This week, at the age of 64, Teus de Jong died of complications after some years of ill-health. Many of you will remember his contributions in this forum and the scripting forum across the road, though because of his health problems in recent years he hasn’t posted in any forum for a while.
Teus was an accomplished typesetter, routinely collecting prizes for best-produced books in the Netherlands. He was quite versatile, setting complicated titles, not only novels in Dutch – his mother tongue – but also bilingual Hebrew-Dutch bibles and and Dutch-Arabic/Arabic-Dutch dictionaries. In typographical matters he was self-taught: he was trained as a sociologist, then for several years worked as a lecturer in the history of science at Delft Technical University in Holland. Later, in the early late 1970s, he turned to book production – not entirely unsurprising as he had always been a bibliophile – had his own company, and, after several years of co-owning a typesetting company, worked on his own again until his death. Teus was also an excellent programmer: he was fluent in PostScript, C, Pascal, and later in JavaScript, too.
He will be remembered for his sardonic quick wit and, above all, his generosity. No matter what you sought his advice or views on – typography, the latest developments in hard-disk technology, the merits of a particular typeface, or the ultimate argument why Glenn Gould was the best Bach interpreter – he always had time for you and explained things in great detail. Those who knew him will miss him. Teus is survived by his wife, Monique, and four adult children.
Peter Kahrel
![[Jongware]](/people/%5BJongware%5D/avatar/30.png?a=20686){kind=small}
