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67-415: The company was founded to design, license and market typefaces for filmsetting and computer set types internationally. The company issued both new designs and revivals of older or classic faces, invariably re-cut to be suitable for phototypesetting and later digital use and produced in families of different weights. Although it is claimed that the designers took care to preserve the style and character of

134-562: A CRT screen, with easy-to-use editing commands, is faster than keyboarding on a Linotype machine. Storing the text magnetically for easy retrieval and subsequent editing also saves time. An early developer of CRT-based editing terminals for photocomposition machines was Omnitext of Ann Arbor, Michigan. These CRT phototypesetting terminals were sold under the Singer brand name during the 1970s. Early machines have no text storage capability; some machines only display 32 characters in uppercase on

201-495: A basis in the gestural movements of handwriting. The visual qualities of a given stroke are derived from factors surrounding its formation: the kind of tool used, the angle at which the tool is dragged across a surface, and the degree of pressure applied from beginning to end. The stroke is the positive form that establishes a character's archetypal shape. The spaces created between and around strokes are called counters (also known as counterforms). These negative forms help to define

268-429: A character on a glass grid, read its width and then scanned the character onto the photographic paper. The scan rate on the paper was fixed but the scan rate from the grid was changed to account for character size. If the vertical scan from the grid was slowed the character on the paper would be larger. Video Setters were almost all newspaper machines and limited to 45 picas wide with a maximum character size of 72 pints. It

335-432: A continuous range of weight (and size) variants of a single typeface. Contrast refers to the variation in weight that may exist internally within each character, between thin strokes and thick strokes. More extreme contrasts will produce texts with more uneven typographic color. At a smaller scale, strokes within a character may individually also exhibit contrasts in weight, which is called modulation. Each character within

402-517: A different font strip or uses a 2x magnifying lens built into the machine, which doubles the size of font. The CompuWriter II automated the lens switch and let the operator use multiple settings. Other manufacturers of photo compositing machines include Alphatype , Varityper, Mergenthaler , Autologic , Berthold , Dymo , Harris (formerly Linotype's competitor "Intertype"), Monotype , Star/Photon , Graphic Systems Inc. , Hell AG , MGD Graphic Systems , and American Type Founders . Released in 1975,

469-727: A handful of universities, including the MA Typeface Design at the University of Reading (UK) and the Type Media program at the KABK ( Royal Academy of Art in the Hague). At the same time, the transition to digital type and font editors which can be inexpensive (or even open source and free) has led to a great democratization of type design; the craft is accessible to anyone with the interest to pursue it, nevertheless, it may take

536-485: A movable CRT that covered a rectangle about 200 x 200 points and it would set all the characters in that rectangle before it moved the CRT or the paper. Common characters would still be in memory from the previous moves. It would set all the "e" and "t" then go to the next letter while it was decoding any characters it did not have in memory. If there was a size, width or font change the characters would have to be recalculated. It

603-404: A particularly attractive or legible texture when seen in text settings. Spacing is also an important part of type design. Each glyph consists not only of the shape of the character, but also the white space around it. The type designer must consider the relationship of the space within a letter form (the counter) and the letter spacing between them. Designing type requires many accommodations for

670-451: A pointer at the hand-held vertex and a cutting tool at the opposite vertex down to a size usually less than a quarter-inch (6 mm). The pantographic engraver was first used to cut punches, and later to directly create matrices. In the late 1960s through the 1980s, typesetting moved from metal to photo composition. During this time, type design made a similar transition from physical matrixes to hand drawn letters on vellum or mylar and then

737-544: A sans-serif the drafts were a bunch of misshapen sausages!" Type design Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces . This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production such as handwriting and drawing in that it is a fixed set of alphanumeric characters with specific characteristics to be used repetitively. Historically, these were physical elements, called sorts , placed in

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804-405: A scroll of photographic paper . It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing which gave rise to digital typesetting . The first phototypesetters quickly project light through a film negative of an individual character in a font , then through a lens that magnifies or reduces the size of the character onto photographic paper or film, which

