[OS X TeX] Font in TeXShop

[William Adams]

On Feb 22, 2006, at 2:29 PM, Arthur Snoke wrote:

> Comments have been made in this thread that Times New Roman and  
> Times are almost identical.  On the mac, I find one significant  
> difference between them, and also for how Times New Roman is  
> rendered in different applications.  This is relevant to the  
> current thread because it suggests there are several sets of fonts  
> on the Mac with the same descriptors but different properties, so  
> compatibility among font rendering can be problematic.
>
> In WORD, for size 11 (for example), Times takes up significantly  
> less space than TNR -- that is more words on a page with Times.   
> Also find things like word spacing different depending on the font  
> -- and to some extent the size.
>
> If I have a WORD (Office X) document and want to preserve links  
> when saving to PDF (I have Acrobat 7), it does not work in WORD,  
> but it does work in OpenOffice 2.  But the same document with the  
> same font and size takes up more space (fewer words per page) in  
> Open Office than in WORD. Also, not all characters are rendered  
> correctly in Open Office (version 2).  NeoOffice (which last I  
> looked is based on OO v1.something) does not preserve links but has  
> a much better html writer than WORD but again fonts are not  
> rendered the same as in WORD -- although more characters come  
> across okay.
>
> I would appreciate explanations to these observations.  Also, is  
> "Times" more likely to be rendered the same among applications  
> compared to "TNR"? Are some sizes (12 vs. 11, for example) more  
> likely to work better when communicating between WORD and LaTex --  
> and with users on different operating systems?  That is, are any  
> among these more universal?

Times New Roman as bundled with Windows (TrueType) is based on the 12  
pt. matrices for Times New Roman, the Times font created by Monotype  
for _The Times_ in London.

Times as bundled with PostScript things and part of the Core 13  
fonts, and a member of the ``LaserWriter Gang of 35'' is based on the  
18 pt. matrices. It was created by Linotype when Monotype failed to  
apply for a trademark on ``Times'' as used for a typeface name in the  
US in a timely fashion.

It's the differing optical sizes which result in different line  
breaks. Set text in TNR and heads in Times for a nice appearance.

Walter Tracy's delightful book, _Letters of Credit_ has a lot more on  
this.

NeoOffice seems to've somehow gotten some tweaking done to it to  
ensure that Mac-encoded characters come out correctly --- I think  
this was in-between 1.0 and 1.1, but not 100% certain. I did see  
quotes change from coming out wrong to right after an update while  
using it to make some spreadsheets listing photos for a publishing job.

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications



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