inm501@csc.anu.edu.au (06/20/91)
I am looking for a serif font suitable for long document. I have been using Times but I found it too "tall". Bookman is more readable but I found both of them too dark. Is there any PD laserwriter serif font which is not as dark as Times and Bookman? Thanks in advance. Ida
1k1mgm@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Christopher Gunn) (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun20.175630.1@csc.anu.edu.au>, inm501@csc.anu.edu.au writes: > > I am looking for a serif font suitable for long document. I have been > using Times but I found it too "tall". Bookman is more readable but I found > both of them too dark. Is there any PD laserwriter serif font which is not > as dark as Times and Bookman? Thanks in advance. > > Ida I did a bunch of experiments when the LaserWriter II's first came out and found that Palatino looks best in big runs of copy. Most of the other LW fonts are just trying to do more in the 10-12 pt. range than a 300 dpi printer can cope with. Course, this is a matter of taste. I just got a QMS printer that speaks Garramond, and it looks like it might be a contender. It appears (subjectively) 'small on the body' in typographers terms (fills a smaller vertical chunk of an N pt. slot than a 'big on the body' type) and might let some visual air into large copy blocks. A typographical niceity nobody pays much attention to is a property called 'measure,' which is the most-appropriate length of a line relative to point size. Old-time newspaper printers considered the best 'measure' of a typeface to be 1.5 times the total length of the lower-case alphabet ('abcd...xyz') or twice the point size in picas (1/6 inch). This implies 4-inch columns for 12-pt. type. You need to expand this somewhat to account for laser printer properties, but it still suggests that big masses of copy might look better in two columns on an 8.5x11 page, especially if you've gone down to 11 or 10 point sizes. Catch is that word processors aren't as smart as old Linotype operators, and everything I've every tried to do in two columns has required a lot of manual word-division and other fine-tuning. For 12 pt., best bet is to give yourself as much margin as possible to shrink lines to maybe 5.5 inches. (I use 6" for ordinary letters, etc.) Christopher Gunn Molecular Graphics and Modeling Lab SPAN--KUPHSX::GUNN Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Malott Hall 913-864-4428 or -4495 University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045
dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) (06/20/91)
> I am looking for a serif font suitable for long document. I have been >using Times but I found it too "tall". Bookman is more readable but I found >both of them too dark. I assume you tried adjusting the printer? -- Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!uiuc.edu!s-dorner
vladimir@Eng.Sun.COM (Vladimir G. Ivanovic) (06/22/91)
In article <1991Jun20.155552.1394@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) writes: > I am looking for a serif font suitable for long document. I have been >using Times but I found it too "tall". Bookman is more readable but I found >both of them too dark. I assume you tried adjusting the printer? I think he means that there is more black area in the typeface, not that the printer is adjusted too dark. -- ============================================================================== Vladimir G. Ivanovic Sun Microsystems, Inc (415) 336-2315 MTV12-33 vladimir@Eng.Sun.COM 2550 Garcia Ave. {decwrl,hplabs,ucbvax}!sun!Eng!vladimir Mountain View, CA 94043-1100 Disclaimer: I speak for myself. ==============================================================================