[comp.windows.news] bug in NeWS 1.1 or RTFM ?

tom@nlgvax.UUCP (Tom v. Peer) (04/01/88)

Anyone tried this or something like this in NeWS ?


/Times-Roman findfont 
150 scalefont setfont	% scale is not standard available, but I don't know if
			% that has anything got to do with it
100 100 moveto		% just for convenience
(A) show		% gives you a 72 points "A"
1 rotate		% you could also do "-1 -1 scale" but not "2 2 scale"
(A) show		% gives you the 150 points "A" you actually wanted

Am I just an inexperienced NeWs-clown or is something really wrong here ?

Tom van Peer				| E-mail: mcvax!philmds!nlgvax!tom
Nederlands Philips Bedrijven		|	  peer@vangogh.prl.philips.nl
Dependance Nat. Lab.  Building XR	|	  (last one may vanish soon!)
Willem Alexanderlaan 7B			|
5664 AN Geldrop - The Netherlands	| ...let my brother's hamster burn
Tel: +31-40-892334			| in hell.      (J. Hiatt)

glc@c3po.UUCP (Greg Cockroft) (04/05/88)

>Anyone tried this or something like this in NeWS ?
>
>
>/Times-Roman findfont 
>150 scalefont setfont	% scale is not standard available, but I don't know if
>			% that has anything got to do with it
>100 100 moveto		% just for convenience
>(A) show		% gives you a 72 points "A"
>1 rotate		% you could also do "-1 -1 scale" but not "2 2 scale"
>(A) show		% gives you the 150 points "A" you actually wanted

>Am I just an inexperienced NeWs-clown or is something really wrong here ?

This is not a bug, but an implementation limit.  NeWS always tries to use
a bitmap font.  There is no 150 point Times-Roman in the font directory.
If you do the following.

/Times-Roman findfont 
150 scalefont setfont	
100 100 moveto		
(AAAA) show	

You will notice that the spacing between characters is for a 150 point 
version, although something around 72 points is displayed.  When you did
the 1 rotate you faked out the font machinery inside of NeWS.  It looked at
the Current Transformation Matrix and decided that you were not doing a 
simple scale operation. It therefore computed the glyph for (A) on the fly.
Notice how poor the second glyph looks. 

If you want big glyphs do something like .001 rotate, or add some big bitmap
fonts into your font directory.

If you look closely at the "Text (scaled)" demo you will notice that the 
same bitmap font gets used about 3 times in a row.



	-greg.

liam@cs.qmc.ac.uk (William Roberts) (04/08/88)

Sender:

Followup-To:


It's a bug. Some genius decided on an optimization that looks
to see if the font matrix amounts to [ x 0 0 y ? ?] and if it
does, then only sign(y) and x matters. Other effects of this are:

1 75 scale      has no effect on the letter sizes
1 -75 scale     turns letters upsidedown but doesn't scale them

Furthermore, if you don't have a ".fm" file for your font (e.g.
Screen-Bold) then it won't get turned upsidedown either.
-- 

William Roberts         ARPA: liam@cs.qmc.ac.uk  (gw: cs.ucl.edu)
Queen Mary College      UUCP: liam@qmc-cs.UUCP
LONDON, UK              Tel:  01-980 4811 ext 3933

shadow@pawl23.pawl.rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine) (04/12/88)

In article <220@nlgvax.UUCP> tom@nlgvax.UUCP (Tom v. Peer) writes:
>Anyone tried this or something like this in NeWS ?
>
>
>/Times-Roman findfont 
>150 scalefont setfont	% scale is not standard available, but I don't know if
>			% that has anything got to do with it
>100 100 moveto		% just for convenience
>(A) show		% gives you a 72 points "A"
>1 rotate		% you could also do "-1 -1 scale" but not "2 2 scale"
>(A) show		% gives you the 150 points "A" you actually wanted
>
>Am I just an inexperienced NeWs-clown or is something really wrong here ?
>
>Tom van Peer				| E-mail: mcvax!philmds!nlgvax!tom
>Nederlands Philips Bedrijven		|	  peer@vangogh.prl.philips.nl
>Dependance Nat. Lab.  Building XR	|	  (last one may vanish soon!)
>Willem Alexanderlaan 7B			|
>5664 AN Geldrop - The Netherlands	| ...let my brother's hamster burn
>Tel: +31-40-892334			| in hell.      (J. Hiatt)

Yes, there is something really wrong here.  The problem is that Sun never
implemented the full font model in NeWS 1.0 or 1.1, regardless of what the
release notes for NeWS 1.1 say.  NeWS 1.1 is primarily a bug release.
NeWS uses only bitmap fonts, which I find to be extremely annoying.  I
have been told that NeWS 2.0 & 2.1 have the correct font model.  I'm
hoping.  I *didn't* know that rotating would force it to rescale it as it
should.  And no, that doesn't make you an inexperienced NeWS-clown.
It makes Sun seem a little foolish, but...

Deven T. Corzine
shadow@pawl.rpi.edu
shadow%pawl.rpi.edu@itsgw.rpi.edu

I need a .signature file...  :-(

This b l a n k intentionally left spaced.  (ho! sundance!)

barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) (04/13/88)

In article <647@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> shadow@pawl23.pawl.rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine) writes:
|Yes, there is something really wrong here.  The problem is that Sun never
|implemented the full font model in NeWS 1.0 or 1.1, regardless of what the
|release notes for NeWS 1.1 say.


Don't be to hard on Sun. The problem is that the outline fonts belong
to Adobe. Sun cannot supply them without legal permission.

As I hear, the problem is somewhat sticky. 

I can imagine the conversation (insert tongue in cheek :-) . . .

	Adobe:	NeWS is definitely not PostScript!
	Sun:	But it does everything PostScript does!
	Adobe:	But you didn't license it from us!
	Sun:	But the language is in the public domain.
	Adobe:	No it isn't.
	Sun:	It was when you wrote your charter!
	Adobe:	Well - you can call it PostScript if you pay us our
		per copy fee. That's only $$$$$ per machine.
	Sun:	But we wrote the entire thing ourselves!
	Adobe:	So?
	Sun:	Why should we pay you for our effort!!!
	Adobe:	Do you want to call it PostScript or not?

Note: The above is an example of humor - it bears no relation to
	the actual legal disagreement between Sun and Adobe.
-- 
	Bruce G. Barnett 	<barnett@ge-crd.ARPA> <barnett@steinmetz.UUCP>
				uunet!steinmetz!barnett