urban@spp2.UUCP (Mike Urban) (03/22/85)
The lettering style officially used by TRW is something
called "Universe," but the printing office people didn't seem
to know where it comes from, or whether a digitized version
of this font is available. Can the Usenet Mass Mind be
of assistance? I'd like to be able to use this font
with TeX or Troff on our Imagen printers.
--
Mike Urban
{ucbvax|decvax}!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!urban
"You're in a maze of twisty UUCP connections, all alike"buck@shell.UUCP (Lester Buck) (03/26/85)
The font you mean is called "Univers" and is available
from the Mergenthaler Linotype Stempel Haas digital typeface
library. They just got through changing their name to
Allied Linotype. I called them up for information about
their new PostScript phototypesetters mentioned in laser-
lovers. Currently they sell the L300 (max 2540 lines/inch,
$34k + front end) and the L101 (max 1440 lines/inch, $23k +
front end) which have PostScript buried inside (according to
the salesman), but do not support the graphics primitives.
The newer P300 and P101 to be out in a few months will sup-
port the full PostScript language, but prices were not
available. The front end terminal they require ranges from
$5k to $10k, but the salesman indicated that sometime they
will be selling a bare phototypesetter with a communications
port that accepts PostScript input. The fonts themselves
are quite reasonable, each one selling for about $180 in the
complete range of sizes (1pt to 186pt, in steps of .1 pt).
According to the digital typeface directory that he left,
"Univers" comes in 18 fonts, from Univers Light Ultra Con-
densed to Univers Black Extended. The directory is a fas-
cinating booklet to browse through, if you can get a copy.
It gives examples of over 1700 fonts available in the
library. I would guess all the Mergenthaler fonts should be
available eventually in PostScript form to download to a
LaserWriter, but they will certainly be compressed in a
proprietary way, like Xerox does. The salesman told me how
their fonts are designed on a base of about 400pt, but their
printers are restricted from printing at full design size to
keep people from printing the full size font and re-
digitizing. Somehow that is not feasible from the smaller
sizes because of a built in algorithm for adjusting stroke
weight, etc. as the size of the font varies.
As far as using TeX on these machines, we need a .dvi
to PostScript translater plus a release of all the font
metric info, kerning, ligature, etc. information. Also,
don't plan on doing much math in the typical Merganthaler
font - it includes A-Z,a-z,0-9 and .,;:'`&!?$, and that's
it. They have six Universal Math fonts which, all together,
are much weaker than the plain TeX fonts. They must have
more specialized math fonts available.
A. Lester Buck @ Shell Development Co.
{ihnp4, pur-ee, ut-sally}!shell!buckfuruta@uw-beaver (Richard Furuta) (03/30/85)
In article <256@shell.UUCP> buck@shell.UUCP (Lester Buck) writes: > > The font you mean is called "Univers" and is available >from the Mergenthaler Linotype Stempel Haas digital typeface >library. They just got through changing their name to >Allied Linotype. I called them up for information about >their new PostScript phototypesetters mentioned in laser- >lovers. Currently they sell the L300 (max 2540 lines/inch, >$34k + front end) and the L101 (max 1440 lines/inch, $23k + >front end) which have PostScript buried inside (according to >the salesman), but do not support the graphics primitives. >The newer P300 and P101 to be out in a few months will sup- >port the full PostScript language, but prices were not >available. The front end terminal they require ranges from >$5k to $10k, but the salesman indicated that sometime they >will be selling a bare phototypesetter with a communications >port that accepts PostScript input. Please note that a subsequent message to Laser-Lovers from Andy Shore of Adobe indicated that the Allied Linotype salesperson was wrong about PostScript being buried inside of the L300 and L101. --Rick