ABishop@massey.ac.nz (A.G. Bishop) (08/15/90)
Hi group, I would like some help with understanding what manafacturers and others are talking about when they describe fonts. Example: I use Quattro Pro, great spreadsheet with excellent hardcopy output. The manual, however, leaves me wondering about the different types of font they discuss: Hershey fonts: These look like a superset of the characters that I can get using Turbo Pascal, they are constructed entirely from lines with no filled-in areas. Bitstream fonts: The name may mean nothing as it is a brand name (the company is called Bitstream, Inc.). These seem to be "proper" fonts where there is some abstract description given of the typeface and a piece of software that takes as input this description plus your selection of style and point size, producing some type of bitmap of the final set of characters. If anybody saw the Monty Python-ish movie "Time Bandits" the posters included construction lines on all the letters - circles, arcs, measurements etc. defining the shape and positioning of serifs, etc. I always think of this when imagining the abstract description of the characters. Also available are fonts supported by the printer. I use our networked LaserWriter, from my brief experience with Postscript it seems that these fonts are the same as bitstream above but the description and software are contained in the printer's rom. Other undefined terms abound; eg. an unreliable source told me that "font hinting" is a technique for scaling a font already in its bitmap form, true? Enough! Please, folks could you provide some info to steer me towards the information I seek? Thanks in anticipation, Tony. -- Tony Bishop Computer Centre A.G.Bishop@massey.ac.nz Massey University Palmerston North, N.Z.
bts@unx.sas.com (Brian T. Schellenberger) (08/23/90)
[I don't think this group is busy enough that a post should be offensive. If you disagree, I'm sure you'll let me know . . .] In article <910@massey.ac.nz> ABishop@massey.ac.nz (A.G. Bishop) writes: |I would like some help with understanding what manafacturers and |others are talking about when they describe fonts. | |Hershey fonts: These look like a superset of the characters that I |can get using Turbo Pascal, they are constructed entirely from lines |with no filled-in areas. Hershey fonts are a set of public domain font description which consist entirely of vectors. These were fairly common in the early days of computer grahics, because they work pretty well on plotters. However, they look prety attrocious on most bitmapped devices, and since virtually all computer output devices are now bitmapped, they should put out of our misery. For they most part, they are. |Bitstream fonts: The name may mean nothing as it is a brand name (the |company is called Bitstream, Inc.). These seem to be "proper" fonts |where there is some abstract description given of the typeface and a |piece of software that takes as input this description plus your |selection of style and point size, producing some type of bitmap of |the final set of characters. |If anybody saw the Monty Python-ish movie "Time Bandits" the posters |included construction lines on all the letters - circles, arcs, |measurements etc. defining the shape and positioning of serifs, etc. |I always think of this when imagining the abstract description of the |characters. Bitstream is a font vendor. So are Adobe, ITC, and numerous others. Bitstream has a large number of fonts, and they look prety good. Your "abstract picture" is prety accurate, actually. Most scalable computer font representations use a series of arcs and lines to describe the boundries of the characters. Unlike the "Time Bandits" font, howevr, which is really prety simplistic (all the extra curves obscure this), some form of splines or Bezier curves are more common that cicrular arcs. Such a representation can be scaled and even automatically obliqued. And, as you speculate, they are ultimately turned into bitmaps before the final printing stage. Some fonts, of course (such as LaserJet fonts) are actually shipped as bitmaps. |Also available are fonts supported by the printer. I use our |networked LaserWriter, from my brief experience with Postscript it |seems that these fonts are the same as bitstream above but the |description and software are contained in the printer's rom. Precisely correct, except that with (real) PostScript the fonts and the font scaling technology are supplied by Adobe rather than Bitstream. |Other undefined terms abound; eg. an unreliable source told me that |"font hinting" is a technique for scaling a font already in its |bitmap form, true? False. You do seem to have a good feel for what makes sense and what doesn't, though. Hinting is an attempt to deal with problems in con- verting abstract mathametical curves to real discreet bits. For example, if a letter `e' is has the top line as taking up the top 20% of the space the middle as taking up the middle 10% and the bottom as taking up the botom 20% of the space, then at a resolution such that there are fewer than 10 pixels for the "ex" height of the font (the height ofower-case leters), then the shelf in the middle of the "e" may be rendered with zero pixels. This would be severely uncool. Similarly, hints prevent the top line of a `E' from being more or less thick than the bottom line (unless the font designer intended such an effect). And so on. Try drawing abstract shapes onto graph paper and then mechanically filling in all squares that are more than 50% of the way inside of the figure sometime to see the sort of effect tha hints try to avoid. Hope all this helps. -- -- Brian, the Man from Babble-on. bts@unx.sas.com -- (Brian Schellenberger) "And when the votes were cast, the winner was . . . Mister James K. Polk, Napolean of the stump." -- THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS.
