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From: mackay@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Pierre MacKay)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Postscript version of CMR fonts
Message-ID: <8707282030.AA19941@brillig.umd.edu>
Date: Thu, 16-Jul-87 19:46:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: brillig.8707282030.AA19941
Posted: Thu Jul 16 19:46:41 1987
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CMR fonts as produced by METAFONT are carefully rasterised, and supplied
with several precise optical and inking adjustments which override the
simpler splines of the basic character.  Moreover, they are carefully
sized so that the proportions of (e.g) cmr5 are quite distinct from
those of cmr10.  Brian Reid, in a recent issue of Unix Review, says
that nobody bothers with that sort of quality any more, and that optical
scaling from 12-point down to 4-point and up to 96 point is all anybody
wants.  Don Knuth does bother, and so do many others.  

It is theoretically possible to trap the splines in METAFONT and convert them
to postscript code, but if you did it too early, you would lose exactly those
elements of final optical correction that put the final polish on high
resolution characters in METAFONT.  Maybe it should be done, but if it is done,
let us hope that the breezy postscript habit of using 12-point masters for
everything, regardless of how inappropriate the proportions may be, is not
applied to Computer Modern, or to any of the future fonts developed under
METAFONT.


						Pierre A. MacKay
						TUG Site Coordinator for
						Unix-flavored TeX