Re: FT2 design question

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Adobe said they will continue to use it there (it's indeed indispensible
> there), but they also said that that's a *very* special case of MM, capable
> of doing things plain MM doesn't support. I think the main issue is
> adapting the width axis on a per character basis (to match the metrics of
> the original font).
>
> [...]
>
> - optical scaling can be an excellent thing to have for printed
> matter.

pdfTeX recently started to have this implemented (one of the aspects
of Hermann Zapf's hz algorithm) -- so this feature is worth
considering.

> Have you seen the FontWorks stuff? They have a technology they call
> "stroke based fonts". It seems a very elegant approach.

I've just read a headline about it...  Is the format patent-free?  Is
it documented?  Is it freely available?

Well, John Hobby's (the creator of Metapost) doctoral dissertation
handles something similar, so in case this is patented ... :-)


    Werner