Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!euler.claremont.edu!dhosek
From: dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: First faces in the Multiple Master format
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.043018.1@euler.claremont.edu>
Date: 9 Apr 91 11:30:18 GMT
References: <1991Apr9.001714.11592@d.cs.okstate.edu> <rxbgzr+@rpi.edu>
Sender: news@jarthur.Claremont.EDU
Organization: Harvey Mudd College
Lines: 54

In article <rxbgzr+@rpi.edu>, kibo@jec311.its.rpi.edu (James 'Kibo' Parry) writes:
> In article <1991Apr9.001714.11592@d.cs.okstate.edu> norman@d.cs.okstate.edu (Norman Graham) writes:
>>I was considering the purchase of the Univers family, but then I 
>>realized that Univers should be a perfect face for Adobe's new 
>>multiple master technology. That got me wondering: which faces will
>>we see in MM format? Anyone care to comment? I'll start the list with
>>the easy ones:

> I think Univers and Neue Helvetica would be *much* easier to MM-ize than
> Futura, based on my experience with things like Metafont.  The design of
> some Futura letters changes completely when the weights change.
> (The "J", "G", and "Q" change their basic shape, and many details
> change--compre a Futura Light "M" to a Futura Extra Bold "M".

I once had an opportunity to attend a workshop with Sumner Stone
of Adobe where he discussed their methods of type design. They
use really naive methods for getting boldface fonts: the medium
weight face is drawn by hand, scanned and splines are fitted to
it. Other weights are then created by moving the control points
for the splines. Period. Occasionally, they may do more subtle
adjustments, but that's a rarity.

In any event, unless they provide something like decent
design-sizing, it seems to me that the whole multiple master idea
is a wash. How often do you really need more than two weights of
any given typeface? When was the last time you used an expanded
or compressed font. (OK, the latter has some uses in graphic
arts, in particular, back in my newspaper days, we would fudge
headlines by expanding or compressing the typeface. I have fond
memories of the day that we accidentally requested 36pt Century
schoolbook at 17% instead of 117%. Yeesh, you'd think the
typesetters would catch something like that). But anyway, for
realistic typesetting, including graphic arts work, a great deal
of metaness is not a useful thing and makes the type design
rather difficult (few type designers are willing to give up
drawing the letters precisely by hand and there's an end to the
design process. MF never caught on because for a truly meta
design, the designer must abandon the visual process entirely and
it's not a trivial endeavor. The end result is that we see a lot
of half-baked MF code, designers decide that it's not a real tool
and it slowly dies off. The only reason it gets used at all is
because it's the only font system with a clean interface to TeX
and until  Adobe finally released Lucida CM was the most complete
math symbol set around (although it's frightening to see the
number of people Who Should Know Better mixing cm math with other
faces. yuck. But anyway, the whole point of this tirade is that
despite Adobe's having some top-notch designers on their staff
(well maybe not quite that top-notch. To be honest, I wasn't all
that impressed with Stone's work although some of the other
designers have done some nice faces. They have a nice sans-serif
based on Greek mss that's kind of nice) they still are more than
willing to make stupid design decisions with their faces.

-dh