Alex Galloway wrote:

Hi RHIZOMErs…

I am in the middle of a writing project and I thought the community out
there could give me some good feedback on several questions I have
concerning computer fonts and the electro-digital transfer of textual
information (i.e. email, the internet, etc).

I am realizing that fonts are central to a lot of new media work, and
the nature of fonts themselves may tell us something about these new
technologies and the issue of representation in digital art forms. My
assumption is that a computer font is a veneer for textual information,
that it is put on at the last minute, so to speak, and that fonts
themselves are rather disposable or changeable (i.e. any text can be
represented in any font).

So, feedback to any of the following questions would be greatly
appreciated:

For something like hypertext, would it be safe to say that computer
fonts do the same work in the digital/semiotic world that HTML does in
the virtual world? That is, both are a set of instructions for the
compilation of contents: fonts compile and represent digitized texts
(from a disk or from the net), while HTML compiles and displays
hypertextual elements.

And for the theory-heads out there, would it be safe to say that the
signifier itself (in addition to the sign) is internally complex? That
it is not just a genetic element of the sign? In text for example, can a
font be thought of independently from content, written markings, etc.?

I am thinking about written text, and how things like fonts can be
thought of as below or within the signifier. A font is only part of the
written signifier, like a veneer for representation, or a set of
instructions for representation itself. Does the idea of a font make us
rethink the signifier?

A font is insufficient to account for a text's complete representation,
i.e. a font is just a certain "arrangement" of markings. Do you think
that the notion of a font necessitates one to believe in its opposite,
that is, some sort of real unrepresented raw information?

[…]

Let's hear from all those hypertext fiction writers and HTML
conceptualists out there–that counts for "mew media art" too, don't it?

Chris Paul responded:

Fonts of recent times (sans hot metal) have a whole lot of code behind
them just as html texts. The mark up is apparently similar in terms of
size, leading, position, style and so on.

But fonts are specified from a vast range or bespoke, unlike under html,
usually requiring just two or three key strokes to represent a choice.

And each digital font represents a whole lot of code, or vice versa.

Mark Coniglio also responded:

I think it is important to consider that most HTML browsers allow the
user to specify the default font that will be used when imaging an HTML
page. Unlike TrueType or some other font specification technology, HTML
does not allow you more than the most general control over the
typography of a document. While one person is reading this in hard-nosed
"Times Gothic" another may be have it displayed via a delightfully
curved "Zapf Chancery." So at the presentation level, unintended and
uncontrollable inflection is being added to this these documents.

To which Alex Galloway replies:

Your point is relevant to older browsers and HTML 2.0, however with the
new FONT FACE tag it is possible to specify a variety of font faces
directly from the HTML source.