比較好的名稱，有一個法國人說「那叫 FontForge 如何？」於是那時起就叫 FontForge 了。— 實在比 PfaEdit 好太多了。
OSP: (laughs)
OSP：（笑）
G: Used it ever since.
喬治：後來就用它了。
OSP: But your background… you talked about your father studying…
OSP：不過你的背景⋯ 你談到你父親在研究⋯
G: I grew up in a household where Shakespeare was quoted at me every day, and he was an English teacher, still is an English teacher, well, obviously retired but he still occasionally teaches, and has been working for about 30 years on one of those versions of Shakespeare where you have two lines of Shakespeare text at the top and the rest of the page is footnotes.
喬治：我在一個每天都有人引用莎士比亞著作的家庭長大，他是個英文老師，現在還是，嗯，他確實已經退休了，但有機會偶爾還是會教；他已經研究那種上面兩行寫莎士比亞原文，下面全部寫滿註解的書三十多年了。
And I went completely differently and became a mathematician and computer scientist and worked in those areas for almost 20 years and then went off and tried to do my own things.
我和他完全不同，成為一位數學家兼電腦科學家，在這些領域上投入大概 20 年的時間，接著離開並嘗試做自己想做的事。
OSP: So how did you become a mathematician?
OSP：你是怎樣變成數學家的？
G: (pause) I just liked it.
喬治：（停頓）我就是喜歡。
OSP: (laughs) “just liked it”
OSP：（笑）「就是喜歡」
G: I was good at it. I got pushed ahead in high school. It just never occurred to me that I’d do anything else — until I met a computer. And then I still did maths because I didn’t think computers were — appropriate — or — I was a snob. How about that.
喬治：我很擅長數學，在高中時代名列前茅。我一直不知道要做什麼 — 直到我遇到電腦。𣎴過那之後我還是有在碰數學，因為電腦不是⋯ 那麼適合，或者說⋯ 我其實是個自負的人。聽起來怎樣？
OSP: (laughs)
OSP：（笑）
G: But I spent all my time working on computers as I went through university. And then got my first job at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and shortly thereafter the shuttle blew up and we had some (JPL is part of NASA) — some of our experiments — my little group — flew on the shuttle and some of them flew on an airplane which went over the US took special radar pictures of the US. We also took special radar pictures of the world from the shuttle (SIR-A, SIR-B, SIR-C). And then our airplane burned up. And JPL was not a very happy place to work after that.
喬治：但我去大學之後就把時間都花在電腦上了。後來我得到人生第一分工作，在 JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) 上班，不過不久之後太空梭升空爆炸了；我們 (JPL 是 NASA 的一部分) ⋯ 有些實驗 — 我們的小組裡 — 有些是操控太空梭，有些是操控飛機，飛機是那種在美國上空飛來飛去拍攝特殊雷達照片的飛機；我們也從太空梭（SIR-A, SIR-B, SIR-C）拍攝那種特殊的雷達照片。後來我們的飛機燒掉了。而且 JPL 在那之後也不是個能夠開心工作的地方。
So then I went to a little company with some college friends of mine, that they’d started, created compilers and debuggers — do you know what those are?
所以後來我去了我大學朋友開的小公司，他們剛開始是做編譯器與除錯器的 — 你懂那是在幹什麼的嗎？
OSP: Mm-hmm.
OSP：嗯哼。
G: And I worked a long time on that, and then the internet came out and found another little company with some friends — and worked on HTML.
喬治：我做了很長一段時間，然後網際網路出來了，就和一些朋友開了間小公司 — 開始弄 HTML。
OSP: So when, before we moved, I was curious about, I wanted you to talk about a Shakespearian influence on your interest in fonts. But on the other hand you talk about working in a company where you did HTML editors at the time you actually started, I think. So do you think that is somehow present… the web is somehow present in your — in how FontForge works? or how fonts work or how you think about fonts?
