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From: wayner@kama.cs.cornell.edu (Peter Wayner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Doubling Font sizes and Shrinking Photographically
Message-ID: <48088@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 90 17:24:25 GMT
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept. Ithaca NY
Lines: 25

Here's an idea that someone has probably thought of already. When you want to 
use offset printing, the copy is photographically reproduced on the plate. 
This can involve some amount of enlarging and reduction. To generate 600 
dots per inch, you can simply take a 300 dots per inch laser copy output
and shrink it the right amount. (Roughly speaking). 

One problem with this is that the fonts are tuned to the action of the eye so
24 point letter is just not a 12 point letter expanded by a factor of two. 
The widths and the stroke lengths are tweaked by the font designer to
provided two different collections of letters that look harmonious 
in the different sizes. The differences are quite large.

My question is, would it be possible to print out a document that has been
electronically enlarged. That is, twelve point font descriptions are printed
twice as big, so when they are photographically reduced the resolution
is (roughly) doubled?

Is there anyone who has tried this? Is there any reason not to do it?

-Peter Wayner
(wayner@cs.cornell.edu)

Peter Wayner   Department of Computer Science Cornell Univ. Ithaca, NY 14850
EMail:wayner@cs.cornell.edu    Office: 607-255-9202 or 255-1008
Home: 116 Oak Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850  Phone: 607-277-6678