Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!yale!cmcl2!phri!roy
From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Monospaced Helvetica.
Summary: What the world needs now is a good monospaced font
Message-ID: <3655@phri.UUCP>
Date: 19 Jan 89 03:10:54 GMT
References: <735@umb.umb.edu>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 24

In article <735@umb.umb.edu> karl@umb.umb.edu (Karl Berry.) writes:
> 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.

	What about Orator and Letter Gothic?  Just look in any IBM Selectric
typeball catalog.  Ok, maybe Orator would make a typographer puke, but for
those of us who really need a monospaced font but don't like Courier, it
would be a godsend.  Around here, people spend a lot of time printing DNA
sequences.  Ever seen what happens to:

1          11         21         31         41         51         
AACGCTACTA CCATTAGTAG AATTGATGCC ACCTTTTCAG CTCGCGCCCC AAATGAAAAT
TTGCGATGAT GGTAATCATC TTAACTACGG TGGAAAAGTC GAGCGCGGGG TTTACTTTTA

(the second line is essentially 'tr ACGT TGCA' done to the first line) when
set in proportional type?  It turns out that in most typefaces A, C, G, and
T are roughly the same width, but the results are still pretty disgusting,
and essentially useless.  Not to mention that DNA just wasn't designed to be
kerned :-).
-- 
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net
"The connector is the network"