Xref: utzoo comp.fonts:365 comp.text:2675 comp.lang.postscript:1081
Path: utzoo!dciem!trigraph!john
From: john@trigraph.UUCP (John Chew)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts,comp.text,comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: METAFONT & PostScript
Message-ID: <422@trigraph.UUCP>
Date: 27 Oct 88 19:03:34 GMT
Article-I.D.: trigraph.422
References: <902@cps3xx.UUCP> <10417@s.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: poslfit@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca
Followup-To: comp.fonts,comp.lang.postscript
Organization: Trigraph Inc., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 29

In article <10417@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
>I'm no great fan of either, but I have to point out that METAFONT does a lot
>more to generate fonts of a certain size than Postscript does. You can always
>send font outlines to Postscript for scaling, but the results aren't going to
>look as good as if you let METAFONT do it.
...
>If you generate stuff on the fly, you either do it really slow and good with
>METAFONT, or fast but not quite so good with Postscript.

The criticism of PostScript is misleading.  Certainly if you create
a pure bitmap or pure outline PostScript font, it will be scaled as
a bitmap or an outline: poorly.

If however you design a proper algorithmic PostScript font (one 
which makes rasterization decisions based on the current font size),
then the result will be every bit as good as, and quite possibly
identical to that of METAFONT.

The automatic translation of METAFONT source to PostScript source
would not be an impossible task.  My guess is it would be about
as difficult as and remarkably similar to writing a Pascal to
Forth translator.

John Chew
-- 
john j. chew, iii   		  
trigraph, inc., toronto, canada   {uunet!utai!utcsri,utgpu,utzoo}!trigraph!john
dept. of math., u. of toronto     poslfit@{utorgpu.bitnet,gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca}
Opinions?  All mine.  My company never yawns openly.