[comp.fonts] Question about fonts in word processors

dhosek@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (dhosek) (02/21/90)

In article <1990Feb20.174552.8838@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <17140@boulder.Colorado.EDU> scholes@snoopy.Colorado.EDU (SCHOLES MARTIN LEE) writes:
>>  Why doesn't WordPerfect, or anyone for that matter, include a set of
>>scaleable fonts in the package, and then send the doc to the printer in
>>graphics mode (forget the printer's built in text mode), with the fonts
>>all scaled to the right size, and adjusted for the particular printer?

>Probably because scaling fonts well is a tricky job, especially at
>relatively low resolutions (300 dpi is low resolution for this purpose),
>and adjusting them for the particular printer is ad-hoc black magic.
>The fact is, using the built-in fonts gets better results.

Built-in fonts kind of give better results... MF's routines for bitmapping
are more sophisticated than PostScript's. The reason that PostScript
looks as good as it does is simply because they don't have fonts with any
really fine details that could get munched by their rasterization at
300dpi. On the other hand, the Merganthaler fonts available for Xerox
printers are hand-tuned with all sorts of bitmap magic to give rather
outstanding results. Too bad the rest of the printer software isn't as
nice.

>The TeX people sort of kind of do what you're suggesting, part of the
>time, with the Computer Modern fonts, but the scaling process there is
>elaborate and expensive and is done as setup work rather than on the
>fly every time.  (The significance of this is that the scaled fonts eat
>up lots and lots of disk space.)  Some people aren't too impressed with
>the results, either.

If one is careful to restrict themselves to only the font/size combinations
that they actually use, the space requirements aren't too bad. I think it
would take less than 2m to get a minimal set of fonts in PK format for
LaTeX. The reason most systems have so many fonts is that often the software
(MF) for generating the fonts is not available and it is difficult to 
predict what will be wanted so everything is generated.

The Bitstream fonts, incidentally, are, from my understanding, something
rather ideal for what the original poster was looking for. The only
system that uses them "on the fly" to my knowledge is a new product
(and I'm only speculating on the Bitstream connection here) called VectorTeX
which at present supports only PS and HP laser printers.

-dh
-- 
"Odi et amo, quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
   nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior"          -Catullus
D.A. Hosek.                        UUCP: uunet!jarthur!dhosek
                               Internet: dhosek@hmcvax.claremont.edu