Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ncis.llnl.gov!ncis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!bionet!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!mailrus!ncar!husc6!contact!umb!karl
From: karl@umb.umb.edu (Karl Berry.)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Monospaced Helvetica.
Message-ID: <735@umb.umb.edu>
Date: 17 Jan 89 20:09:04 GMT
Organization: UMASS-Boston, Boston, MA
Lines: 29


A monospaced Helvetica is not the right term; Helvetica
is not a monospaced typeface.

A fixed-width sans serif typeface presents a number
of technical challenges. If one inspects Courier, it
is apparent that the constraint of fixed-width has led
to elongation of serifs. This is especially
obvious in the ``l'' or ``i''. (The ``r'' also looks
pretty amusing when seen outside a context, as Chuck
Bigelow once demonstrated in a talk.)
In a sans serif typeface, clearly the serifs cannot
be emphasized, and so some other solution must be found.
I don't think a good one exists, which is why no
fixed-width sans serif typeface has come into general
use, the way Courier has.

A far better solution is to fix video displays so that
they can display variable width characters. 
Not necessarily a bitmap display, but simply having
characters of different widths on your standard CRT would
be a vast improvement. What irks me is that even on bitmap
displays, variable width type can't be used as your basic
font, at least in shelltool (SunView) and xterm (X11).
(If anyone has any clues about how to fix the latter to
allow this, I'd appreciate it.)

Karl.
karl@umb.edu     ...!harvard!umb!karl