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From: kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: ATF type converter ATM==> TrueType
Message-ID: <3997@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be>
Date: 18 Jun 91 14:16:01 GMT
Sender: news@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science (K.U.Leuven)
Lines: 30
Originator: kpottie@icarus

I've been using both ATM and TrueType now, with system 7.
TrueType has the advantage that it can work without bitmaps, and 
as a consequence one can use an app's default way to select typestyles
(bold, italic...) in stead of having to select another font (like Times Bold,
Time italic).
I took my favorite ATM font(Agaramond) to my friend, who has ATF
Type converter, and let him convert it to truetype. I took the
result home and compared the results.
For one, I noticed TrueType was *much* slower than ATM, esp. during
printing on my Deskwriter.
The result on paper was almost equal for ATM and TT, when I selected
fontsizes larger than 11 points. The TrueType result degraded for
sizes smaller or equal to 10 point:

    * vertical bars on 'l', 'k', ... are much to thin.
    * the 'm' looks like there was dirt on the printhead when it was printed 
    * the dash '-' doesn't show on screen.
    * the ovals or circles of letters like 'd' or 'o' seems more square.

My questions: is the conversion to blame, or does truetype have worse
abilities when it comes to printing smaller sizes. Is there any way
to improve the result ?


Karl 

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