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Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
里德大学在那时开设了也许是全美最好的美术字课程。校园里的每张海报、每个抽屉的标签都用漂亮的美术字做成。因为退学了，不必去上常规的课程，所以我决定去上美术字课，学习怎样写出漂亮的美术字。我学到了关于serifff和san seri字体的知识，还有改变不同的字母组合的间距，以及好的印刷式样之所以好的原因。它很美，有历史感，还有一种科学无法解释的艺术精妙。我发现那实在是太迷人了。
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
当时这些东西在我的生活中全都没有任何实际应用的可能。但是十年后，我们设计第一台Macintosh电脑时，这一切又回到我的脑海。我把那些东西全都放进了Mac的设计之中。那是第一台拥有漂亮印刷字体的电脑。在大学，要是我没去旁听这门课，Mac今天就不会有这么丰富的字体以及赏心悦目的字体间距。又因为Windows只是照抄了Mac,所以任何个人电脑可能都不会有这些东西。要是我没有退学，我就不会去旁听那门美术字课程，个人电脑也就可能不会拥有现在这么漂亮的字体。当然，我在大学的时候，还不可能在展望未来的时候把这些点串连起来，但是十年后再回顾这一切，就再清楚不过了。
