Re: Postscript font usage

[Todd Clements <mole6e23(at)hotmail.com>]

> I have a somewhat open-ended question.  I'm wondering: how many of you
> use Postscript fonts in your direct graphics work?  What are your
> experiences with it?

Yes, I use them exclusively for printing purposes, and my experience 
with them is yuck.

However, things aren't all that bad. We only have about 5 different 
"major" plot types in the lab that we use. Of course, each of these 
plots can have different annotations and lables, and titles and such, 
but five isn't too large of a number.

After hours of tinkering, I managed to put together programs that use 
IDLs silly built in fonts on screen and postscript fonts in the output, 
and for the most part things show up where they are supposed to, but it 
took tinkering. Putting in magic numbers for relative sizes, 
thicknesses, offsets and all those kinds of things.

I think postscript fonts could be made to be easier to use, but I have 
to say I understand some of the limitations that RSI/Kodak is working 
under having to support fonts on multiple platforms while still allowing 
code to be platform-'independent'. If I had to do the same thing, at 
some point I'd probably throw up my hands and just create my own fonts 
as well.

> legibility.  In so many talks, the speaker rambles on about a plot for
> five minutes in front of a bemused squinting audience, until someone
> finally gets the courage to ask, "excuse me, what are the axes?"
> That tends not to happen with postscript fonts.

Postscript fonts have nothing to do with this one! Don't get me started 
on people who don't care enough about their data to make it look good! 
Sometimes post-processing is needed to make plots look good, and people 
should do that, darnit!

Todd