Probably asked before, but

[quadibloc]

@hrant:
Luc Devroye's web site claims that the notion that William Starling Burgess was the real designer of Times Roman was a joke.

If so, I don't think that Monotype is laughing.

I don't think that is the case. I think that Burgess did design a face, and it did look a lot like Times Roman, and so Mike Parker acted in good faith.

However, I think he was still wrong.

Basically, I think the original face by Burgess derived from De Vinne, while Times Roman derived from Plantin, and the similarity between them was coincidental (to the extent that it exceeded the similarity to be expected from having Caslon and Dutch types among their models and influences).

@riccard0:
Actually, this doesn't have anything much to do with the difference between "typeface" and "font" in the usual sense, but rather with the difference between "typeface" and something else, which is sometimes taken as another meaning of the word "font".

That is, the thing we want people to use the word "font" for is one of the following:
- a package of lead type slugs for printing in a given typeface, perhaps containing 20 a's and proportional numbers of the rest of the letters in the alphabet;
- a file with the extension .ttf or .otf used to allow a computer to print in a given typeface;
- an element for a Selectric composer, the brass matrices to fill a Monotype matrix-case, or the round or square negative to put in a photocomposition machine.

The alternate meaning of font, for which we really need a third word, is a specific weight, size, and drawing of a given typeface. It's the "sometimes subtle difference between typeface and" that which Times Roman in this discussion would help to explain.

And it doesn't help that this third thing is much closer to being like a typeface (as it is an abstract way of shaping letters too, just a more specific one) than it is to be a font. So as long as you call the third thing a font, you end up increasing confusion rather than decreasing it.

[Riccardo Sartori]

Surely it would be semantically correct finding a new term defining the “abstract way of shaping letters”, but I think that, apart from historical contexts, that’s exactly what I think “font” is good for.
After all, the meaning of the word has already broadened (abstracted) its meaning along with the evolution of type. Otherwise, we’ll need a new term also for files used to produce vector-based letters, because they’re not size-specific, like a lead font is.
So, given there will always be philosophical and semantical nuances, I think the best way to discriminate is to referring to the “thing”, the œuvre, the platonic idea, as typeface, and as font to the technical mean needed to deliver it.

[Thomas Phinney]

I have a moderately strong belief that the whole Burgess thing was a mammoth practical joke. If not, Parker invented some completely bogus/imaginary supporting evidence.

Mike Parker claimed there was a written document that bound Lanston Monotype and its successors to secrecy, and it was suggested that Gerald Giampa had it and had seen it and felt bound by it.

But when Giampa sold his business, assets and the Lanston name to P22, they found no trace of it, nor any other evidence.