Re: Stylings only possible with Tables

David Woolley wrote:

> I believe that fonts are modified for reasons other than pixel fitting, 
> so scaling by eye here meant that the person engraving the mould for the 
> typeface would make adjustments so that the font looked right at the 
> particular size.

Exactly so.  Compare Don Knuth's "Computer Modern" typefaces
cmr5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 (ideally using MetaFont
proof or smoke mode) to really appreciate how the various
elements of a glyph need to vary depending on the design size.
The differences are most noticeable at the smallest sizes.
The table commencing on page 12 of Volume E of "Computers
and Typesetting" shews the numerical differences, but
the most obvious way of perceiving the differences is
to scale all design sizes to the same final size, and
to set the same text in each.  See

	http://www.rhul.ac.uk/resources/Font-samples/CMR-Lorem.pdf

for a sample sheet.

Philip Taylor

Received on Saturday, 30 June 2007 21:54:24 UTC