CAB@SU-AI.ARPA.UUCP (05/17/86)
Chris Warth inquires about the history of digital outline fonts. Outlines comprising vectors or arcs and vectors began to be used in digital CRT typesetting machines in the early to mid 1970s. The extinct Suncomp was one such device, and the infamous MGD Metroset another. The Metroset is well known because its arc & vector outline technology was implemented in hardware and patented. The patent is usually called the "Evans & Caswell" patent, after the inventors. There were two issues, around 1976 and 1980 (sorry I don't have my copy handy). It is infamous because Rockwell, parent of MGD, sued Allied, parent of (Mergenthaler) Linotype over infringement. The Linotron 202, introduced in 1978, used a vector outline font, substantially the same as the later Omnitech font (both were or are Linotype devices). Allied settled out of court, and is rumored to have paid a substantial sum, even though many experts believed that the Linotron vector outline did not infringe the arc & vector MGD hardware method. Now, III, having bought all rights to the Metroset, is suing Compugraphic over infringement by the CG8600 outline fonts. CG is fighting it. Even before the Metroset, there were academic treatments of outline fonts. Philippe Coueignoux, in his MIT Master's thesis in 1973, described an outline font format, and further elaborated on even more compact font encodings in his MIT doctoral dissertation of 1975. Electronic Publishing. There was a conference called EP86 at Nottingham in April. The Proceedings have previously been cited to this list. EP88 is scheduled for Nice, France, in 1988, organized by Jacques Andre of INRIA, Rennes.