871-406: A single case. The design of a legible text-based typeface remains one of the most challenging assignments in graphic design . The even visual quality of the reading material being of paramount importance, each drawn character (called a glyph) must be even in appearance with every other glyph regardless of order or sequence. Also, if the typeface is to be versatile, it must appear the same whether it

938-412: A small LED screen and spell-checking is not available. Proofing typeset galleys is an important step after developing the photo paper. Corrections can be made by typesetting a word or line of type and by waxing the back of the galleys, and corrections can be cut out with a razor blade and pasted on top of any mistakes. Since most early phototypesetting machines can only create one column of type at

1005-518: A time, long galleys of type were pasted onto layout boards in order to create a full page of text for magazines and newsletters. Paste-up artists played an important role in creating production art. Later phototypesetters have multiple column features that allow the typesetter to save paste-up time. Early digital typesetting programs were designed to drive phototypesetters, most notably the Graphic Systems CAT phototypesetter that troff

1072-613: A typeface can easily be modified by another type designer; such a modified font is usually considered a derivative work , and is covered by the copyright of the original font software. Type design could be copyrighted typeface by typeface in many countries, though not the United States. The United States offered and continues to offer design patents as an option for typeface design protection. The shape of designed letterforms and other characters are defined by strokes arranged in specific combinations. This shaping and construction has

1139-410: A typeface has its own overall width relative to its height. These proportions may be changed globally so that characters are narrowed or widened. Typefaces that are narrowed are called condensed typefaces, while those that are widened are called extended typefaces. Letterform structures may be structured in a way that changes the angle between upright stem structures and the typeface's baseline, changing

1206-552: A typographic magazine dedicated to showcasing their traditional and newer typefaces in particularly creative ways, originally edited and designed by Herb Lubalin until his death in May, 1981. Because of its extraordinary blend of typographic design , illustration and cartoons (sometimes by world-renowned artists and cartoonists such as Lou Myers ), verse and prose extolling the virtues of well-designed type , as well as contributions by amateur or semi-professional typographers ,

1273-418: A uniform square area, European Latin characters vary in width, from the very wide "M" to the slender "l". Gutenberg developed an adjustable mold which could accommodate an infinite variety of widths. From then until at least 400 years later, type started with cutting punches, which would be struck into a brass "matrix". The matrix was inserted into the bottom of the adjustable meld and the negative space formed by

1340-650: A wooden frame; modern typefaces are stored and used electronically. It is the art of a type designer to develop a pleasing and functional typeface. In contrast, it is the task of the typographer (or typesetter ) to lay out a page using a typeface that is appropriate to the work to be printed or displayed. Type designers use the basic concepts of strokes, counter, body, and structural groups when designing typefaces. There are also variables that type designers take into account when creating typefaces. These design variables are style, weight, contrast, width, posture, and case. The technology of printing text using movable type

1407-466: Is called uppercase or capitals (also known as majuscule) and the smaller case is called lowercase (also known as minuscule). Typefaces may also include a set of small capitals, which are uppercase forms designed in the same height and weight as lowercase forms. Other writing systems are unicameral, meaning only one case exists for letterforms. Bicameral writing systems may have typefaces with unicase designs, which mix uppercase and lowercase letterforms within

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1474-513: Is collected on a spool in a light-proof canister. The paper or film is then fed into a processor, a machine that pulls the paper or film strip through two or three baths of chemicals, from which it emerges ready for paste-up or film make-up. Later phototypesetting machines used other methods, such as displaying a digitised character on a CRT screen. The results of this process are then transferred onto printing plates which are used in offset printing . Phototypesetting offered numerous advantages over

1541-416: Is extremely fast and was one of the first low-cost output systems. The 8400 used up to 12-inch photographic paper and could set camera-ready output. It was a cost reduced version of the 8600 which was faster. The 8600 came standard CRT width of 45 picas and wide width of 68 picas. The 8600 had much more computing power than the 8400 but did not have the memory to store a lot of characters so they were decoded on

1608-535: Is small or large. Because of optical illusions that occur when we apprehend small or large objects, this entails that in the best fonts, a version is designed for small use and another version is drawn for large, display, applications. Also, large letterforms reveal their shape, whereas small letterforms in text settings reveal only their textures: this requires that any typeface that aspires to versatility in both text and display, needs to be evaluated in both of these visual domains. A beautifully shaped typeface may not have

