Xref: utzoo comp.fonts:2408 comp.text.tex:7060 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!crdgw1!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!chalmers.se!cs.chalmers.se!jeffrey From: jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se (Alan Jeffrey) Newsgroups: comp.fonts,comp.text.tex Subject: Re: Malvern (meta-)font and MFjob program now available Keywords: Malvern, MFjob, METAFONT, TeX, font, archive Message-ID: <4435@undis.cs.chalmers.se> Date: 28 Apr 91 09:38:24 GMT References: Sender: news@cs.chalmers.se Organization: Dept. of CS, Chalmers, Sweden Lines: 47 Mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes: >Damian.Cugley@prg.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) writes: >> Malvern grew out of my frustration with trying to get >> what I consider a pleasing sanserif font out of the CM program files. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > and very different from (say) CMSS or Helvetica (I consider this its > main attraction:-). It is intended to be used by itself as the main > ^^^^^^^^^^^ >> font of a document, rather than being another alphabet for mathematics! > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [...] >Why not go the whole hog and print your entire book in underlined bold zapf >chancery? Because underlined bold Zapf Chancery doesn't have a history and tradition of use as a book font, whereas sans serif fonts do. You may not be a particular fan of the Bauhaus/asymmetric/geometric school of book design, but it would be a brave individual who would deny the tremendous impact it had on the look and feel of 20th century typesetting. Sans serif fonts are eminently suitable for setting book matter that won't be read for hours at a time, such as magazines, some technical reference books, advertising matter and children's books. It's also suitable for display work and headings. At the moment, the only sans serif fonts available to all TeX installations are cmss (which is a very nice display font, but unfortunately digitizes badly, and so is unsuitable for use as a 300dpi book font) and cmssq (which I happen to like quite a bit, but it's very... er... idiosyncratic). To get more than this, you need to run with PS fonts, and even then, many of them are designed for >1000dpi and digitize appallingly. (I've even seen a professional (no names, no pack drill) implementation of Gill Sans with a ragged baseline, barf city.) One of TeX's biggest problems is it's lack of alternatives to CMR, and so salutes should be made to people like Damian (and Yannis and Micheal and all the others) who are trying to make life bearable for those of us who would like a few more options than `Any colour you like as long as it's CMR.' Cheers, Alan. Alan Jeffrey Tel: +46 31 72 10 98 jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se Department of Computer Sciences, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden