OT Best font for online viewing.

OT Best font for online viewing.

[John Culleton]

 built a document using the encoding for Palatino thus:

 \usetypescript[berry][ec]
\usetypescript[palatino][ec]
\setupbodyfont[palatino,12pt]

The good news is I got the Palladio version of Palatino according 
to Acrobat Reader 5.05. The bad news is that the characters are
distorted. When I blow them up 400% then they look OK. 

In particular the capital T looks like someone trimmed part of
the top bar with a router. But lc letters look funky as well.

I know Lucida Bright is the favorite font for on-line use in
pragma-nl. But is there a regular (like, free) Adobe Font that
looks OK when used with Acrobat Reader? Or is there some other
setup improvement I need to make?

In GV the glyphs look a bit ragged but the artifacts like the
chopped up capital T are not present. So it is an Acrobat weakness.
But Acrobat Reader is the name of the game for e-books. 



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Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Patrick Gundlach]

John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> writes:

Hello John,

> pragma-nl. But is there a regular (like, free) Adobe Font that
> looks OK when used with Acrobat Reader? 

I sometimes use dolly typeface for online presentations. As far as I
know, it is free for non-commercial use. See www.underware.nl.

> Or is there some other setup improvement I need to make?

Slightly increase or decrease the resolution. Use different papersize
or alike.


Patrick

Re: Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Robbie Pickering]

Patrick Gundlach wrote:
>John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> writes:
>
>Hello John,
>
>> pragma-nl. But is there a regular (like, free) Adobe Font that
>> looks OK when used with Acrobat Reader? 
>
>I sometimes use dolly typeface for online presentations. As far as I
>know, it is free for non-commercial use. See www.underware.nl.
>

Sadly, the designers have a different opinion: 
 
 http://www.underware.nl/site2/index.php3?id1=dolly&id2=priceinfo says:
 
 What will Dolly cost?

1 user: 150,- Euro
2 users: 200,- Euro
5 users: 300,- Euro
10 users: 500,- Euro

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Patrick Gundlach]

drymartini@gmx.de (Robbie Pickering) writes:

Hello Robbie,

>>I sometimes use dolly typeface for online presentations. As far as I
>>know, it is free for non-commercial use. See www.underware.nl.
>
> Sadly, the designers have a different opinion: 

>  http://www.underware.nl/site2/index.php3?id1=dolly&id2=priceinfo says:
>  
>  What will Dolly cost?
>
> 1 user: 150,- Euro


That is for commercial use as far as I can remember. There is a small
book (in german)

http://www.koppmedien.de/produktdetail.php?nr=12329

that includes the typeface for EUR 10,20. (I don't remember what
format it is in, ttf?) There was a discussion a
while ago in the german tex list about this typeface, and a local
font guru stated that in the licence term it is written that non
commercial use is free. Just mail the designers and ask :)

Patrick

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Patrick Gundlach]

Patrick Gundlach <pg@levana.de> writes:

> That is for commercial use as far as I can remember. There is a small
> book (in german)

sorry: the webpage is in german, the book is (I guess) in english.


Patrick

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Johannes Hüsing]

John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> [Mon, May 12, 2003 at 09:48:42PM CEST]:
[...]
> 
> I know Lucida Bright is the favorite font for on-line use in
> pragma-nl. But is there a regular (like, free) Adobe Font that
> looks OK when used with Acrobat Reader? Or is there some other
> setup improvement I need to make?

Don't know about Adobe, but I use Bitstream Charter with LuxiMono and
Euler (thanks Adam) for slides, which I consider quite robust. Haven't
made up my mind about a matching sans serif font yet though.

Cheers


Johannes

-- 
Johannes Hüsing   There is something fascinating about science. One gets
hannes@ruhrau.de  such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a 
                  trifling investment of fact.                Mark Twain

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Jens-Uwe Morawski]

On Mon, 12 May 2003 15:48:42 -0400
John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> The good news is I got the Palladio version of Palatino according 
> to Acrobat Reader 5.05. The bad news is that the characters are
> distorted. When I blow them up 400% then they look OK. 

is smoothing of text enabled in AR?
 
