On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Behdad Esfahbod <behdad@behdad.org> wrote: > On 08/13/10 14:08, Thomas Phinney wrote: > > > > - that you do not *encourage* agents to synthesize font-stretch ("allow" > > is okay I guess, though you should understand the results will always be > > crap) > > Come on, it's not more crap than synthesized *bold*! > > behdad > Well, I didn't say I was in favor of synthesized bold, either, did I? :) And that horse already left the barn in the 1980s. This, on the other hand, is a newer proposal. As a side note, whether it's better or worse would depend on the degree of stretch, whether one is condensing vs expanding (condensing is usually more problematic) and a number of other variables. But typically, IMO, yes it is worse. Oh, and speaking of Helvetica Narrow, it actually has about the same "stretch" as Helvetica Condensed. It's just that the Narrow was a squished version and the Condensed was a designed version. Helvetica Narrow was created as a synthetic condensed back in 1985, when printer ROM was a precious commodity. When Adobe converted the Adobe Type Library to OpenType, the one and only typeface that was not converted was Helvetica Narrow. Those of us on the Adobe type team welcomed the opportunity to phase it out, even though it had been one of the core 35 PostScript fonts, because its very existence was an embarrassment. We didn't get many complaints about it going away. Cheers, T -- Underpriced spite! — http://amultiverse.com/2010/06/28/ghostco/Received on Friday, 13 August 2010 18:26:26 GMT
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