OSP：所以是什麼時候，在我們繼續之前，嗯我很好奇喔，能不能請你講一下莎士比亞對你的字體興趣有怎樣的影響。另一方面你前面談到你到新公司做 HTML 編輯器的時候，我想正是你實際開始的時候。所以你是否認為有關⋯ 網路是否多少對你的 — FontForge 作品有怎樣的影響？或是說對字體有怎樣的影響？或是你對字體有什麼看法？
G: I don’t think the web had much to do with my — well, that’s not true. OK, when I was working on the HTML editor, at the time, mid-90s, there weren’t any Unicode fonts, and so part of the reason I was writing all these scripts to add accents and get Type0 support in PostScript (which is what you need for a Unicode font) was because I needed a Unicode font for our HTML product.
喬治：我不認為網路有對我的⋯ 喔，也不是這樣說。好吧，當我在做 HTML 編輯器的時候，大概1990年代中期，是還没有 Unicode 字體的，所以我之所以寫那些指令稿，例如加入重音符號，並且在 PostScript 中加入 Type0 支援（Unicode 字體的需求），原因之一就是我們的 HTML 產品也需要 Unicode 字體。
To that extent — yes-s-s-s.
就這樣來說⋯確實啦。
It had an effect. Aside from that, not really.
是有影響。不過撇開那點不看，不算真的有。
The web has certainly allowed me to distribute it. Without the web I doubt anyone would know — I wouldn’t have any idea how to “market” it. If that’s the right word for something that doesn’t get paid for. And certainly the web has provided a convenient infrastructure to do the documentation in.
網路確實讓我能散布這個作品。没了網路，我懷疑不會有人知道 — 我完全不懂要怎樣去「行銷」，我不清楚沒付錢是不是也能用這個詞來表達。而確實網路也提供了方便的基礎架構去做文件。
But — as for font design itself — that (the web) has certainly not affected me.
但，就字體設計本身來說，網路根本沒有影響到我。
Maybe with this creative commons talk that Jon Phillips was giving, there may be, at some point, a button that you can press to upload your fonts to the Open Font Library — but I haven’t gotten there yet, so I don’t want to promise that.
也許 Jon Phillips 的創用CC (Creative Commons) 演講，可能在某種程度上讓我想放個按鈕，按一下就能上傳你的字體到 Open Font Library 上 — 但我還沒做到那裡，所以我不能保證。
OSP: (laughs) But no, indeed there was– hearing you speak about cchost, that’s the–
OSP：（笑）但不，實際上有⋯ 聽你說過 cchost，那是—
G: Mm-hmm.
喬治：嗯哼。
OSP: software we are talking about?
OSP：我們現在在談的軟體嗎？
G: That’s what the Open Font Library uses, yes.
喬治：那是 Open Font Library 所採用的軟體，是的。
OSP: Yeah. And a connection to FontForge could change the way, not only how you distribute fonts, but also how you design fonts.
OSP：好。如果能和 FontForge 連結可能會帶來改變，那就不只是字體的散布方式而已，也會影響字體的設計方式。
G: It — it might. I don’t know … I don’t have a view of the future.
喬治：也許吧，我不知道⋯ 我無法預知未來。
I guess to some extent, obviously font design has been affected by requiring it (the font) to be displayed on a small screen with a low resolution display. And there are all kinds of hacks in modern fonts formats for dealing with low resolution stuff. PostScript calls them hints and TrueType calls them instructions. They are different approaches to the same thing. But that, that certainly has affected font design in the last — well since PostScript came out.
我認為某種程度上，字體設計明顯受到需要顯示在低解析度的小螢幕上而受到影響。現代字體格式中有許多 hack 都在處理低解析度的東西。PostScript 將這稱為字繪提示 hint，而 TrueType 稱它為字繪指示 instruction。它們的作法不同，但都在做同一件事。不過，那確實大大影響了最近⋯ 好，從 PostScript 出現之後的字體設計。
The web itself? I don’t think that has yet been a significant influence on font design, but then — I’m no longer a designer. I discovered I was much better at designing font editors than at designing fonts.
至於網路？我不認為那有對字體設計造成過什麼重大影響，不過⋯ 後來我也很久沒再設計字體了。我發現比起字體設計，我更在行的是字體編輯器設計。
So I’ve given up on that aspect of things.
所以我放棄了那一類的事。
OSP: Mm-K, because I’m curious about your making a division about being a designer, or being a font-editor-maker, because for me that same definition of maker, these two things might be very related.