dkletter@adobe.COM (It's all fun and games until someone PUTS AN EYE OUT) (08/24/90)
bts@unx.sas.com (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes: >Bitstream is a font vendor. So are Adobe, ITC, and numerous others. >Bitstream has a large number of fonts, and they look prety good. actually, ITC is a "Type Foundry". Bitstream and Adobe could be considered as such seeing as they have original typeface designs of their own, but in general, those two are basically vendors or sorts. why pick such a nit? because it there is a distinct difference. ITC has been around for a VERY long time and they have either the rights to or were the creators of many typefaces that are commonly used today. similarly, Monotype, Berthold, Bauer, Stempel and the American Typefoundry are/were also "Foundries" (to name a few) that other vendors such as Linotype today sell their typefaces to the masses. >Such a representation can be scaled and even automatically obliqued. >And, as you speculate, they are ultimately turned into bitmaps before >the final printing stage. this is a bit convoluted. there are two parts to a digital typeface: the outlines (PostScript program which defines the shapes of each individual character in a file) and the bitmaped representation which can be manipulated on one's computer screen. the outlines, are what the printer needs to produce the beautiful output one sees these days. >Precisely correct, except that with (real) PostScript the fonts and >the font scaling technology are supplied by Adobe rather than Bitstream. this font scaling technology is bascially PostScript at work. Bitstream uses it as well. the difference between their typefaces and ours is that Adobe typefaces are in the Type1 format (includes the encryption and hinting methods) and Bitstream's are Type3. of course, with the advent of the Black Book, anyone can produce Type1 fonts if they so desire. -- "Yellow... black and rectangular... with wedged shapes inside... Oh, I see them everywhere... Am I losing my mind?"
dkletter@adobe.COM (It's all fun and games until someone PUTS AN EYE OUT) (08/25/90)
In article <5916@adobe.UUCP> i said: >actually, ITC is a "Type Foundry". oops. i really goofed here. ITC is probably more a vendor, but i wasn't thinking when i typed this. sorry bout that... -- "Yellow... black and rectangular... with wedged shapes inside... Oh, I see them everywhere... Am I losing my mind?"
phillips@tegra.COM (Steve Phillips) (08/28/90)
In article <5916@adobe.UUCP> dkletter@adobe.UUCP (It's all fun and games until someone PUTS AN EYE OUT) writes: > ... >this font scaling technology is bascially PostScript at work. Bitstream >uses it as well. the difference between their typefaces and ours is >that Adobe typefaces are in the Type1 format (includes the encryption >and hinting methods) and Bitstream's are Type3. > >of course, with the advent of the Black Book, anyone can produce Type1 >fonts if they so desire. My understanding was that Bitstream offers type 1 fonts as well as type 3. I know that Bitstream announced they had cracked the type 1 format shortly before Adobe announced they were making it public. - Steve -- ============================================================================ Steve Phillips Tegra-Varityper, Inc. tegra!phillips@uunet.com Billerica, MA ============================================================================
tim@int13.hf.intel.com (Timothy E. Forsyth) (08/30/90)
dkletter@adobe.COM writes: >this font scaling technology is bascially PostScript at work. Bitstream >uses it as well. the difference between their typefaces and ours is >that Adobe typefaces are in the Type1 format (includes the encryption >and hinting methods) and Bitstream's are Type3. >of course, with the advent of the Black Book, anyone can produce Type1 >fonts if they so desire. OK, I'll bite, what is the Black Book and where can I get a copy (and how much does it cost?). I'm new to the creation of fonts, I just got METAFONT up and running on Unix System V/386 Release 3.2.2 (Intel's version), and generated the CMR fonts into laserjet softfont file using pk2sfp. Another question I have, has anyone created a pk to Windows 3.0 screen font converter? Or will I have to look a doing one (and have it done in time for Win4.0 :-) ) Later, Tim Forsyth -- Tim Forsyth, tim@int13.hf.intel.com or forsytim@ccm.hf.intel.com Intel Corp., Oregon MicroComputer Division, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
leeann@huxley.UUCP (Leeann Sack) (08/30/90)
In article <1328@io.tegra.COM> phillips@io.UUCP (Steve Phillips) writes: >In article <5916@adobe.UUCP> dkletter@adobe.UUCP (It's all fun and games until someone PUTS AN EYE OUT) writes: >> ... >>and hinting methods) and Bitstream's are Type3. > >My understanding was that Bitstream offers type 1 fonts as well as type 3. Bitstream offers many different font formats, including PostScript Type1 encrypted fonts that are not hinted. ----------------------------- Leeann Sack leeann@bitstream.com
bts@unx.sas.com (Brian T. Schellenberger) (08/31/90)
In article <5916@adobe.UUCP> dkletter@adobe.UUCP (It's all fun and games until someone PUTS AN EYE OUT) writes: |bts@unx.sas.com (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes: |>Precisely correct, except that with (real) PostScript the fonts and |>the font scaling technology are supplied by Adobe rather than Bitstream. | |this font scaling technology is bascially PostScript at work. Bitstream |uses it as well. the difference between their typefaces and ours is |that Adobe typefaces are in the Type1 format (includes the encryption |and hinting methods) and Bitstream's are Type3. I will take your word for it that BitStream has fonts out in Adobe format, which uses PostScript to do the work. However, Bitstream also has their *own* fonts and font-rendering technology, called Speedo. Various software vendors then liscense this technology and put it their products. This gives their products output-device-independent scalable fonts. The entire world does not revolve around PostScript, even if it's really nifty. -- -- Brian, the Man from Babble-on. bts@unx.sas.com -- (Brian Schellenberger) "And when the votes were cast, the winner was . . . Mister James K. Polk, Napolean of the stump." -- THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS.
lucy@mofh.uucp (Gary J. Hamilton) (09/01/90)
> The entire world does not revolve around PostScript, even if it's really > nifty. But most hip software does, and so does the hippest hardware... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- lucy@mofh.uucp Gary J. Hamilton MoFH, the Meriachee Old Folks Home Waffle 1.62 (403) 487-9543, Courier HST 14.4kb, 24 hours a day -This isn't right, This isn't even wrong. Wolfgang Pauli- --------------------------------------------------------------------------