From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Apr 17 23:30:28 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from lariat.org (lariat.org [12.23.109.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4CDA437B424 for ; Tue, 17 Apr 2001 23:30:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: from mustang.lariat.org (IDENT:ppp0.lariat.org@lariat.org [12.23.109.2]) by lariat.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA08279; Wed, 18 Apr 2001 00:29:57 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010417213813.044654f0@localhost> X-Sender: brett@localhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 21:43:29 -0600 To: Rahul Siddharthan From: Brett Glass Subject: Re: banner(6) Cc: James Howard , Joseph Mallett , chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <20010417210712.Q74385@lpt.ens.fr> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010417125858.0458c6f0@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20010416211727.045766e0@localhost> <20010416191256.R27477@lpt.ens.fr> <20010416193151.U27477@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010416211727.045766e0@localhost> <20010417095140.A74385@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010417124229.0458bec0@localhost> <20010417205532.P74385@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010417125858.0458c6f0@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org At 01:07 PM 4/17/2001, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: >Quite likely. My point was that, these days, most books printed in >(say) Times Roman don't change the proportions of letters at small >sizes. I assumed it was because Type 1 fonts or truetype fonts don't >allow for it; but maybe the reason is something else (sloppy software?) Both Type 1 and TrueType allow for it. TrueType has special mechanisms built in: it has both extra hints for small sizes (which can squeeze or stretch the characters) and the ability to include hand-tuned bitmaps for REALLY small sizes. >I was also saying that reserving the word "font" for a particular >point size makes sense if there is such adjustment in proportion. >But often, these days, there isn't. Times New Roman 6pt is exactly >the same font as Times New Roman at 14pt, only smaller. "Smaller" is different. Prior to computer typesetting (and even in the early days of computer typesetting), printers had to buy different sizes as separate fonts. Software "scalable fonts" (which should have correctly been called "scalable typefaces") changed the economics, but the meanings of the terms haven't changed. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message