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From: greid@adobe.com (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Need references for font substitution techniques
Keywords: font substitution, ISO 9541
Message-ID: <912@adobe.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jun 89 16:12:44 GMT
References: <677@ztivax.UUCP> <168@ssp17.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Sender: news@adobe.COM
Reply-To: greid@adobe.COM (Glenn Reid)
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View
Lines: 44

Don't forget about character widths.  That is probably the most
important attribute of a font, from a substitution point of view,
other than perhaps the character set, as has been pointed out.

The argument that follows really only makes sense if you do not
have the option to reformat the document completely.  For example,
it applies to font substitution after the document has been created,
and may be a PostScript file or other "final format".  If you can
reformat the document, the best font substitution technique is a
big chart of typefaces for the user to look at.  A carefully
harmonized page with complementary typefaces will usually be
ruined visually if the substitution is not done carefully.  Very
often the entire design of a page might change in light of different
typefaces.   If the bold isn't bold enough, you might increase the
point size for emphasis, in addition.  Or whatever.

If you set justified text (or, to some extent, centered), it
will look absolutely horrible if the widths are wrong.  Furthermore,
if you position the Roman text and the Bold text in a given line
according to their X position (as you often would, for example,
on a PostScript printer), then you will have big gaps or overlapping
text if you substitute with the wrong widths.

Also, if there happen to be other elements on the page, rules,
graphics, or whatever, the relationship of the type to these
graphic elements will be different, and perhaps unacceptable.

The "style" of the typeface is almost incidental.

To get a feel for this, take a document with some mixed faces of,
say, Times Roman.  Get a good sample of bold and italic, and for
a worst-case scenario, set it full-justified.  Now substitute ANY
font for Times-Roman, like New Century Schoolbook, Palatino, or
whatever, and print it.  And throw it away.

I personally think that font substitution makes no sense from a
typographic standpoint.  You can substitute one vendor's version
Helvetica for another implementation, but if you substitute
Univers, it will likely only be acceptable in a minimum of
situations.

Glenn Reid
Adobe Systems
PostScript Developer Tools & Strategies