Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!oliveb!amiga!kodiak
From: kodiak@amiga.UUCP (Robert R. Burns)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: adobe screen fonts in 1.3?
Summary: Courier Proportional, but Equal
Message-ID: <2095@amiga.UUCP>
Date: 11 May 88 19:25:20 GMT
References: <347@mergvax.UUCP> <3934@gryphon.CTS.COM> <9006@oberon.USC.EDU>  <9020@oberon.USC.EDU>
Reply-To: kodiak (Robert Burns)
Distribution: na
Organization: Commodore-Amiga Inc, Los Gatos CA
Lines: 32

In article ... blah blah [do you really read the path?] ... (Marco Papa)
>|| The 1.3 "Extras" disk distributed at DevCon included 3 Adobe fonts: Courier,
>|
>|I certainly hope Courier is not a proportional font.  It is supposed
>|to be fixed-width.
>
>Sorry, but I just checked with the font editor, and ALL the Adobe fonts from
>the Extras disk, including Courier, are proportional width.
>
>-- Marco Papa 'Doc'

The courier fonts have the proportional bit set.  They are, however,
monospacing -- i.e. they line up like they all have the same width.
The proportional bit being set may be a bug (thanks for reporting it,
gamma users: this is why you have the disks, remember).  The reason
my Adobe -> Amiga font conversion program set the proportional bit is
because some of the characters in the font extend beyond the character
advance, e.g. the 1/2 character.  You cannot, then, assume that it is
valid to multiply the width of the font by the number of characters in
the string to be rendered to determine the area the rendering will
occur in.  Is it preferable to not set proportional because of this?
I'm not sure.  I took the conservative approach that applications that
need fixed width fonts, and would thus be checking this advisory bit,
would have their assumptions about what fixed-width means blown away
by the Courier font.  So I set the proportional bit.

You may send timely arguments for not setting the bit to amiga!kodiak.
If I don't post another article about it, you can assume that I didn't
get any email feedback -- everyone bought this "dressing up the possible
bug so it was viewed as a feature" article and was happy.

- Kodiak