Re: Fonts

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

> All I was wondering was this: would it be easier on the eyes to stare at
> his monos all day or his plain Sans or Mix? The samples don't give you
> much of a sense.
I don't really know, never having made the comparison. It might be also be
a personal issue, or something you could get used to or not get used to.
I'm happy enough with Arial in Win and Lucida Console in my dosbox. But
please, please, tell me, you _are_ using ClearType, aren't you? It's
available in XP in I think in some previous systems. Activated under
desktop properties. It's of most value when you are using an LCD screen,
and the higher the resolution, the better it works. It's absolutely
outstanding. More info, including customizing utilities, on MS's site.
By and large, the best screen fonts are those supplied by Microsoft.
Optimization of scalable fonts for screen is a tedious and expensive
process and only MS really has the money to do it consistently. That said,
I believe the hints in Prima Sans were really worked on - that would only
be the TT version of course. The principal distinction between PS and TT
fonts in this respect is that hinting is primarily done by the rasterizer
in PS; it is primarily done in the font in TT. That is why TT fonts are so
seldom well-hinted. But when they are, because they can be custom hinted
with many more parameters than a PS font, they have the capability to look
much better on screen.
> Why Postscript?
Because if I'm using a font, I care about printing first and foremost, and
printing can only be rationally done with PS fonts, which all printers are
set up for and know how to use. In addition, most TT fonts are crap
conversions from PS even though TT does theoretically have the capability
to be better than PS for two reasons: one, custom hintability, two a larger
workspace (the PS grid is 1,000 by 1,000 units, which is not really enough;
TT is 2,048 by 2,048 units. Even so, the vast majority of type designers
work in PS editors only so their TT conversions will show the advantages of
the larger bounding box).