I thought the font was TW Cent?  Anyway, if you know you can never have exact reprints because the files don't exist, this is about as close as you can get.

Quote from: jadrax;556783This has been discussed at length before. AFAIK, the B, i, j and the quotation marks are different in 20th Century Modern to what is in the AD&D books. It's probably a 'Futura' variant, which is not widely available font.

Wait, you mean a "I could make a better book than these professional book publishers, it's so easy!" comment might have been just a bit hasty and ill-considered?

I'm more worried about the text disappearing in the crease of the spine than anything else. That's potentially a problem, or not, depending on the binding, whether it allows the book to be WIDE open naturally or not. It works with the original books, but with some of the binding techniques today... we'll see, I guess.

Quote from: Fifth Element;556847Wait, you mean a "I could make a better book than these professional book publishers, it's so easy!" comment might have been just a bit hasty and ill-considered?

Modern technology means that WOTC should be able to reproduce the books at least equal in quality to the 1979 version. The futura font is still available but even more important is the binding. The original books are solid and my originals purchased in 83 are battered but still structurally sound.

I hope that these can last as long.

I don't care what people think, I'm tremendously looking forward to getting my copies.

RPGPundit

I can't wait to see the shit-fits when someone finds a typo like "teh" and use it as evidence that WotC just doesn't get it and if Gary were still alive & c.

Quote from: KenHR;557316I can't wait to see the shit-fits when someone finds a typo like "teh" and use it as evidence that WotC just doesn't get it and if Gary were still alive & c.

That would be ironic considering all the typos to be found in the AD&D modules and other official material.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;557317That would be ironic considering all the typos to be found in the AD&D modules and other official material.

But those typos are part of the atmosphere and charm of 1e.

Quote from: KenHR;557318But those typos are part of the atmosphere and charm of 1e.

The only one that I know of that qualifies would be the %liar screw up and only because of the very funny story that goes with it.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;556857Modern technology means that WOTC should be able to reproduce the books at least equal in quality to the 1979 version.

I worked in book publishing doing book production work, for a Random House imprint, around 1990 and, at the time, the way they'd produce a lot of trade paperbacks was to simply "shoot" (photograph the pages of) a dismantled hardcover, with typos fixed via typeset pages and a waxing machine and placed with X-Acto knives, photographically scaled as necessary to fit a new size.  All by hand and without computers.  It was often better than re-typesetting the books, which inevitably added new typos.  In fact, around 2000, an Italian company actually published some of the original AD&D books in miniature size (e.g., this) without having to re-typeset them.  The only thing that wouldn't work this way are screened images, and I don't remember the original AD&D books having any of those.  

So I'm absolutely stunned that WotC today can't do what we regularly did at Random House around 1990 and what an Italian publisher did around 2000, which is to simply shoot a clean (or cleaned up) copy of the physical book and make printing plates from that, changing whatever they need to change on the copyright page and so on by pasting in newly typeset pages, either electronically or even physically pasting them to the pages before photographing them.  They could even replace some or all of the art that way, if that's the problem.  Has the entire printing industry lost the ability to photographically copy books and not replaced it with a digital equivalent?  Or is the staff at WotC simply that profoundly incompetent?

It does seem strange.  No scanning and OCRing?  I created my own version of Traveller's LBBs using OCR'd scans from a consumer grade flatbed scanner and had to do very little cleanup work...even the tables came out properly formatted in Word (later the FarFuture CDs came out and I finished the project using those).

Quote from: KenHR;557362It does seem strange.  No scanning and OCRing?  I created my own version of Traveller's LBBs using OCR'd scans from a consumer grade flatbed scanner and had to do very little cleanup work...even the tables came out properly formatted in Word (later the FarFuture CDs came out and I finished the project using those).

Heck, if the font is a problem, there are also role-players who do typefaces (see here and here) that could probably affordably produce a knock-off font for them.  It shouldn't be rocket science to reprint those books.  I'm wondering if there is some sort of copyright thing going on here, motivated by evil hoards of Hasbro lawyers.  That, or people responsible for the reprint who want to make sure they put their mark on it, sort of like a cat spraying the sofa.

Quote from: John Morrow;557359Has the entire printing industry lost the ability to photographically copy books and not replaced it with a digital equivalent?  Or is the staff at WotC simply that profoundly incompetent?

I'm betting a lot of the old hands have retired by now, and all the new guys can't do anything if they don't have a computer to play with.

Quote from: John Morrow;557364I'm wondering if there is some sort of copyright thing going on here, motivated by evil hoards of Hasbro lawyers.  That, or people responsible for the reprint who want to make sure they put their mark on it, sort of like a cat spraying the sofa.

Both sound plausible.

Quote from: John Morrow;557359Or is the staff at WotC simply that profoundly incompetent?

Read the article - they mention that the pages are fairly thin and when they copied the art images text from the opposite side bled through, necessitating cleanup. Presumably this would be an issue for photocopied text as well. That would be a hell of a lot of cleanup.

Which is another way of saying, your experience 22 years ago versus people who currently publish books for a living. Guess who wins, unless we have some real serious evidence to the contrary.