maintaining modes.mf

[mackay@cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay)]

How well I know the Omnilaser, though we don't have one here any longer.

I use it as an example in a paper which will be coming out in
conference proceedings fairly soon.  

The existing mode-def is probably wrong.  I would caution very strongly 
against the use of negative values for fillin.  It either produces
gross effects or none at all.  In the case of the RicohFourZeroEightZero
mode_def it mostly produces gross effects.

But even when you use an adjusted mode def, you get the shrinking font
effect.  Because the black area is etched away on a write-white
printer you get the effect of the loss of an entire pixel in height
and width by comparison with a write-black font at the same
resolution.  When you have a maximum of 18 pixels top to bottom
in a ten-point lower-case o that gets very noticeable.
You would have to reposition the vertical values in the
parameter file to correct the effect, which would further distort the
character, since you can't safely change the horizontals without
the risk of mucking up the leading and trailing side bearings.

Also, I suspect that the print-engine is inherently sloppy.  Try comparing
a standard Adobe font from the Omnilaser with the same font from
a Canon, such as a Laserwriter, and you will get rather a shock.


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