Re: Fonts and optical scaling

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Michael,

Michael Piotrowski <address@hidden> writes:

> Well, according to that page, OpenType fonts contain information about
> the design size, i.e. the size at which the font is supposed to be
> used.  This helps typesetting applications to select the right design
> *if* there are different designs available, but it's got nothing to do
> with optical scaling: You'd still need to have separate designs for
> different sizes.

Right, but at least that means that there is interest in having
different designs for different fonts.  ;-)

> Adobe also offers a number of fonts in various design sizes in their
> "Opticals" collection.  In most cases they were probably derived from
> earlier MM fonts.  Instead of an MM font, which you could scale any
> way you wanted, they're now selling pre-scaled sizes ("Caption",
> "Subhead", etc.).

Perhaps the conclusion is that implementors considered Multiple Master
Fonts to much of a burden for that purpose?  Indeed, it may be much
harder to implement than an ad hoc solution along the lines of what I
proposed at the beginning of this thread.

Thanks!

Ludo'.