Re: Curious about Pointless - example?

["Roger Johnstone" <rojaws@mac.com>]

In article <9gg1ae$kg5$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>, "Rodney Hester" 
<rod3@mindspring.com> wrote:

> "Joe Kohn" <joko@NoMoreSpam.net.invalid> wrote in message
> news:3b28efc4_2@newsfeeds...
>
>> As the distributor of Pointless, I'm not quite sure what it is you hope
>> to see. After all, Pointless renders TrueType fonts on screen, and/or on
>> paper (when printed)...so in order to see with your own eyes what
>> Pointless does...you'd have to look at a IIGS monitor that displayed a TT
>> font, or look at a piece of paper that had been printed using TT fonts.
>
> Being new to the IIgs, I foolishly believed one could also use them as
> on-screen fonts (outside of a word processor).  Now that I've been
> better-educated, I still can see where Pointless adds a lot of value for
> those who do word processing-type activities on the IIgs.

They do work on-screen! With Pointless installed you can throw away all your
bitmapped font files. As an example, when a program (any normal IIgs
program) tries to display Times in 12-point size it would normally get it
from a file (Times.12) which held a 12-point bitmap of that font. If it
wasn't available it would use the nearest available size and scale it, which
looks horrible. With Pointless and a TrueType version of Times installed it
can produce any point size up to 255 points on-the-fly. You can type in any
point size you like in your font selection dialog, you are no longer limited
to fixed point sizes.

>> What you're asking for, I think, is to see a bit-mapped font that had been
>> converted from a TrueType font using Pointless. But, that kind of defeats
>> the whole purpose of Pointless...as once you've used TrueType fonts on a
>> IIGS, bit-mapped fonts will seem old fashioned, cumbersome, and to quote
>> 'Seven of Nine', irrelevant.
>
> Would the converted bitmap font not be essentially the representation of the
> TrueType font at that size rendered "real-time" by Pointless?  Commodore's
> AGFA fonts on the Amiga worked in this way - it could generate raster-based
> fonts on-the-fly, or let you convert those fonts to bitmap representations
> (which looked identical) at specific point sizes that were commonly used to
> increase speed.

Pointless lets you convert TrueType fonts and save them as a bitmap font
file for two reasons; you can use them in non-GS programs, and it saves
having to reconvert them on-the-fly (which takes a few seconds on a IIgs).

>> Since you sound sceptical, and I'm obviously biased, maybe one of the
>> many users of Pointless can tell you how good a TrueType font looks on a
>> IIGS.
>
> I'm not skeptical at all - I've read rave reviews on Pointless.  I simply
> wanted to see the results for myself - and as soon as I get the AppleTalk
> adapter for my ImageWriter II, I plan to print a small document using the
> pre-converted fonts the gentleman was kind enough to put together for me to
> actually see the results.
>
> (I'm aware I'd get far better results with a better printer, but that isn't
> in the cards ATM - this is more of a hobbyist thing.)
>
> Rodney

They won't look very good when printed. Apple screen fonts are based at 72
dots per inch. Even an old printer like the ImageWriter II has twice that
resolution e.g if you print a document using Verdana 9 point the system will
send an 18-point version to the printer. If there isn't one it will just
scale up the one you have. With Pointless though it will automatically
supply fonts to the printer at larger point sizes by rendering them
on-the-fly.

--
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand

Apple II - Future Cop:LAPD - Warcraft II
http://homepage.mac.com/rojaws
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