1675-605: The 1960s when software was developed to convert marked up copy, usually typed on paper tape, to the codes that controlled the phototypesetters. In 1949 the Photon Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts developed equipment based on the Lumitype of Rene Higonnet and Louis Moyroud . The Lumitype-Photon was first used to set a complete published book in 1953, and for newspaper work in 1954. Mergenthaler produced

1742-478: The 1970s that made it economically feasible for small publications to set their own type with professional quality. One model, the Compugraphic Compuwriter, uses a filmstrip wrapped around a drum that rotates at several hundred revolutions per minute. The filmstrip contains two fonts (a Roman and a bold or a Roman and an Italic) in one point size. To get different-sized fonts, the typesetter loads

1809-756: The APS series. Rudolf Hell developed the Digiset machine in Germany. The RCA Graphic Systems Division manufactured this in the U.S. as the Videocomp, later marketed by Information International Inc. Software for operator-controlled hyphenation was a major component of digital typesetting. Early work on this topic produced paper tape to control hot-metal machines. C. J. Duncan, at the University of Durham in England,

1876-556: The Compuwriter IV holds two filmstrips, each holding four fonts (usually Roman, Italic, bold, and bold Italic). It also has a lens turret which has eight lenses giving different point sizes from the font, generally 8 or 12 sizes, depending on the model. Low-range models offer sizes from 6- to 36-point, while the high-range models go to 72-point. The Compugraphic EditWriter series took the Compuwriter IV configuration and added floppy disk storage on an 8-inch, 320 KB disk. This allows

1943-500: The Fonts.com blog that the complete run of U&lc had been digitized and would be made available, one year's worth per month, via PDF download from that same blog. As part of Fonts.com redesign in 2012, access to U&lc were moved to fonts.com blog, and Learn About Fonts & Typography for various U&lc web edition articles. In 1986 the company was acquired by Esselte Letraset , who had taken over Letraset , originally makers of

2010-736: The Linofilm using a different design, and Monotype produced Monophoto. Other companies followed with products that included Alphatype and Varityper. To provide much greater speeds, the Photon Corporation produced the ZIP 200 machine for the MEDLARS project of the National Library of Medicine and Mergenthaler produced the Linotron. The ZIP 200 could produce text at 600 characters per second using high-speed flashes behind plates with images of

2077-525: The Videocomp, that introduced elaborate formatting In Europe, the company of Berthold had no experience in developing hot-metal typesetting equipment, but being one of the largest German type foundries, they applied themselves to the transference. Berthold successfully developed its Diatype (1960), Diatronic (1967), and ADS (1977) machines , which led the European high-end typesetting market for decades. Compugraphic produced phototypesetting machines in

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2144-528: The ability to offer a continuous range of point sizes by eliminating film media and lenses. The Compugraphic MCS (Modular Composition System) with the 8400 typesetter is an example of a CRT phototypesetter. This machine loads digital fonts into memory from an 8-inch floppy disk. There was a dual floppy which could also be used with a 1 or 2 hard disk option. Additionally, the 8400 is able to set type-in point sizes between 5- and 120-point in 1/2-point increments. Type width could be adjusted independently of size. It had

2211-481: The band after that. The printing scan rate had to be held constant to prevent overexposing or underexposing the type. White space was not scanned but the beam would jump to the next black position. If it was working on a narrow column the paper speed was faster and if it was on a wide set of columns the paper speed was decreased With this technology characters larger than the CRT imaging area were printed. It would print about 4000 newspaper column lines per minute whether it

2278-673: The basis of the dominant strokes of each letter: verticals and horizontals ( E F H L T ), diagonals ( V W X ), verticals and diagonals ( K M N Y ), horizontals and diagonals ( A Z ), circular strokes ( C O Q S ), circular strokes and verticals ( B D G P R U ), and verticals ( I J ). Type design takes into consideration a number of design variables which are delineated based on writing system and vary in consideration of functionality, aesthetic quality, cultural expectations, and historical context. Style describes several different aspects of typeface variability historically related to character and function. This includes variations in: Weight refers to

