Subject: Font Recommendations To: Kaplan.pa, Sybalsky.pa, Masinter.pa cc: Bird.pasa, Dering.pasa, Raim.pasa One can partition our users into those who have access to hundreds of fonts and those who don't. I'm not particularly worried about the former as they tend to be able to take care of themselves and are, anyway, not a large fraction of our paying customer base. Recent experience shows us that it is very important for Joe Customer that what he sees on his display is what he gets from his printer. This leads to the following conclusions: (1) We should be very ci cumspect about supplying any display-only fonts (such as an interim Terminal-10). (2) We should not insert the characters (such as up-arrow) into the character sets of fonts which do not support it as a printable character. We should take advantage of the control we have over the fonts and software distributed with Harmony. Rather than producing yet another complicated list of rules, substitutions and defaults we ought to be able to tell customers: (1) Which fonts they will be able to display. (2) Any of the above not amenable to press and/or interpress conversion. (3) The procedure for obtaining additional display fonts and their widths files. (4) The procedure for obtaining additional printer fonts, including any required to print fonts whose display and widths files are included in the standard release and which they may be lacking. (5) Any family conversions of which they should be aware - see below. ----- My proposal for the Harmony release: (1) A font to be called TERMINAL. Displays and prints anywhere - software substitution of Gacha for press printing. Initially size 10 may not be available for Interpress printing (we can dummy-up a display font by copying Gacha). Display and press can handle all bold/italic combinations but interpress can only handle MRR. (2) A font to be called CLASSIC (generated by copying CENTURY). Displays and prints anywhere. Available in sizes 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24 and in bold or italic but not both. (3) A font to be called MODERN (generated by copying FRUTIGER). Displays and prints anywhere. Available in sizes 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24 and in bold and/or italic. (4) A font to be called TIMESROMAN. Not supported for interpress. Available in sizes 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 36 and in bold and/or italic. This font is really intended for display only - for those applications (such as Grapher) which require a wide range of font sizes. It may be thought that Helvetica (which has a 5-point font) would be preferable. However, Times Roman 6 is the same height and narrower than Helvetica 5 - see examples below. (5) A font to be called TIMESROMAND. Not supported for interpress. Available in sizes 24, 30, 36 and 72. The display can, of course, support and combination of bold and/or italic but only MRR can be printed. This font complements TIMESROMAN for those applications requiring a large range of font sizes. To avoid possible future problems, Times Roman and Times Roman D should probably both be regarded as unprintable. We could interpress Times Roman sizes 8, 10, 12, 14, 18 and Times Roman D size 24 by substituting Classic. This would be the only family-name conversion built into the software other than Gacha/Terminal (press) and Logo/Logotype (interpress). These three conversions would be specific to one print device and mandatory. This would greatly reduce font-related confusion. This is a sample. THIS IS A SAMPLE. This is HELVETICA 5. Font height is 7. This is a sample. THIS IS A SAMPLE. This is TIMES ROMAN 6. Font height is 7. This is a sample. THIS IS A SAMPLE. This is HELVETICA 7. Font height is 10. This is a sample. THIS IS A SAMPLE. This is CLASSIC 8. Font height is 10. This is a sample. THIS IS A SAMPLE. This is MODERN 8. Font height is 10. This is a sample. THIS IS A SAMPLE. This is TIMES ROMAN 8. Font height is 10. This is a sample. THIS IS A SAMPLE. This is GACHA 8. Font height is 10. TR-16. TR-18. TR-36. TR-D-24. TR-D-30. TR-D-36. TR-D-72.