OSP：嗯，因為我對你把作個設計師，和作個字體編輯器製作者分開來看很好奇；對我而言那都屬於自造者的範疇，這兩件事似乎滿有關聯的。
G: Well they are. And I only got in to doing it because the tools that were available to me were not adequate. But I have found since — that I’m not adequate at doing the design, there are many people who are better at designing — designing fonts, than I am. And I like to design fonts, but I have made some very ugly ones at times.
喬治：那樣說也沒錯。我之所以會進到這個領域是因為我能用的工具不合我用。但自從我發現⋯ 我不適合作設計，有很多人都更擅長設計— 比我更會設計字體。雖然我也喜歡設計字體，但我經常做出很醜的字體。
And so I think I will — I’ll do that occasionally, but that’s not where I’m going to make a mark.
所以我認為我會⋯ 偶爾會作字體，但那不是我能大放異彩的領域。
Mostly now —
現在大多⋯
I just don’t have the —
我想沒有⋯
The font editor itself takes up so much of time that I don’t have the energy, the enthusiasm, or anything like that to devote to another major creative project. And designing a font is a major creative project.
字體編輯器佔據我大多數的時間，所以我沒有精力、熱情，或那一類的東西，去投入需要大量創意的專案中。而設計字體就是一種創意本位的專案。
OSP: Well, can we talk about the major creative project of designing a font editor? I mean, because I’m curious how — how that is a creative project for you — how you look at that.
OSP：好， 那我們來談談設計字體編輯器這樣的創意本位專案好了。我的意思是，嗯，我很好奇喔 — 這樣的創意專案對你的關係 — 你是怎麼看的。
G: I look at it as a puzzle. And someone comes up to me with a problem, and I try and figure out how to solve it. And sometimes I don’t want to figure out how to solve it. But I feel I should anyway. And sometimes I don’t want to figure out how to solve it and I don’t.
喬治：我把它當作拼圖來看。當有人遇到問題來找我，我就試著解決。而我有時候會不想處理。但我總覺得無論如何都該處理才對。不過有時候我不是很想找出解決方案，就不碰了。
That’s one of the glories of being one’s own boss, you don’t have to do everything that you are asked.
這也是自己當老闆的美好之一，我不必都聽別人的。
But — to me — it’s just a problem. And it’s a fascinating problem. But why is it fascinating? — That’s just me. No one else, probably, finds it fascinating. Or — the guys who design FontLab probably also find it fascinating, there are two or three other font design programs in the world. And they would also find it fascinating.
但，對我來說，那不過就是問題，而且還是很吸引人的問題。可是為什麼會吸引人？那就是我。或許沒別人，就只有我覺得吸引人吧。或是，那些設計 FontLab 的人也會覺得問題很吸引人；這世上還有其他兩、三套字體設計程式，他們可能也會覺得吸引人吧。
OSP: Can you give an example of something you would find fascinating?
OSP：你可以解釋一下哪裡吸引人嗎？
G: Well. Dave Crossland who was sitting behind me at the end was talking to me today — he sat down — we started talking after lunch but on the way up the stairs — at first he was complaining that FontForge isn’t written with a standard widget set. So it looks different from everything else. And yes, it does. And I don’t care. Because this isn’t something which interests me.
喬治：好。像今天最後坐在我後面的 Dave Crossland 跑來找我講話，他坐了下來，我們在午餐後開始聊；一開始他一直在抱怨 FontForge 怎麼不是用標準 widget set 寫的，結果讓它看起來跟其他程式都很不一樣。確實是這樣沒錯。但我不在乎，我對那一點興趣也沒有。
On the other hand he was saying that what he also wanted was a paragraph level display of the font. So that as he made changes in the font he could see a ripple effect in the paragraph.
另外，他說他也想要能以段落來顯示字型。這樣他對字型做的修改，就能在段落中看見後續效果。
Now I have a thing which does a word level display, but it doesn’t do multi-lines. (or it does multi-lines if you are doing Japanese (vertical writing mode) but it doesn’t do multi-columns then. So it’s either one vertical row or one horizontal row of glyphs.
