CompuServe Thread

If I interpret your query correctly, you are asking about Adobe's proprietary font technology. The way it works is this: there is code written into (I assume) all Adobe fonts that allows those fonts to print more legibly on certain printers. These "hints" tell the printer how to "round off" the weight of certain strokes, so letters at very small (below 8 pt) sizes still look good on a LaserWriter at 300 dpi. For example, if a letter was scaled to have a stoke weight of 0.3 points, a laserwriter might round this off to two machine pixels (each machine pixel being 1/300th of an inch); but the letter might look like #$@#! with that thick a stroke, so a "hint" would instruct the printer to make the stroke ONE pixel, not two…all this being reasonably complicated and having to do with the printer's storing of bitmaps. The "hints" here are stored in the actual code of the PRINTER font, not in the font metrics file (more on metrics later). No one knows precisely how all this is done, however, because the code is proprietary…Adobe is the only source for PostScript interpreters, and they haven't released the code to other developers. As far as I know, the "hints" in PostScript fonts are resolution dependent; if you print on a Linotronic, the hints are not used due to the higher resolution (no need to round off). There is also (completely unrelated) information in the Font Metrics file for each Adobe font, having to do with tracking (overall letterspacing). This information tells an appli application how tight to set the letterspaing for the font within a certain range of sizes…smaller point sizes need more (or less) space between letters, depending on the type designer's preferences. This is a standard feature of an AFM (font metrics) file, but these files are used only by certain appplications (like JustText); most applications use the information contained in screen font files for spacing, and I don't know if this variable quality is part of those resources (I don't think so). As for 4-point type, I can't really recommend it…I don't remember tr trying anything that small, but readability usually drops off at 6-point (depending on the weight of the face…bolder type is tougher at small s sizes). However, I HAVE printed "thumbnail" versions of documents where the text was probably 4-point or smaller, and I could still make out the words and sentence structures…but only because I knew what was written (a lot of muck to anyone else). CHOICES