This article originally appeared in TidBITS on 1991-06-10 at 12:00 p.m.
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Outlines to PICT

by Adam C. Engst

As part of some design work I was doing, I converted a few Type 1 fonts to outlines and compared the results. Metamorphosis Professional and FontMonger take very different approaches here. Metamorphosis Professional attempts to convert the bezier curves to smooth polygons while FontMonger replaces the curve with a multitude of line segments. The Metamorphosis Professional conversion was much more aesthetically pleasing at an unreduced size. FontMonger's conversion suffered at an unreduced size with very blocky curves. Both looked quite acceptable if they were reduced sufficiently. FontMonger's conversion, though not quite as elegant, didn't suffer a problem I encountered with Metamorphosis: in one instance, I was converting a 500 point italic 'm'. Metamorphosis Professional goofed on the curves causing the outer curve to swing in past the inner curve so I had to adjust the outlines by hand in Canvas. FontMonger, because of its different methodology, didn't suffer this problem.