現在我有字詞級的顯示功能，但還不支援多列。(或如果你做的是日文字型 (直書模式) 的話有多行支援，但還沒有多欄支援。所以目前就只支援橫列或直行顯示字圖。)
And I do also have a paragraph level display, but it is static. You bring it up and it takes the current snapshot of the font and it generates a real truetype font and pass it off to the X windows rasterizer — passes it off to the standard linux toolchain (freetype) as that static font and asks that toolchain to display text.
其實我也是有段落級顯示功能，但是靜態的。你啟動這個功能後，它會對目前的字型做快照並生成真正的 truetype 字型，再傳給 X 視窗柵格處理器 (X windows rasterizer) — 以靜態字型方式傳給標準 linux 工具鏈 (freetype)，並要求工具鏈顯示那段文字。
So what he’s saying is “OK, do that, but update the font that you pass off every now and then.” And “Yeah, that’d be interesting to do. That’s an interesting project to work on.” Much more interesting than changing my widget set which is just a lot of work and tedious. Because there is nothing to think about. It’s just “OK, I’ve got to use this widget instead of my widget.” My widget does exactly what I want — because I designed it that way — how do I make this thing, which I didn’t design, which I don’t know anything about, do exactly what I want?
所以對於他的想法，我覺得「OK，就做吧，但是要隨時不斷更新字體。」然後，「嗯，那確實很有趣。那是個有趣的主題。」比起修改我的 widget set 還要有趣多了，畢竟那是用一堆苦工與枯燥乏味做出來的。我的 widget 能精準完成我想要做的事情 — 畢竟我本來就是要設計成這樣的 — 你想想看我該如何用這個不是我設計、而且我也不懂的東西，去完成我實際想要完成的事情？
And — that’s dull.
而且 — 那樣很蠢。
For me.
至少對我而言。
OSP: Yeah, well.
OSP：歐，這樣啊。
G: Dave, on the other hand, is very hopeful that he’ll find some poor fool who’ll take that on as a wonderful opportunity. And if he does, that would be great, because not having a standard widget set is one of the biggest complaints people have. Because FontForge doesn’t look like anything else. And people say “Well the grey background –” It used to have a grey background, now it has a white background “is very scary.”
喬治：另一方面來看，Dave 對找到一些把這件事視為美好機會的可憐蠢蛋覺得很有希望。如果他成功了，也是好事一件，因為沒採用標準 widget set 確實是最多人抱怨的。因為 FontForge 看起來不像其他程式一樣。然後大家都說「啊那個灰色背景 –『它之前是灰色背景，但現在改用白色背景了』看起來很恐怖」。
I thought it was normal to have a grey background, but uh… that’s why we now have a white background. A white background may be equally scary, but no one has complained about it yet.
其實我覺得用灰色背景很正常，但是嗯…那也是為什麼我們現在用白色背景的原因。白色背景應該一樣可怕，但卻沒有人再抱怨。
OSP: Try red.
試試紅色。
G: I tried light blue and cream. One of them I was told gave people migraines — I don’t remember specifically what the comment was about the light blue, but
喬治：我試過亮藍色和奶油黃色。其中有個顏色有人告訴我說看了令人頭痛 — 我不記得對亮藍色的反應是什麼，但是
(someone from InkScape): Make it configurable.
（InkScape 的某人）：讓組態可以調整。
G: Oh, it is configurable, but no one configures it.
喬治：噢，其實組態可以調整，只是沒人調整罷了。
(InkScaper): Yeah, I know.
（InkScaper）嗯，我瞭解。
G: So…
喬治：所以…
OSP: So, you talked about spending a lot of time on this project, how does that work, you get up in the morning and start working on FontForge? or…
OSP：所以，你說你花了一堆時間在這個專案上，那是怎樣的情況，你一早爬起來就在處理 FontForge 嗎？還是…
G: Well, I do many things. Some mornings, yes, I get up in the morning and I start working on FontForge and I cook breakfast in the background and eat breakfast and work on FontForge. Some mornings I get up at 4 in the morning and go out running for a couple of hours and come back home and sort of collapse and eat a little bit and go off to yoga class and do a pilates class and do another yoga class and then go to my pottery class, and go to the farmers’ market and come home and I haven’t worked on FontForge at all.
喬治：ㄜ，我做很多事。有些早上，是，我會早上爬起來，然後開始處理 FontForge 還有順便做早餐、吃早餐、同時處理 FontForge。有些早上我會 4 點起床，外出跑步幾個小時，回到家有點累，吃一點東西，再離開去上瑜伽課，做一點皮拉提斯以及瑜伽後，再跑去上我的陶藝課，然後去農夫市集並回家，一整天都沒有處理 FontForge。
So it varies according to the day.
所以不見得，要看哪一天。
But yes I…
但是，我確實…
There was a period where I was spending 40, 50 hours a week working on FontForge, I don’t spend that much time on it now, it’s more like 20 hours, though the last month I got all excited about the release that I put out last Tuesday — today is Sunday. And so I was working really hard — probably got up to — oh — 30 hours some of that time. I was really excited about the change. All kinds of things were different — I put in python scripting, which people had been asking for — well, I’m glad I’ve done it, but it was actually kind of boring, that bit — the stuff that came before was — fascinating.
有一段時間我每週會花上 40、50 個小時在 FontForge 上，現在沒花那麼多時間了，大概 20 小時左右，不過上個月我對於新發行版很興奮，也就是上週二發行的版本 — 今天是禮拜日。所以我花了滿多時間 — 大概快要 — 噢 — 有時會到 30 小時吧。我真的覺得這次的修改很棒。有些東西不大一樣了 — 我放了 python scripting 進去，也是大家一直詢問的 — 好吧，我很高興我終於完成了，但真的有點無聊 — 之前在做的事情比較 — 吸引人。
OSP: Like?
OSP：怎麼說？
G: I — are you familiar with the OpenType spec? No. OK. The way you… the way you specify ligatures and kerning in OpenType can be looked at at several different levels. And the way OpenType wants you to look at it, I felt, was unnecessarily complicated. So I didn’t look at it at that level. And then after about 5 years of looking at it that way I discovered that the reason I thought it was unnecessarily complicated was because I was only used to Latin or Cyrillic or Greek text, and for Latin, Cyrillic or Greek, it probably is unnecessarily complicated. But for Indic scripts it is not unnecessarily complicated, and you need all those things. So I ripped out all of the code for specifying strange glyph conversions. You know in Arabic a character looks different at the beginning of a word and so on? So that’s also handled in this area. And I ripped all that stuff out and redid it in the way that OpenType wanted it to be done and not the somewhat simplified but not sufficiently powerful method that I’d been using up until then.
喬治：我 — 你對 OpenType 規格有熟嗎？沒有。好吧。用 OpenType 指定連字或字距微調的方法可以從許多不同層面來看。而 OpenType 希望你使用的查看方式，就我來說，覺得不必搞得這樣複雜。所以我沒有就那層面來看。然後大約過了 5 年，我發現之所以覺得查看方式不必那樣複雜是因為我只有用到拉丁文、西里爾文或希臘文的文字；而對於拉丁文、西里爾文或希臘文來說，可能不必那樣複雜。至於印度文字，雖然不必那樣複雜，但你還是會需要所有要求的東西。所以我拿掉所有指定特殊字符轉換的程式碼。你知道阿拉伯文中，同個字元在字詞的開頭之類的地方卻有不同的字符寫法嗎？所以這個領域中也有處理這件事。然後我把我之前的做法全部拿掉，改用 OpenType 希望的處理方式，而不是我在那之前一直使用的簡化過、但不足以處理相關事物的方法。
And that I found, quite fascinating.
而我覺得，這還滿吸引人的。
And once I’d done that, it opened up all kinds of little things that I could change that made the font editor itself bettitor. Better. Bettitor?
而我完成之後，它開啟各種我能讓字體編輯器本身變得更 bettitor 的所有小事情的可能性。Better。Bettitor？
OSP: (laughs) That’s almost Dutch.
OSP：（笑）那好像是荷蘭語。
G: And so after I’d done that the display I talked about which could show a word — I realized that I should redo that to take advantage of what I had done. And so I redid that, and it’s now, it’s now much more usable. It now shows — at least I hope it shows — more of what people want to see when they are working with these transformations that apply to the font, there’s now a list of the various transformations, that can be enabled at any time and then it goes through and does them — whereas before it just sort of — well it did kerning, and if you asked it to it would substitute this glyph so you could see what it would look like — but it was all sort of — half-baked.
