Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!pitt!cisunx!jbw
From: jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai  Wang)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: New dvi2ps with on-line help and continuous font sizes
Message-ID: <17943@cisunx.UUCP>
Date: 5 May 89 17:36:58 GMT
References: <17892@cisunx.UUCP> <1989May3.204353.29194@cs.rochester.edu> <17924@cisunx.UUCP> <1989May4.154256.22958@cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: jbw@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Jingbai  Wang)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Sys
Lines: 106

...

>At this site virtex, tex, latex, and slitex are all links to one file.
>All that is needed to run slitex is slitex.fmt (a.k.a. splain.fmt).

That's a kind of strange setup, but by-and-by.

>space taken is negligible especially as it is spread over all the
>workstations served by one file server. Here is the disk usage
>for slitex fonts:
>
>943	pk
>
>Actually this is an overestimate because this includes lasy, line and
>circle fonts. A mere 1 Mb.

Your SliTeX might not be the most up to the date. My resent experience
seem to indicate taht i*.tfm files are also used in SliTeX. splain.fmt and
slitex binary seem to be the biggest files among TeX/LaTeX package.

Disk space is indeed cheap nowadays. It is why TeX can afford PK files at
numerous mag steps. Older fashioned packages would magnify each individual
pixels (which can not reduce font size and may make large fonts ugly),
instead of Metafont's way to scale (linearly) the character contour and
refill it with new bitmap. But, no one can afford the the disk space
for fonts from 1pt size to 1000pt size, say 1pt as the step. Try your
dvi2ps (not my version) with

\font\Rfive=cmr10 at 5pt
\font\Rseven=cmr10 at 7pt
\font\Rten=cmr10
\font\Rtwelve=cmr10 at 12pt
...
\font\Rxxvi=cmr10 at 24pt
\font\Rxxx=cmr10 at 30pt

\Rfive{
cmfonts at 5pt
}
\Rseven{
 cmfonts at 7pt
}
\Rten{
 cmfonts at 10pt
}
\Rtwelve{
 cmfonts at 12pt
}
...
\Rxxvi{
 cmfonts at 24pt
}
\Rxxx{
 cmfonts at 30pt
}
\end

And, then try mine. Of course, this is not a clever way of using fonts,
for instance, for 5pt you might use "cmr5 at magstep0" instead of
cmr10 at 5pt (that's what people said about nonlinearity). The example
is just to show that no one can have ALL the PK files for all the fonts.

>Slides are usually done separately anyway because of the telegraphic
>style of communication. It is generally a mistake to put more than 10
>to 12 lines of text on a slide and some people would say even that is
>too much. 

That's too bad, too time consuming and frustrating.

>So many times I have seen illegible tables of results at
>presentations. Who can read those anyway? ...

Indeed, but users would not read a book on how to make  efficient
slides.

>Besides using standard slitex saves maintainers time because we don't ...

Our sites have hesitated on supporting SliTeX, we can't affort a whole
crew of system analysts supporting everything from TeX tape. But a device
driver is must.

>ditroff users use 24-36 pt ditroff fonts for slides and they are happy
>too.

That's right, no one needs to be taught to make slides as long as he can
get visible fonts when projected (the result of presentation is a separate
topic).

SliTeX is a recognized piece of work. I did not try to promote this verison
of dvi2ps by doing way with it. This is only a dvi->ps, SliTeX can be used
for many many other devices. In the mean time, it is worth pointing out
many features in SliTeX can be defined in TeX and LaTeX as well.
My point, really, is that PostScript printers should be made better use
of by taking advantage of its powerful page description features. 


Scaling bitmap fonts is only a remedy, and it works most of times and
produces much much better results than the best-substituted fonts (
as most of dvi derivers do -- try the TeX code shown above). However,
if I could find time, I would get rid of bitmap fonts completely for
PostScript, and merge MetaFont program and *.base into the device driver
to make analytical TeX fonts on top of Adobe fonts.



JB Wang