2345-401: The characters to be printed. Each character had a separate xenon flash constantly ready to fire. A separate system of optics positioned the image on the page. An enormous advance was made by the mid-1960s with the development of equipment that projects the characters from CRT screens. Early CRT phototypesetters, such as Linotype's Linotron 1010 from 1966, used the same type of film negative for

2412-473: The clear substrate, would then be ready to be photographed using a reproduction camera. With the coming of computers, type design became a form of computer graphics. Initially, this transition occurred with a program called Ikarus around 1980, but widespread transition began with programs such as Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator, and finally to dedicated type design programs called font editors, such as Fontographer and FontLab. This process occurred rapidly: by

2479-478: The dramatically higher x-height increased legibility in smaller point sizes, in normal text sizes the extreme height of the lowercase characters imparted a commercial, subjective voice to texts. ITC typefaces were widely distributed. Gene Gable commented "You could easily say that ITC designs put a face on the ’70s and ’80s...You couldn’t open a magazine or pass a billboard in the ’70s without seeing [them]." The company published U&lc (Upper and Lower Case),

2546-538: The first dry transfer lettering, and later to become developers of new typefaces for filmsetting and computer applications. In 2000, Agfa Monotype Corporation announced the acquisition of the capital stock of International Typeface Corporation (ITC) from Esselte. The transaction included ITC’s complete library of over 1600 typefaces, all typeface subscriber and distributor agreements, the itcfonts.com Web site, and typographic software. At this point ITC ceased to operate as an independent entity. In November 2005 Agfa Monotype

2613-564: The fly. The unit would set the characters line at a time as long as they fit on the CRT. Small type may be set 6 to 8 lines before the photo paper was advanced. The paper advance was much faster than the 8400 CRT move or 8400 paper advance. All the fonts were stored on a hard disk. 8600 was a big step forward from the Video Setters which ended with the Video Setter V. Video setter was much like a closed circuit TV system that looked at

2680-456: The font source as traditional optical phototypesetters did, but by instead scanning the font negative via a flying spot scanner array to a video signal, which was then displayed on the CRT to be exposed to the photographic paper or film. Later CRT phototypesetters used high-resolution digitized font data stored in a frame buffer which was used to render the font characters directly to the CRT. Alphanumeric Corporation (later Autologic) produced

2747-588: The former case, a grid system is used to delineate vertical proportions and gridlines (such as the baseline, mean line/x-height, cap line, descent line, and ascent line). In the latter case, letterforms of a typeface may be designed with variable bodies, making the typeface proportional, or they may be designed to fit within a single body measure, making the typeface fixed width or monospaced . When designing letterforms, characters with analogous structures can be grouped in consideration of their shared visual qualities. In Latin, for example, archetypal groups can be made on

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2814-625: The late 19th century to the letterpress printing technique that offered greatly improved typesetting speed and efficiency compared to manual typesetting (where every sort had to be set by hand). The major advancement presented by phototypesetting over hot metal typesetting was the elimination of the metal type altogether which was not needed by the offset printing process. This cold-type technology could also be used in office environments where hot-metal machines (the Linotype , Intertype or Monotype ) could not. The use of phototypesetting grew rapidly in

2881-498: The magazine was avidly read by type enthusiasts and sought after by collectors the world over. A web version of the magazine started in 1998, along with a brand-new sans-serif logo by Mark van Bronkhorst (replacing the famous swash lettered logo by Herb Lubalin). In an editorial, John D. Berry wrote: "There’ll be plenty of overlap between the print magazine and the online magazine, but they won’t be identical: some things are best done with ink on paper, others are best done on screen." Yet

2948-469: The metal type used in letterpress printing , including the lack of need to keep heavy metal type and matrices in stock, the ability to use a much wider range of fonts and graphics and to print them at any desired size, and faster page layout setting. Phototypesetting machines project characters onto film for offset printing. Prior to the advent of phototypesetting, mass-market typesetting typically employed hot metal typesetting – an improvement introduced in

