karl@umb.umb.edu (Karl Berry.) (01/18/89)
A monospaced Helvetica is not the right term; Helvetica is not a monospaced typeface. A fixed-width sans serif typeface presents a number of technical challenges. If one inspects Courier, it is apparent that the constraint of fixed-width has led to elongation of serifs. This is especially obvious in the ``l'' or ``i''. (The ``r'' also looks pretty amusing when seen outside a context, as Chuck Bigelow once demonstrated in a talk.) In a sans serif typeface, clearly the serifs cannot be emphasized, and so some other solution must be found. I don't think a good one exists, which is why no fixed-width sans serif typeface has come into general use, the way Courier has. A far better solution is to fix video displays so that they can display variable width characters. Not necessarily a bitmap display, but simply having characters of different widths on your standard CRT would be a vast improvement. What irks me is that even on bitmap displays, variable width type can't be used as your basic font, at least in shelltool (SunView) and xterm (X11). (If anyone has any clues about how to fix the latter to allow this, I'd appreciate it.) Karl. karl@umb.edu ...!harvard!umb!karl
roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (01/19/89)
In article <735@umb.umb.edu> karl@umb.umb.edu (Karl Berry.) writes: > I don't think a good one exists, which is why no fixed-width sans serif > typeface has come into general use, the way Courier has. What about Orator and Letter Gothic? Just look in any IBM Selectric typeball catalog. Ok, maybe Orator would make a typographer puke, but for those of us who really need a monospaced font but don't like Courier, it would be a godsend. Around here, people spend a lot of time printing DNA sequences. Ever seen what happens to: 1 11 21 31 41 51 AACGCTACTA CCATTAGTAG AATTGATGCC ACCTTTTCAG CTCGCGCCCC AAATGAAAAT TTGCGATGAT GGTAATCATC TTAACTACGG TGGAAAAGTC GAGCGCGGGG TTTACTTTTA (the second line is essentially 'tr ACGT TGCA' done to the first line) when set in proportional type? It turns out that in most typefaces A, C, G, and T are roughly the same width, but the results are still pretty disgusting, and essentially useless. Not to mention that DNA just wasn't designed to be kerned :-). -- Roy Smith, System Administrator Public Health Research Institute {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net "The connector is the network"
pls@sorsac.UUCP (P. L. Sullivan) (01/20/89)
HP's Line Printer font is very similar to Helvetica, and is fixed width.