> I know Lucida Bright is the favorite font for on-line use in
> pragma-nl. But is there a regular (like, free) Adobe Font that
> looks OK when used with Acrobat Reader?

the old StarOffice 5.2 includes Type1-fonts of LucidaBright,
LucidaSans and LucidaMono but no math fonts.
Maybe you can get SO5.2 from somewhere. TFMs and VFs are available from
http://home.vr-web.de/was/fonts ; ConTeXt typescripts you can get from me.

Jens

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Bill McClain]

On Mon, 12 May 2003 15:48:42 -0400
John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> I know Lucida Bright is the favorite font for on-line use in
> pragma-nl. But is there a regular (like, free) Adobe Font that
> looks OK when used with Acrobat Reader? Or is there some other
> setup improvement I need to make?

Charter, Bookman and Utopia are free and are worth a try. I agree that
Acrobat doesn't render Palatino very nicely at small sizes. You've done
everything correctly in ConTeXt, and I'm sure it would print out nicely
on a high-res printer.

I've seen discussions of "fonts suitable for low-res display", generally
in the context of web browsers. But we also have the factor of "what
does Acrobat render nicely?" which is a different topic, of which I'm
ignorant.

I use the free MS Georgia truetype font in my browser and it works
pretty well; the numerals are old-stype by default. Rather complete set
of glyphs but no kerning. As an experiment I installed it into the tex
directories using the truetype procedure described on my help page.
Looks nice; maybe better than the other free fonts. I'll post a sample
if anyone wants to see it.

I checked the MS site for licensing info but was a bit overwhelmed.
"Embedding is encouraged" but I didn't see a definite "yes, it's legal."
I'd check more closely if I wanted to use it for a public project.

Looking at Luc_Devroye's site (http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/fonts.html)
it is clear that most of the world's free fonts are in truetype.

-Bill
-- 
Sattre Press                                      Tales of War
http://sattre-press.com/                       by Lord Dunsany
info@sattre-press.com             http://tow.sattre-press.com/ 

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[John Culleton]

On Tuesday 13 May 2003 09:50 am, Bill McClain wrote:
> On Mon, 12 May 2003 15:48:42 -0400
>
> John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
> > I know Lucida Bright is the favorite font for on-line use in
> > pragma-nl. But is there a regular (like, free) Adobe Font that
> > looks OK when used with Acrobat Reader? Or is there some other
> > setup improvement I need to make?
>
> Charter, Bookman and Utopia are free and are worth a try. I agree that
> Acrobat doesn't render Palatino very nicely at small sizes. You've done
> everything correctly in ConTeXt, and I'm sure it would print out nicely
> on a high-res printer.

But of course the printer is not the target in this case; the online
viewer using AR is. For a temporary solution I have fallen back to
(drumroll) the default CM which in pdftex is the Type 1 conversion
thereof. It is a bit spidery but it is handsomer than the Palladio in
the viewer window. As time permits I will play with some others per
your and others suggestions.

For all flavors of TeX fonts are the last major stumbling block. As we
chip away at that problem we render Tex/Context to be more practical
for the many who spend significant bucks on Pagemaker, InDesign,
Quark, Framemaker, Ventura et al.

TFYH

John Culleton





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Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Bill McClain]

On Tue, 13 May 2003 14:02:50 -0400
John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> For a temporary solution I have fallen back to
> (drumroll) the default CM which in pdftex is the Type 1 conversion
> thereof. It is a bit spidery but it is handsomer than the Palladio in
> the viewer window. As time permits I will play with some others per
> your and others suggestions.

Here are CM, Bookman, Charter, Palatino, Utopia, and Georgia in one
document, all 12pt:

    http://home.salamander.com/~wmcclain/comparison.pdf

Charter, Utopia, and Georgia all look pretty good at screen resolution.

-Bill
-- 
Sattre Press                                      Tales of War
http://sattre-press.com/                       by Lord Dunsany
info@sattre-press.com             http://tow.sattre-press.com/ 

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Hartmut Henkel]

Bitstream recently has published the ten free Vera fonts (.ttf), which
are e. g. used as screen fonts by the gnome project. They should be
optimized for screen use, and therefore also for online use.

See www.gnome.org/fonts/ and
www.bitstream.com/categories/news/press/2003_bitstream/012203_gnome.htm

They may also be a candidate for shipping with teTeX.

