Smaller font needs more space

[Stan The Man]

I'm using Word: Mac 2001 under Os9 and I'm getting frustrated by the
way my fonts display. Typically, I enter some text in Frutiger
Condensed 57Cn at 12pt and it is a tad too long to fit on one line so I
reduce it to 11pt and although the text reduces in size on the screen,
the spacing between the words expands so that the line length actually
increases, or at least it does on the monitor. If I go down a size to
10pt everything looks ok again and the line length shortens to what I
would expect, with proper word spacing.

No doubt this is all due to the fact that only the 10pt and 12pt screen
fonts are actually installed but I always thought that it wasn't
necessary to install every point size. If the software is interpolating
the 11pt size all I can say is that it is making a terrible job of it.

Nor, as far as I know, is there an 11pt screen font available to
install so if I want text at 11pt and need WYSIWYG on screen, I'm just
out of luck. Or am I wrong about that? TIA.

Stan

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Stan,

Could be kerning (Format > Font > Character spacing > Kerning for fonts: x
points and above).

If that's set to 12 pt, it might explain what you see. For 12 pt and above,
the text would compress a bit because say, the "a" in "Ta" slips beneath the
"T".

I don't think screen fonts have anything to do with it.
I don't think they even exist any more (though TrueType fonts might still be
optimized for some point size).

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Stan The Man]

Thanks for that Klaus but Kerning wasn't the culprit.

Screen fonts do continue to exist in Os9-land, where I live.

Stan

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Stan -

It sounds like you are dealing with a Postscript Type 1 font, and you are
pretty much on the money with regard to why the rendering on screen is less
than desireable for sizes that are not 'there'. The problem is not with
Word, though, so much as it is with the compendium of other variables
involved - including the OS, the display technology, as well as the design
of Type 1's in the first place. This blurb from the Adobe website may help a
little in understanding what is going on;

"On the Macintosh platform, there are two components to a Type 1 font: a
screen font suitcase that contains bitmapped screen fonts in specific point
sizes and the font's metric information and a printer font (also known as an
outline font) that is used when printing. The printer font is also used by
the operating system to create screen fonts for point sizes that are outside
of the sizes contained in the screen font suitcase."

So, basically, what you see on screen is a rasterized version of the vector
(scalable) shapes that actually get sent to a Postscript printer.
Resolution, zoom, etc. get thrown into the rendering, so WYS(ain't)WYG.

For a little more, you might want to take a look at;

http://store.adobe.com/type/browser/P/P_261.html

Click the More Info tab, then click the Format: link. I believe Frutiger 57
Condensed is available in TrueType & will render far more accurately on
screen. If that is a major concern, it may well be worth (rather reasonable)
price.

 

[Stan The Man]

Thanks for that, Bob. I hear what you say about the various culprits
but I often use this font at various sizes in QuarkXpress documents on
the same Mac and this problem doesn't arise there. The 11pt font
displays ok on screen which suggests to me that Word is handling it
differently. It is very disconcerting to reduce the font from 12pt to
11pt in Word and watch the line expand in width so that it flows over
to a new line. How is it possible to design good-looking and
predictable Word documents using a Type 1 font at the not-unreasonable
size of 11 point?

TrueType might be the answer but I also need to export the Word doc to
a printable PDF file with fonts embedded - for use cross-platform. Will
the TrueType font embed and also display and print ok on a Windows
system?

Stan