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From: khcg0492@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kenneth Holden Chang)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Doubling Font sizes and Shrinking Photographically
Message-ID: <1990Nov13.174531.11434@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 13 Nov 90 17:45:31 GMT
References: <17104@shlump.nac.dec.com> <48104@cornell.UUCP> <19458@oolong.la.locus.com>
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Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
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In article <19458@oolong.la.locus.com> jfr@locus.com (Jon Rosen) writes:
>Type 1
>fonts in Adobe Postscript include "hints" which are essentially little
>pieces of Postscript code that are attached to each character definition
>and which modify the actual raster image depending on the size of the
>character, the style and possibly other variables like kerning, leading,
>etc.  This means that as you enlarge fonts, you will see small changes
>in the actual raster image, mostly in the thickness of the body and stem
>elements and in the ascender/descender elements.  

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is *not* what the hints do, and is indeed
one of the drawbacks of Postscript. What the "hints" do is adjust for low
resolution (300 dpi) printers. Otherwise the letters tend to look "heavy."
On a high-resolution printer like a Linotronic, however, fonts are scaled
exactly, that is a 48 point 'A' looks exactly like a 24 point 'A' except it's
larger. This is also Adobe's Expert Collections contain what are called
"Titling" characters, i.e. fonts designed for larger point sizes.

One of the advantages of TrueType when it finally appears is that
it will incorporate the "nonlinear scaling" that Mr. Rosen describes.
--
*****************************************************************************
  Kenneth Chang                         *   khcg0492@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
  Center for Complex Systems Research   *             or
  University of Illinois                *   kc@complex.ccsr.uiuc.edu
*****************************************************************************