Re: noclip=0 with postscript fonts

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Med Bennett (mbennett@indra.com) writes:

> Same as when I use font=0.  What's the differnce anyway?  I never understood this
> keyword completely.

FONT=1 selects true-type fonts. These are polygon filled fonts,
that act very much like vectors fonts. That is, they can be rotated
in 3D space, etc., since each polygon is a 3D list of points. 

IDL comes with four true-type font families: times, helvetica,
courier, and symbol. You can use others if you have them.
For example, to use the Times font I would do this:

   Device, Set_Font='Times*16', /TT_Font
   Plot, Findgen(11), Font=1, Title='This title is in TIMES typeface.'

True-type fonts don't look so great in direct graphics on
the display (although they always look fabulous in hardcopy).
If you want neat JPEG text, you sometimes have to do the
trick of drawing into a window that is 4-5 times larger
than you really want, with THICK=5, SIZE=5, etc, and then
take a snapshot of the larger window and rebin it to the
size you really want. This make text look great, usually,
although it can be a fair amount of work.

Hardware fonts may or may not be true-type fonts, depending
upon your printer, what kinds of fonts you have installed on
your printer, etc. There are many variations, although I think
*most* fonts on *most* printers these days are probably true-type
fonts. They are slower to render, but they scale nicely.

Cheers,

David
-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
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