🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov18.045514.4005@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu> carlip@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (Walter C3arlip) writes:

   I have a technical question to ask about Postscript Font Scaling and its
   relation to font design.  As I understand it, a given style of type will
   have a different design depending upon the point size it is to be printed
   at, e.g., Times Roman at 12pt will have lines that are wider and darker
   relative to the hight of the letter than Times Roman at 20pt.

   Now, when one uses postscript fonts, one has outline descriptions of the
   font.  Is it possible to determine what point size the font was designed
   for?  When one prints the font at a larger size, is the font scaled 
   linearly or is postscript smart enough to 'redesign' the font for the
   larger size? 

   Let me put this an another context.  Suppose one wants to produce 
   a journal using a 300dpi printer.  If one uses a 24pt design, and
   then uses photo reduction to 12pt, can one effectively get 600dpi
   resolution (I'd expect this to work if the fonts are scaled linearly),
   or will the reduced copy look like type designed for 24pt and
   then shrunk (so that the type does not match its design size)?

   I'm looking for the straight dope here, as I have already gotten 2 opposite
   answers to this from people I'd expect to know. 

Type 1 fonts are scaled linearly. So printing at 20pt and scaling 50%
essentially gives you the same shapes you would get if you had printed the
font at 10pt (modulo rasterization effects).

Most Type 1 fonts appear to have a design size of 10pt, 
although it is usually not specified.

Some Type 1 font families come with different fonts for different design
sizes.  For example the Computer Modern fonts in Type 1 form include cmr5,
cmr6, cmr7, cmr8, cmr9, cmr10, cmr12, and cmr17, where the numeric suffix
indicates the design point size.

So you certainly can have different designs for different point sizes, 
although you pay a price in terms of font downloading.

MultipleMaster fonts provide for continuous variation of some parameters,
although this is usually used for weight variation and condensed/expand
rather than design size.

Berthold K.P. Horn
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA