Re: Broken Linotype font

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

Dear Linotype:

I downloaded the sample font  "LinotypeUnivers-BasicRegular" (ubr_____.pfb) 
from "Special Offer" on your web site:
http://www.linotypelibrary.com/f_special.htm
http://195.63.153.131/fonts/htm/00000000/f_univers_download.htm

I must say I am rather disappointed in the technical quality of this font.
This font had problems with:

(1) Aring, aring, Scaron, scaron, Zcaron, zcaron have only the base character, no accent;
(2) iacute, icircumflex, idieresis, igrave are lacking the "dotlessi", only the accent is shown;
(3) The corresponding AFM file entries in the Composite section are also wrong (missing glyph names);
(4) The offsets of the accents given in the Compiste section of the AFM give poor placement;
(5) The AFM width for "fraction" is wrong.  It is given as 584 when the glyph actually has width 179;
(6) The AFM width for the ligature "fi" is wrong.  It is given as 457 when the actual glyph has width 584;
(7) The Font BoundingBox is wrong - as the result of (1) above probably;
(8) The hinting is poor.  Several characters have vstem hints that are shifted (as if the sidebearing of
      the glyph may have been adjusted after hinting without moving the hints also);
(9) Some glyphs are missing obvious hints that should be there;
(10) There is no hint switching (needed for many lower case characters as well as 3, B, 8, ampersand etc.);

There are several other minor issues, such as the appearance of comments with a single % before
the %%EndComment DSC comment (a comment with a single % terminates the header comment
section).

Are the other members of this font family similarly affected?

Berthold K.P. Horn
Y&Y, Inc.
45 Walden Street
Concord, MA 01742-2513
http://www.YandY.com
mailto:bkph@YandY.com



Berthold K.P. Horn	Cambridge, Massachusetts (M)