From: James_Hastings-Trew@telepro.UUCP (James Hastings-Trew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics
Subject: Re: Re: Re: IV24 and OPALVISION owners
Distribution: world
Date: 22 Jul 92 23:00:00 CST
Organization: TelePro Technologies

In a message dated Wed 22 Jul 92  5:44, Joeles@cup.portal.com (joel Edward 
wrote:

 JE> Again you've refused to read the statement.  The question is FONT,
 JE> NOT LETTER. 

I haven't refused to read the statement. It is just that the statement was
nonsensical. 

The original question was whether or not a particular graphics card was
going to produce a higher resolution on a screen by cramming all of the
pixels closer together. The suggestion was to put a font on the screen and
measure it to see if it was the right size. Aside from the obvious answer
that if you put more pixels on a fixed size monitor, of course everthing
will be smaller, the advice to measure a font is nonsensical.

No letter has both ascenders and descenders. Therefore, there is no one
single character that you can measure that will BE the point size that is
given. You would have to stretch your measurement across two different,
disconnecte items, which would be innaccurate at best. I suppose that lines
could be drawn on the screen, but this is getting silly.

You can only measure LETTERS. You could put a captial letter E and a
lowercase g on the screen, but again, the size you get would be completely
dependent upon the STYLE of the font family chosen, not the point size.
What if the font I choose to measure is Copperplate, or Machine, or some
other font that has no lowercase letters? What then? What if the font was
like Gill, with truncated, rounded descenders, or like FreeStyle Script
with long looping descenders? 

 JE> The modern day concept is font families, not cast type from the turn
 JE> of the century.

The only change in nomenclature from the turn of the century to now is that
the old usage of the word "font" meant a complete set of characters of a
given typeface and point size. Since modern type is scalable, the word
"font" now means a complete set of characters in a given typeface.
Ignorance of the roots of words and concepts is what leads us to false
assumptions like the ones you are making.

 JE> I've worked in one.  I have one.  Leading is figured in addition to
 JE> the font size.  The font does not include leading as you seemed to
 JE> suggest.

Actually, leading is included in all modern electronic typefaces. It might
also interest you to know that different typefaces will have different
amounts of leading, so that "tight-set" type in different fonts will end up
with slightly different line-spacing. Pull up a word processor on a Mac,
like Microsoft Word - one that does not specify leading in the traditional
sense, but instead uses the leading built into the fonts. Set some type and
then change the font. Do this a number of times, and watch the line
spacing. In a page layout program, set some type 24 point on 24 point
leading. Do the ascenders and descenders touch?

Question: If a client says he wants a 3 inch high headline, what do you
give him? The answer is NOT 216 point type. The answer is 324 point type.
You can tell him you were measuring the distance from the descenders to the
ascenders, but he probably still won't be happy. :) And if you don't know
the 2/3 rule, I suppose you would be stuck measuring your typesetters guide
with a linegauge -- not a pretty sight... :)


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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics