Design philosophy: all information in this web site should be accessible to the intended audience regardless of platform, browser, or size of screen. Graphics are kept to a minimum to reduce download times. If you see a frame or an animated GIF, feel free to flame me mercilessly.

This site uses fully compliant cascading style sheets (CSS). Older browsers should display text in their default fonts, while more recent browsers will all display fully formatted text. (However, the styles sheets will look best viewed in Internet Explorer 4.0 or above.) The site also complies with major accessibility standards.

Colophon

The base font for this page is Trebuchet MS, a free font from Microsoft designed for on-screen readability at small point sizes. The headlines are 32 pt Times bold italic, combining elegance, classical proportions, and compactness.

The logo is variation on the original logo from Aldus PageMaker and depicts Aldus Manutius, a student of Johannes Gutenberg and inventor of italics. This is to echo the roots of desktop publishing, both in the 1450s and the 1980s. The logo uses Courier from ITC to evoke the feel of metal type and Poetica from Adobe Systems to evoke the era of hand lettering.

Made on a Macintosh using Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia DreamWeaver.

Lorem Ipsum

For a batch of nonsense text, "Lorem Ipsum" has generated a great deal of interest. A Google search for "Lorem Ipsum" recently generates almost 60,000 hits! This is largely because many web page editors use is as "dummy text" so the search finds thousands of web pages with no content, just dummy text -- often with titles like "Welcome to Adobe GoLive"!

However, the text in a lorem ipsum file is of some interest, historically and linguistically. Amazingly, there's even an "official" Lorem Ipsum web site with a lorem generator, some history, and a translation.

Why do publishing programs use dummy text? First, convenience. When designing, it's useful to have some text to flow into the design, and design work is usually done before copy is written. Second, it makes it easier to show off a design. In theory, a reader can be distracted by actual readable content of a page when looking at a layout and concentrate on the text rather than the design. Whatever the reason, though, lorem ipsum has been in use in the publishing industry almost from the beginning in the 1500s.

The Straight Dope explains what it means, as does the comp.fonts FAQ, explaining that it may be a garbled version of a Cicero text. In additon to the lipsum site above, you can find a Lorem Ipsum generator at Subtrerrane.

Lorem Ipsum Software

MacLorem X 2.0, carbonized for Mac OS X, generates random text which graphic designers can use as temporary body copy in spec art and mock-ups to show clients or employers. Based on the classic "lorem ipsum" filler
text, MacLorem X's text is more realistic as it is random, non-repeating, and produces paragraphs of varying, unpredictable lengths. The resulting text can be saved as a .txt file or as HTML with or without special characters encoded for the web. When saving, the default file name can optionally include a date/time stamp for uniqueness.

If you're interested in random text, Kant Generator Pro is the best of a number of programs to generate it. Based on modules, it comes with a thank you note generator, an excuse generator, and, of course, a Kant generator. Sample paragraph:

In natural theology, metaphysics, in respect of the intelligible character, is a body of demonstrated doctrine, and all of it must be known a priori, by virtue of pure reason. The practical employment of our problematic judgements occupies part of the sphere of reason concerning the existence of the objects in space and time in general; consequently, natural causes are by their very nature contradictory. Since all of the paralogisms of practical reason are ampliative, our understanding, in respect of the intelligible character, is a body of demonstrated doctrine, and none of it must be known a posteriori, yet our faculties have lying before them, so far as regards the never-ending regress in the series of empirical conditions, our a priori concepts.

The PageMaker version

The following version of "lorem ipsum" shipped with Adobe PageMaker 6.5 in a file names "text.rtf" and was used in a tutorial.

Lorem ipsum,

Dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

Ut wisi enim,

Ad Minim Veniam

STEPPS -- Stop Tax Exempt Private Property Sprawl -- Framingham