Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!vavasis
From: vavasis@afi.cs.cornell.edu (Stephen Vavasis)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: cm fonts and postscript typesetting
Message-ID: <51149@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jan 91 18:41:05 GMT
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Reply-To: vavasis@cs.cornell.edu (Stephen Vavasis)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
Lines: 29


Recently I posted a message on this newsgroup asking if anyone has
"pk" files for cm fonts at 1270 d.p.i.  I received several responses
that these files are huge (someone told me 27M per font) and therefore
could not be shipped across the net.

In fact, my reason for asking for these pk files arose from my
misunderstanding of how "dvi" files are printed on phototypesetters.
I had assumed that the CM font bitmaps are downloaded to the
phototypesetter within the postscript code, the same way that
dvips/dvi2ps downloads the fonts for laserwriters.  Actually, the usual
way is to find a Linotronic 300 typesetter with the CM fonts already
loaded.  I found out that the American Math Society has such a
typesetter, and that they can produce copy for a reasonable fee.
This means that I don't need the pk files at 1270 d.p.i.

Nonetheless, this raises some interesting questions in my mind;
suppose I had a vanilla postscript typesetter, and I wanted to
typeset a dvi file without downloading huge bitmap fonts.  Two
possible approaches would be:
  (a) Use only native postscript fonts.  All the TeX math symbols
would somehow have to be recoded into Adobe Symbol.  Has 
anyone done this?
  (b) Download the CM fonts in outline rather than bitmap form.
In this case, the size of the fonts files wouldn't change with
resolution.  Has anyone tried this?

Thanks,
Steve Vavasis