Re: [Devel] Some numbers smaller than some others (TTF, Type1)

[Vadim Plessky]

Hi Sebastien!

On Thursday 20 June 2002 4:47 pm, Sebastien BARRE wrote:
|  Hi Vadim
|
|  At 6/20/2002 05:41 AM, Vadim Plessky wrote:
|  >| Here is the result, for the "Nimbus Sans" and "Nimbus Mono".
|  >|  http://barre.nom.fr/temp/type1bug.gif
|  >|  Note the '1' and '4'
|  >
|  >If you need better fonts than URW - I can send you in private mail.
|
|  Thanks. We need freely redistributable fonts, as I explained to Werner.

I see.
But I guess you know that there is no such a thing as a free lunch. :-)

|  I'll copy and paste my moto:
|  We are looking for freely redistributable clone version of the
|  Arial/Helvetica, Times and Courier fonts (normal, bold, italic and
|  bold/italic faces). We spent a good amount of time searching on the net,
|  and we came up most of the time with incomplete fonts with no real

To my best knowledge, such fonts are not available.
If you can find something usable - pls let me know.

You have an option 1) to develop own fonts, or 2) order some good fonts (to 
design fonts for you), or 3) license such fonts from existing foundry.
First option is cheap but will take a lot of time. Plus there is no warranty 
that you can get acceptable quality.
With options 2) and 3) you will get high quality fonts but it will cost a lot 
of money.

|  distribution policy. The Type1 fonts provided with XFree86 look fine, but
|  they are missing a couple of faces. The Ghostscript fonts looked fine too,
|  and URW, who contributed those to Ghostscripts years ago, was kind enough
|  to allow us to do the same. Now this hinting problem is an issue, sadly.

There are more problems with URW fonts than just hinting.
Most URW typefaces look ugly, it's known fact.
If you want those fonts for commercial project - just do not go for it!
Better license Arial / Times New Roman from Monotype.
 
|
|  | >I just want to add that you should have the bytecode interpreter
|  | >
|  >|  >enabled.  For patent reasons, it is disabled by default.
|  >|
|  >|  It does not solve the pb either.
|  >
|  >Of course this will not solve problem, as you are using it with
|  > PostScript font! You will notice difference with TTF only!
|
|  I think you did not read my first post carefully :), I stated that I
| tested both Type1 and TTF version of these fonts, and posted a screenshot
| for each one of them What I said above is that enabling the interpreter did
| not solve this issue : I implied TTF, but I did not bother reposting a
| screenshot since it was the same rendering artefacts (and we are not going
| to enable the bytecode interpreter anyway).

TTF hinting is *extremly difficult*, believe me!
PS Type1 hinting is much more easy. And powerful at the same time.
I doubt that someone will dustribute for free (I mean, something like MIT or 
GPL license) well-hinted TrueType fonts. At least I am not aware about 
existance of such (free) fonts...
Most *freeware* TrueType fonts just do not have hinting, or have very bad 
hinting. That's the reason why enabling TT interpreter doesn't help for such 
fonts.

|
|  >Real problem with URW fonts that they have bad quality of *hinting*.
|  >I was thinking to enhance contours for those fonts, re-hint  them and
|  >distribute under different name. But so far I was short on time and
|  > haven't completed this (but started!).
|
|  Thanks. Sadly, we do not have those ressources either.
|

But do you have some money?.. (not big, small amount)
Than you can outsource this work (to the place where labour costs are lower 
than in US or Germany)
BTW: whcih character sets do you need?

-- 

Vadim Plessky
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE
http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html
KDE mini-Themes
http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/