Re: the FontType option
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg78861] Re: [mg78817] the FontType option
- From: John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:15:08 -0400 (EDT)
- Reply-to: jfultz at wolfram.com
The name is somewhat confusing, and has some unfortunate origins in the font technology used on early Macintosh versions. But the principle is straightforward... "Bitmap" means use a screen font. The font selection is done according to how your screen rendering system would choose the font, and metric measurements are computed according to how the fonts are drawn on the screen. As such, a "Bitmap" font is completely inappropriate for printing. Historically, the font chooser might have actually selected a bitmap font (which were designed for screens and cannot be decently printed), although font technology in modern windowing systems has developed well beyond those days. "Outline" means to use a printer font. The font selection is done according to how your printer driver would choose the font, and metric measurements are computed according to the printer. If you are using an "Outline" font on the screen, then what it's doing is to take the measurements from the default printer which would be used to print your document, and rescaling them according to the screen. Since screen and printer metrics are often going to be off by a bit, this means you'll see some odd spacing on the screen. However, that spacing will faithfully preserve the dimensions of the overall cell according tohhow it would be printed. The Printout environment uses "Outline" while most of the other environments use "Bitmap". When PostScript or PDF is exported, it will, by default, use "Outline". The font metric issue is why you're seeing a difference in line height. I can'tcomment on your past uses of "Outline", since they involve Macintosh-isms beyondmy reckoning. Sincerely, John Fultz jfultz at wolfram.com User Interface Group Wolfram Research, Inc. On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 06:33:21 -0400 (EDT), Selwyn Hollis wrote: > I recently discovered a bug in QuickTime export that showed itself as > a missing horizontal line of pixels across the center of anything > exported to QuickTime. After Tech Support told me they couldn't > reproduce the problem, I dug around until I finally discovered that > the problem occurs only when PrivateFontOptions "FontType" is set to > "Outline" rather then "Bitmap." (Tech support seemed to think that > having the FontType option set oddly to "Outline" was what was wrong, > as opposed to there actually being a bug.) > > Anyway, I have habitually set FontType->"Outline" for as long as I > can remember. In the "old days" it was necessary in order that Adobe > Type Manager would scale Type 1 fonts. Since OS X and prior to > Mathematica 6, it was necessary in order to have font smoothing via a > "haxie" called Silk (www.unsanity.com). Now with 6, in most cases > type looks more-or-less the same either way, but for some reason it > has an effect on line height. > > The documentation says exactly six words about the FontType option: > "whether a given font is bitmapped." What does this mean? That type > is converted to bitmaps by Mathematica, rather than letting the OS > handle type? > > But I guess what I'm most puzzled about is why anyone cares anymore > about "bitmapped" fonts. I use dozens different applications, and > only with Mathematica is this an issue. And why should "Bitmap" be > the default? > > > Selwyn Hollis