Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 23:37:46 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, James Howard <howardjp@well.com>, Joseph Mallett <jmallett@newgold.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: banner(6) Message-ID: <15069.6682.268488.580768@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20010417205532.P74385@lpt.ens.fr> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010416211727.045766e0@localhost> <Pine.GSO.4.21.0104161028290.23302-100000@well.com> <20010416191256.R27477@lpt.ens.fr> <20010416193151.U27477@lpt.ens.fr> <20010417095140.A74385@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010417124229.0458bec0@localhost> <20010417205532.P74385@lpt.ens.fr>
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Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> types: > If you look at any book by a respectable publisher before 1980, you'll > see that letters in small type are broader (relative to their height), > more rounded, somewhat more broadly spaced (again, relative to their > height), and contain other slight differences, though they may belong > to the same typeface (Times/Baskerville/whatever). This has nothing > to do with pixellation: the resolution of ink on paper is quite > sufficient to render fonts clearly at very small sizes. It's just > that to read a regular 10pt font shrunk to 6pt comfortably, many > people would need a magnifying glass simply because it's too "squashed > up" otherwise. I've always seen this characterized as the "color" of the font, because your squashed up font looks darker at a distance than a properly designed font. You'll note that all of your changes tend to add more whitespace to the each letter. A common "other slight difference" is a narrowing of the broad part of the stroke relative to the rest of the character, which has the same effect. One of the sources of the problems you are seeing with modern books is the DTP revolution. Instead of getting books rendered with metal, or on quality phototypesetters, you're seeing things that are rendered on laser printers. Things as sublte as narrowing the stroke are pretty much wasted in small point sizes at such crude resolutions. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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