JMS@ARIZMIS.BITNET (07/04/87)
Daniel Sears (sears@sum.com) asks: > Does anyone on this list know where to get a PostScript version > of Knuth's Computer Modern fonts? In the dvi-to-postscript translator that Arbortext Inc sells, you have the choice of using the Adobe built-in fonts, or having them download the CMR fonts when needed. I don't know if they sell the fonts separately. | Joel M Snyder | BITNET: jms@arizmis.BITNET | Univ of Arizona Dep't of MIS | Internet: jms@mrsvax.mis.arizona.edu | Tucson, Arizona 85721 | Pseudo-PhoneNET: (602) 621-274
mackay@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Pierre MacKay) (07/17/87)
CMR fonts as produced by METAFONT are carefully rasterised, and supplied with several precise optical and inking adjustments which override the simpler splines of the basic character. Moreover, they are carefully sized so that the proportions of (e.g) cmr5 are quite distinct from those of cmr10. Brian Reid, in a recent issue of Unix Review, says that nobody bothers with that sort of quality any more, and that optical scaling from 12-point down to 4-point and up to 96 point is all anybody wants. Don Knuth does bother, and so do many others. It is theoretically possible to trap the splines in METAFONT and convert them to postscript code, but if you did it too early, you would lose exactly those elements of final optical correction that put the final polish on high resolution characters in METAFONT. Maybe it should be done, but if it is done, let us hope that the breezy postscript habit of using 12-point masters for everything, regardless of how inappropriate the proportions may be, is not applied to Computer Modern, or to any of the future fonts developed under METAFONT. Pierre A. MacKay TUG Site Coordinator for Unix-flavored TeX