Re: TeX fonts
Dave Sherohman <esper@sherohman.org> writes:
> cmr10 and cmr17 both come out looking like bitmapped fonts (gee, I wonder
> why...) which have been blown up without decent antialiasing - the closure
> at the top of "o" is so thin it practically isn't there, the sides
> (particularly the left side) of "!" are jagged, the upper-left to lower-
> right strokes of several letters look like they're a row of dots instead
> of a line, etc.
Metafont produces bitmaps based on the "mode", which is a set of
parameters designed to make things look right for a certain printer.
You probably are not using the ideal mode for your printer.
I could tell you how to change the mode if you're interested, but
first try "dvips -Pcmz yourfile.dvi". That tells dvips to send the PS
Type 1 fonts to the printer instead. This is what I do on my
LJ2100M... at 1200dpi, it doesn't make too much sense to me to ship
bitmaps around.
> The font design seems typical enough, but the execution appears very
> poor.
Next time you're in a library or bookstore, take a look at one of
Knuth's books. That will show you how the font is _supposed_ to
look... if it looks worse on your printer, it's probably a
configuration issue.
> dvips sends its output directly to the printer by default and I haven't
> gotten around to determining how to change that yet
/etc/texmf/dvips/config.ps, comment out the "o |lpr" line.
[changing mode]
> I'll have to give that a shot tomorrow. I assume the "main menu" you're
> referring to is a menu within texconfig, yes?
DVIPS->Global->Letter->mode
Assuming the LJ5000 is similar to the LJ4000, the best mode is
probably ljfzzz.
You can also set the global mode for all programs, but that will
affect the size things appear in xdvi, so I'd recommend doing it just
in dvips.
> > (I found this documented, if sparingly, in the LaTeX Companion, by
> > Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin; ISBN 0-201-54199-8, section 11.9.1.)
>
> Hrm... I'm getting the impression that online documentation for tex is
> hard to come by...
Pretty much. The problem seems to be that the printed documentation
is fairly good, and happens to be written by those who know most.
It's easier for most people to buy the books than to write an online
one themselves.
> I've picked up that LaTeX is essentially just a set of macros for TeX
> proper. What do I need to do to load them?
Just type
latex myfile.tex
and it'll use the LaTeX macros.
--
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
Purrpetual Motion: A kitten at play.
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