Bitstream's Italics

[Lars Hellström]

Walter Schidt wrote:
>Hi,
>
>having installed various typeface families from the "Bitstream 500"
>CD-ROM for use with LaTeX, I have observed a weird behaviour of
>these fonts:
>
>The letters from the italic font shapes protrude a little bit
>to the left of their reference points, i.e., with
>
>\raggedright
>Hello\\
>\textit{Hello}
>
>the second line will protrude somewhat into the left margin.
>
>Is this kind of "built-in optical margin justification",  or
>did I make a mistake?  I have installed most of the fonts
>by just using \latinfamily.  With, e.g., Adobe Helvetica, the
>problem does not occur..

Hmm... I can't see any way in which fontinst should cause this. I suppose
the simplest way to check (unless you happen to have Fontographer or some
similar program) is to look at the AFM files. Lines beginning with the word
C or CH give the metrics for a glyph. The four numbers after B on such
lines specify the bounding box for that glyph, the first of these numbers
is the x-coordinate of the left side of the box. If this number is
generally less in the italic fonts than in the corresponding upright fonts
(by say at least 50 units or so), and not only for glyphs with decenders,
then what you have observed is clearly a feature of the font.

Lars Hellström