Re: TrueType font caution

[Harvey Rarback <rarback(at)ssrl.slac.stanford.edu>]

"K. Bowman" wrote:
> 
> The manuals indicate that IDL draws TT fonts by tesselating the font
> characters and drawing the necessary polygons to create each individual
> character.  I don't know how the PS device handles PS fonts, but I
> expect it leaves the rasterization up to the output device.
> 
> From my experience, this has several implications:
> 
> 1.  PS files created using TT fonts are much larger than the same plots
> using PS fonts, presumably because of all the polygons that must be
> written.  I was unable to combine two plots that use TT fonts (i.e.,
> two panels for a publication figure) in Illustrator even with 180 MB
> allotted for Illustrator on my Mac G4.  I had no trouble doing the same
> thing with PS fonts.
> 
> 2.  Because TT text is actually polygons, it cannot be manipulated in a
> drawing program like Illustrator using the font commands.  That is, you
> can't change the point size, alignment, etc.  You can group, scale and
> move the polygons, but that is less than ideal.

This reminds me of some more disadvantages I found comparing IDL's TT fonts with
hardware fonts on the X device:

  - Drawing is much slower (about a factor of 4 for Helvetica fonts displayed
    to an Exceed PC X server)

  - They look lousier.
                               --Harvey