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Topic: Re: PDF2K1EAST> fonts (Via Email)
Conf: (P-PDF) Prepress and Print, Msg: 22284
From: LeonardR
Date: 6/15/2001 10:42 AM

At 09:22 AM 6/15/2001 -0400, p-pdf-prepress Listmanager wrote:
>There are two reasons for fonts. The first is to make letters appear on
>your screen and the second is to make letters appear from your printer.


A bit simplistic, but not entirely inaccurate...


>A font is basically a computer program.


Not really. It's better to think of a font as a series of vector
images, each image describing a single glyph (character/letter) in the
font. In addition, a font contains data (hinting) that can tell a font
renderer how to improve the look of the vector information at certain point
sizes.


>Because these two are distinct, two types of fonts are needed. One
>program writes codes to the screen, called a screen font and the other is
>known as a printer or postscript font.


Boy are you working from REALLY OLD information!!!

The need for separate fonts (screen vs. printer) hasn't been true
for YEARS (about 10, actually) on either the Mac or Windows
platforms. Since the advent of TrueType and Adobe Type Manager, the EXACT
SAME fonts are used for both screen and print!


>The two most widely used font types are Type 1 fonts and Truetype fonts.


That's true - so at least you got one thing correct ;)


>The difference being that Type 1 fonts have the screen and printer fonts
>separate and Truetype fonts have both types in one package.

Both Type 1 and TrueType fonts only have a single set of data
associated with them - the vector information. That vector info is used
both for screen and printer.


Leonard

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leonard Rosenthol
Director of Software Development (215) 922-3509 (voice)
Appligent, Inc. (formerly Digital Applications) (610) 284-4233 (fax)

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