LyX, LaTeX, PS, PDF

[Tom Buskey]

bscott at ntisys.com said:
>On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, at 12:00am, gnhlug at sophic.org wrote:
>> Earlier in this thread, I think someone suggested doing this via LaTeX
>> commands; it's probably much easier to do it from the LyX Format->Document
>> menu.  In the "fonts" selection box, choose times.
>
>  Ahhh.... yes.  That UI option has the exact same effect as the LaTeX magic
>mwl suggested.  Literally -- the resulting PDF files are byte-for-byte
>identical.
>
><RHETORICAL>
>
>  So, like, in general, the "Times" font will always look good?  Why does
>LyX pick another default font if "Times" is better?  Who decided "Times"  
>gets to look good?  Why don't the other fonts form a union and demand equal

(not being a LyX user, but a LaTeX user) The default font for TeX is
Computer Modern as designed by Knuth in Metafont.  For awhile, it was
hard to use the postscript fonts instead of the CM fonts.

I'd guess that the CM fonts are bitmapped and that's why they don't 
look so good in PDF, etc.

As I remember using the AM (Almost Modern) fonts on VMS...  It was 
amazing to be able to change fonts, do math and simple graphics at all.  The 
alternative was wordstar and maybe wordperfect 4.2.  Most printers 
were 9pin dot matrix.  

>rights?  I'm happy my problem is fixed, but this whole thing strikes me as
>being rather magic.  :)
>
>  I suppose obtaining true enlightenment would probably involve actually
>*learning* about LaTeX/TeX/etc, which, while intellectually appealing, is
>something I likely won't have time to do for the next lifetime or two...
>

It's interesting that TeX and Metafont were developed by D. Knuth 
because he got frustrated with mathmatical typesetting while writing 
his famous computer science series.  TeX and Metafont were a side 
project he developed while working on his *real* work.  If you did into 
some of the filenames, you'll notice 6.3 file names.  He developed it 
on SAIL which a filename limit of 6 characters plus extension.  Made it 
easier to port to DOS, etc



-- 
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Tom Buskey