Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!linus!mbunix!ted
From: ted@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Edward J. Ede)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Anything but Courier!!
Message-ID: <26401@linus.UUCP>
Date: 8 Mar 88 18:22:33 GMT
References: <20453@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: ted@mbunix (Ede)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Mass.
Lines: 44

In article <20453@bu-cs.BU.EDU> berlin@buita.bu.edu (David Fickes Einstein Project) writes:
>Currently, I am using Transcript
>to print the spreadsheets landscape using Courier which is a non-proportional
>font.  Any of the proportional fonts foul up the columns.  I've been
>asked to print these sheets with something besides that "ugly" Courier
>font and would like to use a pseudo-Helvetica (non-proportional) if 
>I can find one...  

I spent about a week trying to hack a "good-looking" monospaced
Helvetica.  You can copy Helvetica's font dictionary and add a Metrics
dictionary to it.  It looks really bad.  If you space the font to
allow for characters as wide as 'W' and 'M' it looks even worse.

I ended up filtering the text.  I used a pretty simple algorithm that
produces ok results when printing Vugraphs designed on a VT100.

algorithm:
1) identify a "chunk"* of text
2) figure out how wide the text would've been if you were using a
   mono-spaced font
3) Use an ashow to adjust the width of the "chunk" to the width found
   in step 2
4) repeat until all "chunks" are printed on the page

*I defined a chunk to be the largest set of characters that did not
contain: 1) two or more spaces 2) any graphics characters or 3) any
video attribute changes.

Have you considers purchasing a different monospaced font from Adobe?
Packages 27-Letter Gothic, 28-Prestige Elite, and 29-Orator are all
monospaced.  27 & 28 are $185 apiece, 29 is $145.  I'd recommend
Letter Gothic, as Prestige Elite still looks similar to Courier and
Orator is all capital letters (in two heights).

As an aside, I think that in most fonts the cells for the digits are
the same size.  I know they are in Helvetica.

Good luck,
ted

Ted Ede -- ted@mitre-bedford.arpa -- The MITRE Corporation -- Burlington Road  
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