Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari!basser!jaa
From: jaa@basser.oz (James Ashton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: What angle do Times-Ital. and Palatino-Ital. slant at?
Message-ID: <1647@basser.oz>
Date: 28 Nov 88 15:04:02 GMT
References: <1822@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
Reply-To: jaa@basser.oz (James Ashton)
Organization: Dept of Comp Sci, Uni of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 21

The exact slope used varies from character to character over quite a
range for the italics fonts which are not after all like oblique
fonts but are separately created.  For Times Italic the angle of
the pipe symbol comes out with the help of some simple trigonometry
at 15.5 degrees.  For Palatino Italic it's not so easy as the pipe
symbol is not sloped at all.  This in itself could be a problem if
you plan to simply change the font transformation matrix to reverse
the slope as then this symbol will be sloped backwards.  I looked
at the longest straight sections I could find on several of the
brackets and `I' and 'H' characters but surprisingly there was
large variation even within the characters and sections which appear
to the eye to be straight are in fact curved.  The character which
has the longest straight line is the paragraph marker and its
slope was 8.3 degrees.

I can't understand why you would want to do what you want to do
but looking at a range of characters in both fonts, the actual
slope varies over range of about three degrees depending on the
character.

						James Ashton.