( XEROX PARC ) The body of knowledge dealing with the construction and use of new font s (e.g. for window systems and typesetting software). It has been said that fontology recapitulates file-ogeny.
Unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not merely a joke. On the Macintosh, for example, System 7 has to go through contortions to compensate for an earlier design error that created a whole different set of abstractions for fonts parallel to "files" and "folders" - ESR
[ Jargon File ]
(1994-12-01)