Read Me--``Benjamin'' Type 1 PostScript display font

Benjamin is based on ``Ben Franklin,'' a nineteenth-century 
wood-type face that imitates eighteenth-century hand-set 
type, as in ``Poor Richard's Almanack'' (yes, I guess they 
were nostalgic a hundred years ago too). It's deliberately 
rough and whimsical--sort of a cross between Windsor and 
Caslon Antique, if you know those two typefaces. I found the 
original in ``Wood Type Alphabets: 100 Fonts,'' edited by 
Rob Roy Kelly and published by Dover in 1977 (I recommend it 
if you're interested in this stuff). Kelly's collection of 
wood type inspired Adobe's two ``Wood Type'' collections, 
but this font isn't in either of them. I scanned ``Ben 
Franklin'' and made a Type 1 font of it with Altsys' 
Fontographer 3.1. I made a few alterations to the original 
typeface, as well as created a number of necessary 
characters missing from the book--the percent sign, the 
parentheses, the number 2, and a few others. I also gave it 
over 100 kerning pairs. This font is most definitely a 
display face that looks best in small amounts and at 18 
points and larger. There's only a 24-point bitmap; I assume 
that if you're into fonts you use Adobe Type Manager.

Since it seems that most shareware font-makers never make 
much money from their fonts anyway, and since I did most of 
the work on this font when I was too sick to go to work but 
well enough to sit huddled at my Mac, sniffling and coughing 
(which also may explain why the font looks like it does), 
it's freeware. Enjoy it. I do, however, REQUIRE that anyone 
who distributes this set of files keep this ``Read Me'' 
message with the font, and that anyone who is not a users 
group and sells it on a disk (floppy, CD-ROM, or whatever) 
send me a free copy of that disk as well. Thanks, or as we 
font people say, 10-Q!

Walter Kafton-Minkel
c/o Portland Macintosh Users Group
PO Box 8949
Portland, OR 97207-8949