pgd@bbt.se (11/17/90)
In article <1990Nov13.174531.11434@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> khcg0492@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kenneth Holden Chang) writes: >Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is *not* what the hints do, and is indeed >one of the drawbacks of Postscript. What the "hints" do is adjust for low >resolution (300 dpi) printers. Otherwise the letters tend to look "heavy." >On a high-resolution printer like a Linotronic, however, fonts are scaled >exactly, that is a 48 point 'A' looks exactly like a 24 point 'A' except it's >larger. This is also Adobe's Expert Collections contain what are called >"Titling" characters, i.e. fonts designed for larger point sizes. I actually made an experiment by taking an Adobe font, converting it to Type 3 format (without hints), and made printout both with, and without hints, on both a laser printer (400 dpi), and a Linotronic 300 (1270dpi). The Linotronic outputs show no difference. The laser-printouts are different. The non-hinted printout looks "uglier". A nearer examination shows the differences: The letters tend to jump on the baseline. This is due to letters like o, a, s, which decend a little bit on the hinted printout, but not on the non-hinted. The non-hinted letters are more misformed, and look more jagged. One example is shallow curves, like on the serifs. The positioning of straight lines also are less accurate on the non-hinted fonts. Each letter might be allright, but the overall appearence of a line of text, is worse. The letters tend to differ more from each other, without hints. So, the hints just compensate for rasterization errors on low-resolution devices (like laser-printers). The hints tend to preserve the letter forms, instead of mathematical correctness. That makes the letters look nicer to the eye.