3015-402: The mid-1990s, virtually all commercial type design had transitioned to digital vector drawing programs. Each glyph design can be drawn or traced by a stylus on a digitizing board, or modified from a scanned drawing, or composed entirely within the program itself. Each glyph is then in a digital form, either in a bitmap (pixel-based) or vector (scalable outline) format. A given digitization of

3082-405: The mold cavity plus the matrix acted as the master for each letter that was cast. The casting material was an alloy usually containing lead, which had a low melting point, cooled readily, and could be easily filed and finished. In those early days, type design had to not only imitate the familiar handwritten forms common to readers, but also account for the limitations of the printing process, such as

3149-570: The original typefaces , several ITC revivals, such as ITC Bookman and ITC Garamond in particular, have received criticism that the end result was related in name only to the original faces. Among the company's notable type designers was Ed Benguiat the creator of Tiffany and Benguiat fonts. ITC's revival designs frequently followed a formulary of increased x-height , multiple weights from light to ultra bold, multiple widths and unusual ligature combinations, sometimes with alternate characters such as swashes. Critics sometimes complain that, while

3216-605: The overall posture of the typeface. In Latin script typefaces, a typeface is categorized as a Roman when this angle is perpendicular. A forward-leaning angle produces either an Italic , if the letterforms are designed with reanalyzed cursive forms, or an oblique, if the letterforms are slanted mechanically. A back-leaning angle produces a reverse oblique, or backslanted, posture. A proportion of writing systems are bicameral, distinguishing between two parallel sets of letters that vary in use based on prescribed grammar or convention. These sets of letters are known as cases . The larger case

3283-473: The paper edition, which in 1998 had shrunk in format from tabloid pages to 8.5" x 11", did not survive for long. The final printed edition was vol. 26 no. 2, dated fall 1999. The last numbered U&lc issue is 42.1.1, issued in 2010. A book celebrating U&lc, U&lc: Influencing Design & Typography by John D. Berry (the magazine's final editor) ISBN   0-9724240-9-1 , was published by Mark Batty in 2005. In October 2010 Allan Haley announced on

3350-406: The photographic paper so the unit knows how many motor pulses to move the paper. The most common unit was a low-range unit that went up to 72 points but there was also a high-range unit that went to 120 points. Some later phototypesetters utilize a CRT to project the image of letters onto the photographic paper. This creates a sharper image, adds some flexibility in manipulating the type, and creates

3417-438: The precise cutting of "rubyliths". Rubylith was a common material in the printing trade, in which a red transparent film, very soft and pliable, was bonded to a supporting clear acetate. Placing the ruby over the master drawing of the letter, the craftsman would gently and precisely cut through the upper film and peel the non-image portions away. The resulting letterform, now existing as the remaining red material still adhering to

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3484-417: The printed page. Subsequent editing of this copy required that the entire process be repeated. The operator would re-keyboard some or all of the original text, incorporating the corrections and new material into the original draft. CRT-based editing terminals, which can work compatibly with a variety of phototypesetting machines, were a major technical innovation in this regard. Keyboarding the original text on

3551-734: The proportion, density, and rhythm of letterforms. The counter is an integral element in Western typography, however this concept may not apply universally to non-Western typographic traditions. More complex scripts, such as Chinese, which make use of compounding elements ( radicals ) within a single character may additionally require consideration of spacing not only between characters but also within characters. The overall proportion of characters, or their body, considers proportions of width and height for all cases involved (which in Latin are uppercase and lowercase), and individually for each character. In

3618-475: The quirks of human perception, "optical corrections" required to make shapes look right, in ways that diverge from what might seem mathematically right. For example, round shapes need to be slightly bigger than square ones to appear "the same" size ("overshoot"), and vertical lines need to be thicker than horizontal ones to appear the same thickness. For a character to be perceived as geometrically round, it must usually be slightly "squared" off (made slightly wider at

3685-490: The rough papers of uneven thicknesses, the squeezing or splashing properties of the ink, and the eventual wear on the type itself. Beginning in the 1890s, each character was drawn in a very large size for the American Type Founders Corporation and a few others using their technology—over a foot (30 cm) high. The outline was then traced by a Benton pantograph -based engraving machine with

