dan@sics.se (Dan Sahlin) (07/12/89)
From the descriptions I have read about the new Macintosh "outline" fonts several things are still unclear about their capabilities. - Is there any support for rotating the fonts? How will the "hints" work for rotated fonts? - Is it possible to make variants of the fonts in the way it is done in Laser FX or the Letraset fonts? Laser FX is using PostScript to reach those effects, and is uncapable of showing the final result on the screen. The software from Letraset uses special fonts, which are only possible to use with their software. - Acorn DTP uses knowledge about the form of the letters to make the kerning "perfect" and automatic. For instance, the pair "AV" can kern very much due to the shape of the letters, whereas "VV" cannot kern much at all. This method for kerning should also be possible for the outline fonts for the Mac as the shape is available. - "Fuzzy fonts" are fonts where greyscale is used to make the edges smoother. I've heard that fuzzy fonts are standard for the NeXT. Tests have shown that fuzzy fonts are much more legible than fonts with sharp edges. The Mac already has support for color and grayscale fonts, but can the outline fonts generate "fuzzy fonts"? - In close relation to fuzzy fonts is the concept "subpixel addressing". By varying the intensity of gray of the edges, the character may appear to move smoothly between the pixels. This method will effectively increase the resolution of the screen several times. The Acorn DTP already supports both "fuzzy fonts" and "subpixel addressing". What about the forthcoming Macintosh "outline" fonts? - The Mac already has support for color fonts. Will the outline fonts also support color? - Many fonts come in families that do not fit the model "Bold/Italic/ Underline/...". For instance some fonts have variants such as "light", "extra heavy" but lack some of the standard variants. Will the new font system support such font families better? /Dan Sahlin email: dan@sics.se
john@acorn.co.uk (John Bowler) (07/13/89)
In article <1989Jul12.111024.10324@sics.se>, dan@sics.se (Dan Sahlin) writes: > > - Acorn DTP uses knowledge about the form of the letters to make the > kerning "perfect" and automatic. For instance, the pair "AV" can kern > very much due to the shape of the letters, whereas "VV" cannot kern much > at all. This method for kerning should also be possible for the outline > fonts for the Mac as the shape is available. > Unfortunately this is not the case - currently our font format has space for character pair kerning information, but this is not used. Manual kerning is certainly possible, but automatic kerning seems too much to hope for at present. For example how close should the letter pair OO be placed? If kerning is done on the basis of character shape the two letters would almost certainly be placed too far apart. Perhaps some form of weighted average using a series of character widths entered by the font designer would give reasonable results (ie better than no kerning). The idea is certainly interesting. The point about the Acorn DTP font format (which may have given rise to the above confusion) is that the hints combined with the support for anti-aliased fonts within the operating system allow the production of quite reasonable screen fonts at small point sizes. Of course, the other advantage is that the software is available now :-) (In Europe) John Bowler, Acorn Computers Ltd [The opinions are my own - not necessarily Acorn's]
tiedeman@acf3.NYU.EDU (Eric S. Tiedemann) (07/16/89)
In article <1989Jul12.111024.10324@sics.se> dan@sics.se writes: >I've heard that fuzzy fonts are standard for the NeXT. Where did you here this? As far as I know this isn't true..which is a shame, since the NeXT screen is an ideal delivery vehicle for fuzzy fonts. Eric est@cs.nyu.edu
epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) (07/17/89)
Take a close look at the loginwindow image.