richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (01/24/89)
In article <1989Jan23.144822.29002@cs.rochester.edu> ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) writes: >> Helvetica Italics aren't half bad at all... > >Small nit: it's Helvetica Oblique. Italics are for serif fonts. Is this really true ? I thought that Italics were a very old idea, and were basically a curvy character different from the ``original'' face, while oblique was less than 100 year old, and was just slanted versions of the ``original'' face. I never saw any reference to serif vs. sans-serif fonts. Another thing to perhaps back this up is that Times-Roman oblique != Times-Italics. ?? -- Corona and foolish drinks. richard@gryphon.COM {...}!gryphon!richard gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (01/24/89)
|>Small nit: it's Helvetica Oblique. Italics are for serif fonts. Add "generally" here ^. Happy? | |Is this really true ? I thought that Italics were a very old idea, Yes, nearly as old as Roman. |and were basically a curvy character different from the ``original'' |face, while oblique was less than 100 year old, and was just slanted |versions of the ``original'' face. I never saw any reference to |serif vs. sans-serif fonts. Another thing to perhaps back this |up is that Times-Roman oblique != Times-Italics. Yes, I agree. That's the very point I was making badly. Italic is not just slanting, i.e. you don't get Times-Italic by putting Times-Roman through a skewing matrix. Italics are a different design within the family. In careless nomenclature, all sloping fonts, italic or not, get called italic. Looking through my list of AFM filenames I see LucidaSans-Italic and StonsSans-Italic. So, with some exceptions, sans serif fonts have just the oblique variation, while serif fonts can have italic and slanted variations, e.g. Computer Modern Slanted and Computer Modern Italic. (Besides the Bold/Light axis of course, in case you were going to point that out.) Being too terse in postings has drawbacks too.