喬治：在那件事之後，我開始弄我剛剛談到的可以顯示字詞的查看功能 — 我體認到我應該要重新來過才能利用我先前完成的優勢。所以我也重做了，而現在它變得更好用了。它現在會顯示 — 至少我希望它能顯示 — 大家想要看到他們對字型處理這些變換時的效果，現在有一個列有各種變換方式的清單，可以隨時啟用，然後程式會走過並完成 — 而之前它是有點 — ㄝ，它的確能處理字距微調，如果你要求的話，它能替換掉這個字符，這樣就能看出看起來會怎樣 — 但是還有點 — 像只烘焙到一半的狀態。
It wasn’t very elegant.
還不是很優雅。
And — it’s much better now, and I’m quite proud of that.
不過 — 現在還是好多了，我還算滿滿意的。
It may crash — but it’s much better.
它還是可能會當掉 — 但好多了。
OSP: So you bring up half-baked, and when we met we talked about bread baking.
OSP：你談到烘焙到一半，然後我們剛碰面的時候我們剛好談到麵包烘焙。
G: Oh, yes.
喬治：噢，對啊。
OSP: And the pleasure of handling a material when you know it well. Maybe make reliable bread — meaning that it comes out always the same way, but by your connection to the material you somehow — well — it’s a pleasure to do that. So, since you’ve said that, and we then went on talking about pottery — how clay might be of the same — give the same kind of pleasure. I’ve been trying to think — how does FontForge have that? Does it have that and where would you find it or how is the…
OSP：還有就是當你很瞭解材料時去處理材料的喜悅感。也許製作出可靠的麵包 — 意思是烤出來都一樣，但是由於你對材料的連結，你某種程度上 — 嗯 — 很開心去那樣做。所以，因為你之前有談到那，我們又接著談到陶藝 — 粘土應該也一樣 — 都會有同一種的喜悅感。我就在想 — FontForge 又有怎樣的相似點呢？會有那樣的感覺嗎？你從那裡發現的？或是它怎麼…
G: I like to make things. I like to make things that — in some strange definition are beautiful. I’m not sure how that applies to making bread, but my pots — I think I make beautiful pots. And I really like the glazing I put onto them.
喬治：我喜歡動手做些東西。我喜歡做那種 — 就某些奇怪定義來說屬於美好的東西。我不是很確定是否能套到做麵包上，不過我的陶壺 — 我想我有作出一些漂亮的陶壺。我還滿喜歡我上的釉色。
It’s harder to say that a font editor is beautiful. But I think the ideas behind it are beautiful in my mind — and in some sense I find the user interface beautiful. I’m not sure that anyone else in the world does, because it’s what I want, but I think it’s beautiful.
很難去說字體編輯器能不能算美。不過我想背後的概念在我的心中算美 — 其實我也覺得使用介面滿美的。我不是很確定這世界上其他人是怎麼想的，但那是我想要的樣子，所以我覺得美。
And there’s a satisfaction in making something — in making something that’s beautiful.
而那就是對於製作東西的滿足感 — 作出出美好的東西。
And there’s a satisfaction too (as far as the bread goes) in making something I need. I eat my own bread — that’s all the bread I eat (except for those few days when I get lazy and don’t get to make bread that day and have to put it off until the next day and have to eat something that day — but that doesn’t happen very often).
製作我所需要的東西也會有滿足感（就像做麵包）。我吃我自己做的麵包 — 我只吃自己做的麵包（除了我很懶又不想做麵包的幾天，只好延後隔天做，但又必須吃些什麼東西的日子之外 — 但那不是很常發生）。
So it’s just — I like making beautiful things.
所以就只是 — 我喜歡自造出美好的東西。
OSP: OK, thank you.
OSP：OK，謝謝你。
G: Mm-hmm.
喬治：嗯哼。
OSP: That was very nice, thank you very much.
OSP：真好，非常感謝你。
G: Thank you. I have pictures of my pots if you’d like to see them?
喬治：謝謝你。我這邊有幾張我的陶壺作品相片，你想要看看嗎？
OSP: Yes, I would very much like to see them.
OSP：好啊，我迫不及待想要看看。
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