sguthery@SLB-DOLL.CSNET (Scott Guthery) (12/30/85)
I am in the process of translating the KST fonts to TeX TFM/PXL format. Does anyone know where these fonts come from? They have a strong smell of MIT/Stanford/CMU about them. They have names like 36vbee, 40vr, fing, delega, and such. Any information will be appreciated. Thanks, Scott
LES@SU-AI.ARPA (Les Earnest) (12/31/85)
[In reply to message from sguthery%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA sent Mon, 30 Dec 85 06:34:49 est.] According to my records, "36vbee" was the MIT name for a Bocklin-like font that was digitized at the Stanford AI Lab by Bruce Baumgart. "40vr" was the MIT name for a Bodoni-like font done by someone at Carnegie-Mellon. "fing" was a hand-sign alphabet done by someone at MIT -- I think it was Ken Herrenstein. I'm not certain who did the Delegate font, but I think that it was swiped from Xerox (a.k.a. "Shy Corporation"). All of these fonts were created in the early '70s for Xerox Graphics Printers. Inasmuch as CMU, MIT and Stanford each ran their XGPs at different resolutions, there are some scaling inconsistencies. Of course, these inconsistencies are relatively unimportant given that most typographers decline to define "point size" in a way that can be measured. For reasons of history and compatibility, Arthur Samuel here at Stanford is currently engaged in rescaling the old XGP Baskerville fonts (known as "BAS" at Stanford and "30VR" at MIT). These were originally digitized by Brian Harvey of the Stanford AI Lab. The rescaled versions are intended to fill some local needs and appear to be surprisingly good, though not beautiful. Art is recasting them in the GF format, used by modern versions of TeX. The crufty old (but versatile) Pub document compiler will also be made to use these fonts and to produce DVI output as an additional option. Les Earnest