Re: fontname question: supplier letter for microsoft truetype fonts

["Berthold K.P. Horn" <bkph@ai.mit.edu>]

At 11:00 PM 8/17/98 +0200, Soren Sandmann Pedersen wrote:

>
> Werner> Most of them already have an appropriate name
> Werner> (e.g. Antqua[bi].ttf == Book Antiqua family from Monotype ==
> Werner> maq).

>Are the metrics for a TrueType version of a font always identical to
>those of the Type 1 version? 

If it is meant as a drop in replacement (like Arial for Helvetica,
Courier New for Courier, Times New Roman for Times-Roman etc.)
then the advance widths at least should match exactly.

Other metrics such as character bounding boxes may not.  
Kerning pairs may differ too, but TeX does the kerning, so you can 
use whatever kerning pairs you want, the actual
outline font doesn't know about that.

Some TrueType fonts are set up for `non-linear' scaling -- originally
touted as a great thing (tm) -- now understood to be a horrible mistake.
Such fonts change advance widths as resolution changes.
(Not to be confused with `optical scaling').

Often the TTF and the PST1 versions do not have the same character
complement. PST1 typically have a starndard 228 glyphs, while
corresponding TTF files may have less or in some cases many more
(such as WGL4 set which is over 600).

Sometimes printer resident versions of fonts do not match those used
on screen (e.g. HP LJ 4000 fonts).  Well, the metrics match, but for
example, one may not have fi and fl, while the other does...

Regards, Berthold.


Berthold K.P. Horn
MIT AI Laboratory
mailto: bkph@ai.mit.edu