Typography

[dmb@PALM.CRAY.COM]

   I agree that Veijo's demo sheet looks pretty good, but that's not all
that surprising since Knuth designed the Computer Modern fonts to harmonize
with each other.  Actually since the CM fonts were based on Monotype 8 or
some such, perhaps the credit should go to Monotype's designer.  In any
case, a few comments are in order.  Real Courier seems to be a bit less
bold than cmtt while CourierBold is even bolder than cmtt.  It's more
difficult to compare real Helvetica with the cmss that Veijo used.  They
seem to be about equal in blackness, though there are some differences in
letter shapes.  I seem to recall that there are some height differences
between Times and Helvetica of the same point size, so interline spacing
might differ between lines containing Helvetica mixed with Times and lines
that are pure Times.  Of course, even sticking with the standard PostScript
fonts one could use AvantGuard instead of Helvetica or Bookman or NewCentury
Schoolbook instead of Times.  I believe that Courier is the only monospaced
font in the standard collection.  My only complaint in this whole discussion
is the inability to distinguish between a capital I and a lower case l in
the sans-serif fonts.  This used to drive me wild in the original Loglan
books, but is less of a problem here, since Lojban has adopted the convention
of using a lower case i to start sentences.

Dave Bowen