RE: fonts

[Todd Graham Lewis <tlewis mindspring net>]

On Sun, 23 Aug 1998, Damon Chaplin wrote:

> The '*'s are placed beside bitmap fonts (which aren't scaled). I thought of
> using icons to show whether the font is a bitmapped font, a scalable font,
> or a scaled bitmapped font, but didn't get around to it.

Just a suggestion: use a columnar form.  E.g., 

	fontname              | bitmap | scalable | scaled
	----------------------+--------+----------+-------
	courier               |        |          |

Then have bubble-help on bitmap, scalable and scaled explaining what
they are.  (It's easy to forget that part...)

> Points are supposed to be device-independent (they are 1/72th of an inch),
> so the font should be the same size on any monitor. Whereas if you specify
> a pixel size, the font will be a different size depending on the resolution
> of the user's monitor.

I don't think that this works out too well in practice.

> > Again, I don't mean to criticise your program - it's quite good, a
> > hell of a lot better than xfontsel. But the problem of harnessing all
> > of X's fonts into something simple is really hard.
> 
> Yes, I agree!

It's a real shame that we're stuck with a moribund standard (X).
I really wish that the conventional unix vendors would simply let the
free software community carry the water on this one, let us expand X,
and then we'd give the code back to them.  Just declare open season
on the X font model, so long as what comes out is reverse compatible,
which should not be too hard.

This is an area where, both on the Macintosh and on Windows, active
research and work has paid off in a very good way, resulting in
excellent usability.  If you've ever seen Arabic on a Macintosh, then
you'll understand what I am talking about; it is seamless and horribly
impressive.

Alas.

--
Todd Graham Lewis            32°49'N,83°36'W          (800) 719-4664, x2804
******Linux******         MindSpring Enterprises      tlewis@mindspring.net