kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl) (06/18/91)
I've been using both ATM and TrueType now, with system 7.
TrueType has the advantage that it can work without bitmaps, and
as a consequence one can use an app's default way to select typestyles
(bold, italic...) in stead of having to select another font (like Times Bold,
Time italic).
I took my favorite ATM font(Agaramond) to my friend, who has ATF
Type converter, and let him convert it to truetype. I took the
result home and compared the results.
For one, I noticed TrueType was *much* slower than ATM, esp. during
printing on my Deskwriter.
The result on paper was almost equal for ATM and TT, when I selected
fontsizes larger than 11 points. The TrueType result degraded for
sizes smaller or equal to 10 point:
* vertical bars on 'l', 'k', ... are much to thin.
* the 'm' looks like there was dirt on the printhead when it was printed
* the dash '-' doesn't show on screen.
* the ovals or circles of letters like 'd' or 'o' seems more square.
My questions: is the conversion to blame, or does truetype have worse
abilities when it comes to printing smaller sizes. Is there any way
to improve the result ?
Karl
********************************************************************
* Does anybody in netland realize that there are also non-US
* users ? :-)
********************************************************************elliott@veronica.cs.wisc.edu (James Elliott) (06/20/91)
In <3997@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be> kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl) writes: >I've been using both ATM and TrueType now, with system 7. >TrueType has the advantage that it can work without bitmaps, and >as a consequence one can use an app's default way to select typestyles >(bold, italic...) in stead of having to select another font (like Times Bold, >Time italic). Of course, if you happen to have Font Harmony (part of the Suitcase utilities) you can do this with ATM fonts too, by merging styled families. One problem with this approach (and I doubt that TrueType lets you get around it) is that the Mac's notion of style families is not rich enough to accomodate the full variations that exist in some families. Sure you can have italic, bold, outline, etc. versions of fonts, but some families come in six or more weights; "plain" and "bold" only allow for two of them. I think the best solution is to leave the fonts separate, and use Adobe Type Reunion to group them into hierarchical menus. -- Jim Elliott "Like a bridge he'll come between us, not a wall" elliott@veronica.cs.wisc.edu
glenn@gla-aux.uucp (Glenn Austin) (06/20/91)
In article <3997@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be>, kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl) writes: > For one, I noticed TrueType was *much* slower than ATM, esp. during > printing on my Deskwriter. I've found exactly the opposite, when I used Apple's Helvetica, Times, Symbol and Courier TT fonts against their Postscript equivalents for ATM. > The result on paper was almost equal for ATM and TT, when I selected > fontsizes larger than 11 points. The TrueType result degraded for > sizes smaller or equal to 10 point: This is because the hinting for Postscript doesn't translate easily to TT. A real TT font looks as good or better at smaller sizes than the ATM-generated fonts, IMHO. =============================================================================== | Glenn L. Austin | "Turn too soon, run out of room. | | Macintosh Wizard and | Turn too late, much better fate." | | Auto Racing Driver | -- Jim Russell Racing School Instructors | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Don't take me too seriously -- I never do! :-) | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Usenet: glenn@gla-aux.uucp or glenn%gla-aux.uucp@skinner.cs.uoregon.edu | ===============================================================================