[OS X TeX] Arial (or similar) font in TeX

[Adrian Heathcote]

I think William is right here.

I've just put a line in Arial and the same line underneath in Helvetica. 
Both at 36 pts. They are obviously the same font. There are very slight 
differences in the trimming of the extenders, but they are obviously the 
same font underneath.

This means that the solution to the problem of the Grant committee is 
very simple: put it in latex in helvetica. No scanner will discern the 
difference. latex is supplied with GWs distribution. Moreover, it does 
not matter that by default pdftex will not embed Helvetica because 
clearly printed output is what is being called for. (But if desired this 
default behaviour of pdftex can be modified by editing its configuration 
file: you uncomment in one line.)

(But how bloody silly to require grant applications to be in Arial. And 
even stupider, if they are going to insist on this, not to realise that 
Arial = Helvetica = Helvetica Neue (at least for all practical 
purposes). How to make people's lives more difficult!)

HTH

Adrian Heathcote


On Monday, June 24, 2002, at 11:08 PM, William Adams wrote:

> Matthias said:
> (re: Arial / Helvetica)
>> No, it is definitely not. Compare the "R" in both fonts. It's very 
>> clear
>> here, but I could tell you in every example if the font used is 
>> Helvetica
>> or Arial...
>
>> Helvetica is a classic Sans-Serif font (which looks very very 80s like
>> today, imho), Arial is a font designed for screen display, which got 
>> very
>> popular, since it was delivered with Word by Microsoft, and obviously 
>> more
>> fashionable than Times New Roman to many people. It does quite a good 
>> job
>> on screen, but I would never use it in printed form.
>
> Helvetica is a ``grotesk'' which style dates back quite a bit farther
> than the 80s (though it was very popular then) to the tail end of the
> 19th century.
>
> Arial was _not_ created for on-screen display, but as a metrically
> compatible alternative to Helvetica by Monotype for use by IBM with
> their then new laserprinters (originally the fonts bundled with that
> were named after rivers in Colorado, so it was ``Sonora Sans''). For
> those interested in the details, Dr. Chuck Bigelow posted on this to
> comp.fonts and groups.google.com should have it.
>
> Monotype later made it available under the name Arial, and when
> Microsoft needed a way out of the lawsuit from Linotype for trademark
> violations (they'd included bitmap screen fonts named ``helv'' and ``tms
> rmn'' with early versions of Windows (3.0 and before)), they siezed upon
> the Monotype triumvirate of Arial, Times New Roman and Symbol (and paid
> them to cook up a version of Courier (CourierNew), since IBM had never
> troubled to trademark that name (they were busy with anti-trust lawsuits
> at the time)).
>
> Microsoft made use of a cross-license of Apple's then new ``Royal''
> outline font technology to bring these fonts to Windows 3.1. Arial and
> Times New Roman, etc. did receive man _years_ of effort in hinting for
> their TrueType versions so as to optimize them for on-screen display
> though. Monotype continues to do this for other fonts in their ``ESQ''
> (Enhanced Screen Quality) line.
>
> William
>
> --
> William Adams, publishing specialist
> ATLIS Graphics & Design / 717-731-6707 voice / 717-731-6708 fax
> Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
> http://www.atlis.com
>
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