Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!apple!apple.com!rmh
From: rmh@apple.com (Rick Holzgrafe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: How does Adobe do it??
Message-ID: <14007@goofy.Apple.COM>
Date: 11 Jun 91 20:49:49 GMT
References: <1991Jun8.122230.991@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 28

In article <1991Jun8.122230.991@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> 
raymond@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (R P Wilson ) writes:
> I was playing with roman, italic, bold and bold-italic versions of fonts 
using
> True Type and noticed that although I had had the symbol true type font
> it produced smooth fonts for italics and bold etc.  How doe sit do this
> when TT also has separate fonts for the times family??

TrueType can produce boldface and italics from a plain TT font by 
thickening or slanting the outlines. That's what it's doing with the 
Symbol font. But this kind of automatically-generated variation generally 
doesn't look as nice as a specially-designed boldface or italic. So, many 
fonts are actually font "families", collections of (typically) four fonts 
which are the plain (aka "Roman"), bold, italic, and bold-italic versions 
of the basic design.

BTW, TrueType is Apple's own outline font technology; Adobe has nothing to 
do with it. But Adobe's own PostScript fonts work the same way: the normal 
font can be munged into a bold or italic version at need, but the best 
results come from font families which include distinct, well-designed 
variations as separate fonts.

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Rick Holzgrafe              |    {sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual}!apple!rmh
Software Engineer           | AppleLink HOLZGRAFE1          rmh@apple.com
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