fontology
({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)