What are fractional widths?

Article View: comp.sys.mac

Article #38925

#38925

From: charles s. geiger, esq.
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 1989 16:33

19 lines
1344 bytes

I haven't been reading this newsgroup for a while.  The Word manual
barely mentions fractional widths, other than to say that "this
[setting] activates the LaserWriter's fractional pixel width
feature to private better output for some fonts."  What does that
mean?

Interestingly (well, maybe not so interestingly) I was going to
post an article asking why words in italics are spaced so poorly on
the LaserWriter; when experimenting with fractional widths, I
discovered that this problem went away.  These fractional widths
seem to change just the space between words rather than spaces
between letters.  They are indispensable when using italics, but
otherwise I don't like the crowding of the words, especially on Old
Style fonts like Goudy.  Is there some other way around the italics
problem?

thanks in advance, and
cheers, from
charles s. geiger, esq.

Technical Details

Message-ID: <11063@ut-emx.UUCP>

Path:

arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!yunexus!torsqnt!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!nedludd

Show Full Headers

Complete Article Headers

Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!yunexus!torsqnt!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!nedludd
From: nedludd@ut-emx.UUCP (charles s. geiger, esq.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: What are fractional widths?
Keywords: I imagine this has been discussed before, but. . .
Message-ID: <11063@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 8 Mar 89 16:33:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: ut-emx.11063
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 19