midkiff@portia.Stanford.EDU (Neil Midkiff) (09/27/90)
In article <4682@crystal9.UUCP> derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) writes: >QUESTION 2 - What is the difference between Italic > and Oblique, technically speaking? It's a question of the design of the characters. Oblique type is just a mechanically slanted version of the upright font. The letters have the same basic form, but are skewed to fit in a parallelogram instead of a rectangle. This is most often done with sans serif faces like Helvetica and Avant Garde, although it can be done with serif fonts like Courier. Italic type, properly speaking, is a different-but-harmonious design. Most often the letters have a "pen-stroked" or calligraphic influence to their shape; true italic types, therefore, are usually associated with serif fonts that have the thick-and-thin strokes based originally on hand lettering. Some letters usually are shaped differently in normal and italic fonts: *** *** * * * * * * * * **** * * * * * * * * * * * *** * *** * (lower-case "a" ... but this bitmapping is difficult and slow. Just look at some italic type and note the following.) The bottom-right stroke on d,h,i,k,l,m,n usually ends with a little hook in italic type; most non-italic ("Roman" sometimes is used) fonts have this hook only on the lower-case t. Italic k often follows the form of handwritten k (kind of like an R in small capitals with a tall initial stroke like an h). Italic f usually descends below the baseline of the characters. And so forth. Designing a true italic font with these traditional calligraphic concepts that also looks like it belongs with the Roman fonts of the same family is a real artistic challenge. So I'm glad to see that Adobe and other font sources are making the distinction between Italic and Oblique. -Neil