Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!ken
From: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Universal font standard
Message-ID: <8405@sol.ARPA>
Date: 7 Apr 88 16:33:42 GMT
References: <3178@gryphon.CTS.COM> <10015@sunybcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 18
Keywords: common

|Well, the problem is that as resolution increases (or the size of the fonts
|get bigger) you're going to have missing information. That's always been a
|problem with bitmap fonts. I'm for pushing something more along the lines
|of what PostScript does. By defining the font as a collection of lines and
|curves, magnification only makes the fonts bigger. All the continuity is
|still there even if you blow up the character to a full page. If a standard
|would be made, it would have to do something like this in order to satisfy
|everyone and to allow for changes in technology.

Before we run off and reinvent the wheel, I suggest we look at what
electronic typesetting has been doing for a while. A book I recently
read explained some half a dozen formats, including bitmap, run-length,
outline, grey-scale. The representations are well known, it's just that
every manufacturer has their format. I don't know what efforts are
being made to standardize font representation for high-res equipment,
but I think it would be worthwhile to track their efforts, since the
problems with screen fonts are a subset of theirs.

	Ken