some help needed

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

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Let's help Thanh: http://www.pragma-ade.nl/samples.htm
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Dear Reader, 

We all know Han The Thanh as the author of pdfTeX. Less
known is that some features present in this program are the
subject of his thesis. 

Although it has been discussed in TeX user group meetings
and on mailing lists, some of the less known features of
pdfTeX concern improving the overall appearance of the
page. This is achieved by: 

- slightly scaling the glyphs horizontally  
- permitting some characters to stick into the margin 

Both mechanisms can be tuned at the glyph level, and both
mechanisms can be applied to either metafonts, type 1 fonts
and multiple master fonts. 

In his thesis, Han The Thanh will provide a detailed
description of the principles behind these optimizations as
well as explore the way they should be dealt with. Although
choosing the right values and making the right decisions is
biased by ones personal favourites, research has
demonstrated that when rating the greyness of a page,
people tend to agree. 

There are 8~sets of samples typeset in a 10~point typeface.
There are bitmap as well as outline fonts, and both serif
and sans serif fonts. 

- computer modern roman
- computer modern sans serif  
- minion               
- myriad               
- palatino             
- helvetica            

The 8 files are in PostScript format, since the Acrobat
viewers have problems with caching some of the fonts. We
would appreciate comments on these samples. You can refer
to the sets by their number and font name. We don't want to
steer you into a direction, but to give you a cue on what
is expected, ask yourself questions like: 

- which pages within a sample set look best
- in what samples is the design of the font violated 
- what characters stick too prominent into the margin
- do you think that these extensions improve the appearance 
- what set does produce the best results for a given font

Especially if you are a happy user of pdfTeX, I think that
spending some time on printing, viewing and reflection will
nicely compensate the time Han The Thanh has spent on
writing this marvellous extension to TeX. 

When these optimizations are found useful, I'm sure that
their application will make it into existing font
mechanisms. Han The Thanh has to finish his thesis in about
a month, so the sooner you can take a look ... You can
reach Han The Thanh at: thanh@informatics.muni.cz. 

Hans Hagen

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Let's help Thanh: http://www.pragma-ade.nl/samples.htm
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                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.nl
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