[XeTeX] resolution (was Re: The future of XeTeX)

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Keith J. Schultz <keithjschultz at web.de>:
> Hi Zdenek,
>
> you and William are missing my point. it does not matter.
>
> I believe you do not understand the full protential of modern typography,
> font format and the use of TeX.
>
> Glyphs need not be based on an particualar form in every situation. There
> are ways to have different Glyphs as Gutenberg used. All you need to do,
> is pick the right type of font and put the needed informtion in their.
>
> To be honest, I do not think one can find a truely complete Font.
> They are just a sub-set. microtype types to help enlarge teh feature set
> and thereby the available amount of Glyphs , but as with all things done
> programmitcally it is only as good as the programmer.
>
No, microtype does not offer more glyphs, it offers glyph distorted in
many different ratios. Multiple Master Fonts would be able to solve it
in a better way but they were declared obsolete. There are just a few
MMF fonts distributed with Acrobat Reader but the development was
stopped years ago.

> To come back to Gutenberg, how Glyphs did he use? (No, I do not want an
> answer) Literally, serveral thousand if not millions. I leave it as a thought
> experiemnt to figure out why!
>
Approximately 2000 per page. They could be reused but not endlessly.
We use computer typesetting systems because production can be faster
and cheaper, not because Gutenberg was unable to do it.

> Once, you have figured it out, my other argument will dawn on you.
>
> regards
>         Keith.
>
> Am 01.08.2012 um 13:41 schrieb Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:
>
>> 2012/8/1 William Adams <will.adams at frycomm.com>:
>>> On Jul 31, 2012, at 6:02 PM, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
>>>
>>>> You are only partially correct. Yes, you can create very fine structures
>>>> off the glyphs. Yet, is only a part of the picture.
>>>>
>>>> You forget interword spacing and kerning. Gutenberg, could never match
>>>> the resolution of microtype.
>>>
>>> I give up.
>>>
>>> If one moves an element less than an imagesetter pixel dimension, how do I see that output in a useful fashion?
>>>
>> As a matter of fact, Gutenberg was able to do it better than
>> microtype. His glyphs were adapted, he had several versions of "m"
>> differing in width, kerning was also possible (look into old
>> textbooks, you will find how it was done). the main poit is thatthe
>> glyphs were designed to allow it, nowadays microtypography achieves a
>> similar rsult by distorting the characters. IMHO in the microtype
>> package the features are not used but abused and the result is often
>> uglier than the text typeset without it.
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz