🚀 go-pugleaf

rberlin@birdland.sun.com (Rich Berlin) writes:
> >   Most postscript fonts do not have multiple rederings for different sizes.
> > Unfortunate, but it does make it cheaper.

> I've seen this several times.  Are you all *sure* about this?  My
> understanding is that Adobe Type 1 fonts (e.g. the built-ins on the
> LaserWriter) are "hinted," which means for example that at small sizes
> some of the strokes will be narrower than at large sizes...

There is adjustment of stroke widths and positions to make them look right
on devices with "coarse" resolution.  But that's not what the other folks
were thinking of.  What they had in mind was actual variations in stroke
weights depending on the point size (independent of the device) to make
letters "look right" at different sizes.

Incidentally, one of the reasons for not doing this in PostScript fonts
(aside from the obvious big one of cost!) is that there's a sort of
nebulous relationship between the point size used to scale the font and
what it means in final output...consider
	0.5 dup scale
	/Times-Roman findfont 16 scalefont setfont
If there were multiple designs depending on size, should this use the 16-pt
artwork (the requested size for scalefont) or the 8-pt artwork (the actual
output size)?  It's even worse if you're going to do any enlargement or
reduction after output, because it's the final size, as seen by the human
eye, that determines which artwork to use.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   Cellular phones: more deadly than marijuana.