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From: kaufman@neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.wanted,comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Why does Mac output not look as good as LaTex?
Message-ID: <1991May22.014952.11749@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 22 May 91 01:49:52 GMT
References: <20081@cs.utexas.edu>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Ca , USA
Lines: 24

In article <20081@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>-----
>I notice that my papers, produced with Word 4.0 and printed on a
>good laserwriter, do not look as good as papers produced with LaTex
>on Unix boxes.  Looking closer, what I discovered is that the
>individual characters are fine, but that their spacing (under
>Microsoft Word 4.0) leaves much to be desired.  Adjacent characters
>often touch, reducing the legibility of expressions, especially 
>when subscripts or superscripts are involved.  In this regard,
>LaTex does a much better job.  (I mostly use the fonts Times and
>Symbol; the individual characters look fine.)  

>Does anyone have a good solution to this?  Are there better fonts
>that cure the problem?

The problem lies in the LaserWriter driver, which does not "really" know
how wide characters are (the font metrics for the LW fonts are not really
the same as the bitmap metrics).  Blame also the Apple FONT/NFNT system
which does not keep enough metric information (such as side-bearings), even
for the cases where the character widths are basically correct.

I think that TrueType sfnts will straighten this all out, eventually.

Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)