| Fonts are readily available on the Internet these days, so finding fonts you might need is no biggie. You just download them and drop them into the Fonts folder (see the section later on adding fonts). Also, OpenType makes it easier to compress and incorporate fonts into your documents so that, when you share them with others, they are displayed correctly even if the recipient doesn't have the fonts installed in his or her system. NOTE From this point on, I'll use the terms OpenType and TrueType interchangeably because they are so closely related. But what if you have older documents that were formatted with fonts not in your system and that you can't acquire? Some word processors, such as Microsoft Word, have an option to substitute missing fonts with present fonts. In Word, choose Tools, Options, Compatibility, Font Substitutions. If all the fonts you need to print the document are installed in the system, you are told that everything is hunky dory. If not, you can make changes. Check the help file for the word processing program for details. Another kind of font substitution pertains only to PostScript printers. Because PostScript printers have internal fonts, printing is faster using them than forcing Windows to download a similar font file into the PostScript rasterizer and then commence printing. For example, the Windows Arial font and the PostScript Helvetica font are virtually identical. So, you can tell your PostScript printer driver to just use the Helvetica font in the printer whenever you print a document formatted with Arial. Likewise, Times can be substituted for Windows's Times New Roman. A font substitution table is responsible for setting the relationship of the screen and printer fonts. In Windows NT, 2000, and XP, you can find this table on the Device Settings tab of a Printer's Properties dialog box. Microsoft's Special LCD Font Technology: ClearType Remember the eight-track tape player? (Oops, there I go dating myself again.) Okay, how about an LP record? Well, the newest kid on the block in the list of landfill items are those fat, heavy, heat-producing old CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitors. Yup, now we have more room on our desks for paper-clip organizers and pen holders. Nowadays, having a CRT stigmatizes you as a relic of the past. All the major manufacturers, Dell, NEC, Mag, Sony, and the rest have gently been "encouraging" us all to shell out fairly big time for the privilege of staring at LCD (liquid crystal displays) instead of glowing phosphor ones. Everyone is being quickly converted to LCDs regardless of what's currently on our desktops. Of course, wrist watches and calculators have used LCDs for years. PalmPilots, cash registers, ATMs, pay phones, and even gas pumps use them. And, of course, all laptop computer displays are LCD in one form or another. Soon to proliferate the market will be ebookselectronic gadgets you can read plug-in or downloadable books on, complete with text, graphics, hot links, and more. Realizing the increasing popularity of the LCD for text display, the folks at Microsoft who were working on TrueType and OpenType got to thinking about improving that technology. Because the pixels on an LCD are square rather than round, and because their focus is perfect (there is no bleeding between dots, which tends to smooth out the look a tad), low-to-medium resolution LCDs tend to display text with a choppy look. To worsen the matter, pixels in LCDs are typically on or off. Microsoft came up with ClearType, which it claims will make words on your LCD screens look as smooth as the words on a piece of paper. Essentially, ClearType is not dissimilar from the font smoothing in TrueType screen fonts. It's just tailored to LCD technology, using shades of gray (or color) to fill in the tiny gaps between and around the pixels that construct onscreen characters. Although ClearType font technology works with existing systems such as CRT monitors or LCD panels being driven by analog video display boards, you're going to see noticeable improvements only on color LCDs driven by digital control boards, such as those found in laptops and high-quality flat panel desktop displays. The advantages gleaned from ClearType are less obvious as the resolution of the LCD panel increases. Low-resolution LCDs form blockier characters because they have fewer pixels to work with. On high-resolution LCDs, pixels are smaller, so pixelation is less obvious to the eye. |
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