Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!randvax!urban
From: urban@randvax.UUCP (Mike Urban)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: What Metafont is (was Re: Custom Fonts...?)
Message-ID: <2346@randvax.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jan 90 15:50:06 GMT
References: <1533@cc.helsinki.fi> <3242@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <10235@zodiac.ADS.COM>
Reply-To: urban@rand-unix.UUCP (Mike Urban)
Organization: RAND Corp., Santa Monica, Ca.
Lines: 28

In article <10235@zodiac.ADS.COM> xanthian@saturn.ADS.COM (Metafont Consultant Account) writes:
> (re doing a logo in MF)
>
>On the down side, the output is _not_ an outline description of the
>symbol, so one must create (by running the mf program with ones
>METAFONT symbol program and a parameter header as input) a rasterized
>instance of each point size, at each display device resolution, of the
>symbol.  For even a simple situation, this can involve dozens of font
>files to manage, just to support a single symbol.  

Well, in the specific case of a corporate logo, this need not be
so; simply use different letter symbols in a single font file to
represent the different sizes of the logo.  This is usually practical,
because the logo size will bear little or no relation to the
type size surrounding it, so the nominal `point size' is unimportant.
In fact, when I did such a logo for my previous employer, the Office
of Corporate Identity (I am not making this up) had specific guidelines
indicating that the corporate logo could not be mixed with text nor
used as a word, and must indeed be surrounded by (I forget how much)
white space.  The size of the logo usually depended on the document
type (memo, letter, title page) rather than surrounding text, so it
was a simple matter to use {\companylogo A} for the half-inch version
and {\companylogo B} for the three-quarters version as appropriate.

-- 

	Mike Urban
	urban@rand.ORG