Re: incompatible metrics

[bbeeton <BNB@MATH.AMS.COM>]

berthold horn is looking for a documented example where two vendors
supply fonts with the same name but different metrics.

although this example doesn't meet the letter of that request, it may
still provide useful and relevant information.

the math society has had an autologic aps micro-5 typesetter for
several years, and in the initial complement of fonts was a family
named "times new 2 [roman]".  this family exhibits all the
characteristics typical of what is usually referred to as "times new
[roman]", which was exactly what we had in mind when ordering it.

when we ordered the fonts, it was possible to select from several
different variations, where the differences were in the font complement.
(this is similar to horn's experience with fonts from different vendors,
but localizes it to one vendor.)  to the best of my knowledge, the
particular variations would not be known by different font names or
autologic master id number (including the id number on the disk
provided for installation), but would be distinguished only by a minor
comment on the paperwork.  in practice, if user a were to send a job
to be set on the typesetter of user b, which might have a different
glyph complement for "times new 2 [roman]", the need for checking this
might easily be overlooked, as the name and id number match perfectly,
and only become apparent through a surprise on the output.

autologic has now renamed some of its fonts.  what we obtained as
"times new 2 roman" (font id 1407) is now listed in autologic's font
catalog as "times square roman", with the same id.  it appears, however,
that the actual content of the font is identical as to shape and metrics.

the other idiosyncrasy of this font is the apparent size.  we usually
specify 10pt for out journal and book work.  however, when compared
to the 10pt times from almost any other source, the autologic font
appears to be nearly equivalent to 11pt.  in fact, when set on 12pt
baselines, the autologic times looks very dense, and set solid, it
looks overly cramped (my opinion).  the relative large size of this
font has now been incontrovertibly demonstrated by comparison with the
presumably equivalent 10pt times font used on our new compugraphic
imagesetter (which uses agfa-compugraphic's rendition of the adobe
postscript times).  granted that compugraphic calls the font "times
ten" (id 62p), which is not the same (and in fact, may not be exactly
the same as the name adobe uses, although the design is credited as
licensed from adobe, and the name "times" credited as being a trademark
of linotype), the fact remains: two fonts intended to be comparable
are quite different in apparent size at the same nominal size and must 
therefore have different metrics.
						-- bb
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