Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Scaling Outline Fonts
Message-ID: <7660@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 12 Apr 88 12:36:21 GMT
References: <5352@pyr.gatech.EDU> <871@hjuxa.UUCP> <49095@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 24

In article <49095@sun.uucp> tut%cairo@Sun.COM (Bill "Bill" Tuthill) writes:
>During this time, readers have gotten used to
>having both small and large point sizes produced from medium-size masters.

It's not a matter of what one is "used to", it's a matter of legibility.
The human visual system is rather non-linear in most of its processing.

For that matter, by now we're all used to running text set in sans-serif
fonts such as Helvetica, but that doesn't make it as easy to read as a
good serif font, something that good typographers acknowledge but that
the "artistic" typographers don't seem to care about.

>While you're at it, perhaps
>you'd like to consider trading your late model car for a Model T.

If this is mean to be an analogy, then the "Model T" should correspond
to isometric fonts which exist simply because they were easier to
implement, not because they were what the job called for.  This is a
common software quality failing, by the way, not limited to printer
software.  If you're willing to adopt the same attitude toward type
quality that troff takes toward typesetting quality (as opposed to TEX
for example), then isometric fonts are adequate, but if you're after
the best quality attainable, your software should be able to accommodate
non-isometric font families.