Greetings Hartmut


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr.-Ing. Hartmut Henkel, Oftersheim, Germany
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[John Culleton]

On Tuesday 13 May 2003 03:42 pm, Bill McClain wrote:
> On Tue, 13 May 2003 14:02:50 -0400
>
> John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
> > For a temporary solution I have fallen back to
> > (drumroll) the default CM which in pdftex is the Type 1 conversion
> > thereof. It is a bit spidery but it is handsomer than the Palladio in
> > the viewer window. As time permits I will play with some others per
> > your and others suggestions.
>
> Here are CM, Bookman, Charter, Palatino, Utopia, and Georgia in one
> document, all 12pt:
>
>     http://home.salamander.com/~wmcclain/comparison.pdf
>
> Charter, Utopia, and Georgia all look pretty good at screen resolution.
>
> -Bill
 Now that is a useful file! One can not only admire the appearance but
 by checking the top line of each section get a feel for the
 spreadiness of the characters. The Georgia font seems to be the best,
 but it is a Microsoft font that comes in a PC version and a Mac
 version. Are both versions truetype? If so what gyrations did you go
 through to make it pdftex/context ready? 

 BTW I had another ttf I was trying to use but ttf2afm can't seem to
 find it even if I fully qualify the name. So maybe I have to
 recompile ttf2afm. My binary version was found in
 /usr/TeX/source/bin/i686-pc-linux-gnu/ttf2afm
but it doesn't seem to want to play on my system. 

Font-chasing reminds me of the old children's song about the bear that
went over the mountain only to find another mountain in his way. 

TFYH

John Culleton



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Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 07:17  PM, John Culleton wrote:

> The Georgia font seems to be the best, but it is a Microsoft font that 
> comes in a PC version and a Mac version. Are both versions truetype?

Yes.

> If so what gyrations did you go through to make it pdftex/context 
> ready?

I'm not sure how Bill did this, but probably the easiest way is to use 
ttf2tex, and then you're just left writing a typescript (unless someone 
wants to figure out what Bash code to add to get it to create them 
automatically, as it does with LaTeX fd files).

Bruce

Re: OT Best font for online viewing.

[Bill McClain]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 936 bytes --]

On Tue, 13 May 2003 19:17:40 -0400
John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> The Georgia font seems to be the best,
>  but it is a Microsoft font that comes in a PC version and a Mac
>  version. Are both versions truetype? If so what gyrations did you go
>  through to make it pdftex/context ready?

I'm using the version that came with my Linux X11, as packaged by SuSE:

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype/georgia.ttf

"file" says "MS-Windows true type font .ttf".

The gyrations are described on my help page in the Truetype section:

http://home.salamander.com/~wmcclain/context-help.html#newfont-truetype

As Bruce says, ttf2tex may be a simpler procedure, but I haven't used
it.

I've attached the source to comparison.pdf.

-Bill
-- 
Sattre Press                                      Tales of War
http://sattre-press.com/                       by Lord Dunsany
info@sattre-press.com             http://tow.sattre-press.com/ 

[-- Attachment #2: comparison.tex --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 848 bytes --]

\usetypescript[berry][ec]
\definetypeface[bookman][rm][serif][bookman][default][encoding=ec]
\definetypeface[charter][rm][serif][charter][default][encoding=ec]
\definetypeface[palatino][rm][serif][palatino][default][encoding=ec]
\definetypeface[utopia][rm][serif][utopia][default][encoding=ec]
\setupbodyfont[12pt]

\pdfmapfile{+texnansi-georgia.map}

\startbuffer[Example]
\blank
0123456789
\input tufte
\input knuth
\blank
\stopbuffer

\starttext
Computer Modern
\getbuffer[Example]

\switchtobodyfont[bookman]
Bookman
\getbuffer[Example]

\switchtobodyfont[charter]
Charter
\getbuffer[Example]

\switchtobodyfont[palatino]
Palatino
\getbuffer[Example]

\switchtobodyfont[utopia]
Utopia
\getbuffer[Example]

% Sorry, haven't had time to make a typescript yet. 
\font\Myfont=texnansi-georgia at 12pt
\Myfont 
Georgia
\getbuffer[Example]
\stoptext