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A set of fonts that each have the same critical points marked (the curly tip of an f, the three endpoints of a T.)
Extremes of "times bold here, grotesque condensed here" are marked on a page; the formatter interpolates, slowly changing from one
extreme to the other.
[Update: If the two fonts
come from the same family within Don Knuth's Metafont system, this is easy. In the general case, the
consensus seems to be that the result would be too ugly to even try.]
Fontographer
http://www.macromed...cuments/tn3708.html
Tech note describing Fontographer's font interpolation. [tomierna, Mar 01 1998]
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Annotation:
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Douglas Hofstadter's FARG work is very much in this direction. |
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Typographers and designers and such use a nextgen TrueType based system called multiple master fonts. This system works by each font family haviing several dimensions (italic, bold, serif, spacing), and the user can select a font using gradiations of those dimensions (30% serifed, 20% bold, 50% italic). I believe Adobe has had a hand in pushing this technology. |
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TrueType was an Apple innovation licensed by Microsoft and others. |
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Multiple masters were an extension of Adobe's Postscript font technology. You may be familiar with a couple of them as they are included in Adobe Acrobat Reader installs. |
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Additionally, a program called Fontographer has had font interpolation available for quite some time. |
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I think the result would messy and distracting, even if the
fonts were good. |
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If I'm reading something, I know that bold and italic signify
something, depending on context. If the text gradually
starts to become a bit bolder, then bolder yet, then less
bold, then back to regular, it's just going to be annoying.
Does it mean that the text is becoming more important
and then less important? Am I meant to look at the
boldest word as being the most important? And where
exactly did it start getting bold? And where exactly does
the diminishing boldness end? And if a word is just slightly
italic, does that mean it's a slightly foreign word? |
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Some cheap print is uneven, drifting from bold to regular
over several lines, and it's just uggerly and distracting. |
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A bold, italic [-], alas. |
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