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 UTC