[net.internat] italics

colonel@ellie.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (02/11/86)

[You choke over your food --More--]

> >Is ``italicness' an attribute or a separate font?
> 
> Italic is a separate font (some characters have different shapes,
> eg 'a' and 'g').  Slant is an attribute.  One of the things Apple got
> wrong with the Mac was to call slanted fonts Italic.  This breaks the
> 'WYSIWYG' correspondence between MacWrite and the LaserWriter.

This oversimplifies.  Italic fonts are designed to harmonize with the
corresponding Roman fonts.  Many of the letterforms differ, but you can
usually find some salient similarities.  On the other hand, while
slanted fonts can be made by just shearing unslanted fonts, they
usually look better with a few alterations afterwards.
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel
CS: colonel@buffalo-cs
BI: csdsicher@sunyabva