Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 09:30:13 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, Jamie Bowden <ragnar@sysabend.org> Cc: James Howard <howardjp@well.com>, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, Joseph Mallett <jmallett@newgold.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: banner(6) Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20010419092019.04484770@localhost> In-Reply-To: <15070.37699.876831.515060@guru.mired.org> References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10104181512060.71134-100000@moo.sysabend.org> <Pine.GSO.4.21.0104180641460.517-100000@well.com> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10104181512060.71134-100000@moo.sysabend.org>
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At 01:26 AM 4/19/2001, Mike Meyer wrote: >So what did he call a collection of programs that are used to render a >typeface? I didn't call it anything.... I said that Adobe, and later others, mistakenly called it a "font." The correct term is, or should be, "digital typeface," "scalable typeface," or "typeface rendering software." >Quoting the comp.fonts faq (my references are in storage), question >1.12: > > A typeface is a set of lettters, numbers, and other symbolic > characters that are related by repeating design elements [...]. > > A font is a computer file or program used to represent or > create the typeface. The latter is incorrect. >Classicaly, when you bought a font you got a rendering of a typeface >at a specific size and weight from a specific foundry designed to be >set on a specific kind of machine. Yes. >When you buy a non-scalable >computer font, that's exactly what you get, except the machine they >are set on is now software. Scalable computer fonts are the same, >except they are no longer tied to a specific size. No. The term "scalable font" is a misnomer; it really isn't a font at all. It produces MANY fonts from an internal description of a typeface. Bitstream got the terminology right in its typeface packages, which I used with Ventura Publisher in the early days of desktop publishing. In those days, CPUs were slow and often didn't have built in floating point units, so one rendered one's fonts in advance rather than on the fly. I remember calling up Bitstream's renderer and asking it to render fonts for me in half a dozen sizes each. I discovered that (a) the process took all night; and (b) it took up most of my voluminous 40 MB hard drive. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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