Typefaces, Fonts, and Types: Toward a Classification of Fifteenth-Century Gothic ‘Types´

For more than a century, librarians and bibliographers have supposedly identified and cataloged gothic types using the Proctor-Haebler system and many incunabula collections have been described using it. It is now widely accepted that the Proctor-Haebler system's nomenclature and techniques are uniform and consistent for cataloging rare books and that it is informative about types. This article explains that although the Proctor-Haebler system may help us to identify a printer or a printing office, it confounds different typographic concepts (typeface, font, and type), uses contradictory methods, is based on weak or arguable assumptions, and does not inform us about “types.”
Depto. de Literaturas Hispánicas y Bibliografía
Fac. de Ciencias de la Documentación
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