3752-425: The shoulders). As a result of all these subtleties, excellence in type design is highly respected in the design professions. Type design is performed by a type designer . It is a craft , blending elements of art and science. In the pre-digital era it was primarily learned through apprenticeship and professional training within the industry. Since the mid-1990s it has become the subject of dedicated degree programs at

3819-593: The start of desktop publishing software, Trout Computing in California introduced VepSet, which allows Xerox Ventura Publisher to be used as a front end and wrote a Compugraphic MCS disk with typesetting codes to reproduce the page layout. In retrospect, cold type paved the way for the vast range of modern digital fonts, with the lighter weight of equipment allowing far larger families than had been possible with metal type. However, modern designers have noted that compromises of cold type, such as altered designs, made

3886-422: The thickness or thinness of a typeface's strokes in a global sense. Typefaces usually have a default medium, or regular, weight which will produce the appearance of a uniform grey value when set in text. Categories of weight include hairline, thin, extra light, light, book, regular/medium, semibold, bold, black/heavy, and extra black/ultra. Variable fonts are computer fonts that are able to store and make use of

3953-484: The transition to digital when a better path might have been to return to the traditions of metal type. Adrian Frutiger , who in his early career redesigned many fonts for phototype, noted that "the fonts [I redrew] don’t have any historical worth...to think of the sort of aberrations I had to produce in order to see a good result on Lumitype! V and W needed huge crotches in order to stay open. I nearly had to introduce serifs in order to prevent rounded-off corners – instead of

4020-480: The typesetter to make changes and corrections without rekeying. A CRT screen lets the user view typesetting codes and text. Because early generations of phototypesetters could not change text size and font easily, many composing rooms and print shops had special machines designed to set display type or headlines. One such model is the PhotoTypositor , manufactured by Visual Graphics Corporation , which lets

4087-413: The user position each letter visually and thus retain complete control over kerning . Compugraphic's model 7200 uses the "strobe-through-a-filmstrip-through-a-lens" technology to expose letters and characters onto a 35mm strip of phototypesetting paper that is then developed by a photo processor. The 7200 is a headliner machine that read the character width from the filmstrip as the character is flashed onto

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4154-436: Was 1 column at 4000 lines or 4 columns at 1000 lines each. As phototypesetting machines matured as a technology in the 1970s, more efficient methods were found for creating and subsequently editing text intended for the printed page. Previously, hot-metal typesetting equipment had incorporated a built-in keyboard, such that the machine operator would create both the original text and the medium (lead type slugs) that would create

4221-408: Was a lot slower than the 8600. For a fast typesetter at the time, the APS 5 from AutoLogic was hard to beat. It had a 64-speed paper advance and did not stop to set type. It figured what needed to be set in a band of data and matched the electronic advance to the mechanical advance. If there were parts of a character that were not included in the band of printing it would be printed in the next band or

4288-718: Was a pioneer. The earliest applications of computer-controlled phototypesetting machines produced the output of the Russian translation programs of Gilbert King at the IBM Research Laboratories, and built-up mathematical formulas and other material in the Cooperative Computing Laboratory of Michael Barnett at MIT. There are extensive accounts of the early applications, the equipment and the PAGE I algorithmic typesetting language for

4355-473: Was designed to provide input for. Though such programs still exist, their output is no longer targeted at any specific form of hardware. Some companies, such as TeleTypesetting Co. created software and hardware interfaces between personal computers like the Apple II and IBM PS/2 and phototypesetting machines which provided computers equipped with it the capability to connect to phototypesetting machines. With

4422-409: Was incorporated as Monotype Imaging , with a focus on the company's traditional core competencies of typographic design and professional printing. Famous contemporary typographers associated with Monotype include Adrian Frutiger , Hermann Zapf and Matthew Carter . Phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of setting type which uses photography to make columns of type on

4489-472: Was invented in China, but the vast number of Chinese characters, and the esteem with which calligraphy was held, meant that few distinctive, complete typefaces were created in China in the early centuries of printing. Gutenberg's most important innovation in the mid 15th century development of his press was not the printing itself, but the casting of Latinate types. Unlike Chinese characters, which are based on

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