[pdftex] Spacing between letters ---plain pdftex

[Robin Fairbairns]

jonathan d p ferguson <jdpf at sunforge.com> wrote:

> As an aside, I observe that Latin Modern lacks a true  
> Italic face, offering only an Oblique face (of course, this maps to  
> "italic" most of the time, but it isn't really italic, it's oblique,  
> or in the parlance of DEK: slanted).

not being a font expert, i'm interested in this assertion.

how do you justify it, in light of the very high degree of visual
similarity between computer modern and latin modern text italic?