Page:A contribution to computer typesetting techniques - tables of coordinates for Hershey's repertory of occidental type fonts and graphic symbols (IA contributiontoco424wolc).pdf/9

 case, auxiliary devices are available to make film copies, and to make enlargements on paper or on short-run printing plates

These devices are related in design to a whole series of optical phototypesetters and electronic typesetters developed for graphic arts computerized typesetting A state-of-the-art review, of computer-assisted phototypesetting, circa 1967, (NBS Monograph 99) by M. E. Stevens and J. H. Little [9] already contains a description of the General Dynamics S-C 4020 - a precursor to all the modern COM devices.

At the time the National Bureau of Standards acquired an S-C 4020 it had already made extensive use of the Linofilm phototypesetter and the Linotron electronic typesetter at the Government Printing Office. Certain obvious advantages of an in-house machine led us to examine the output from this COM device to determine its utility in preparing computer program listings for publications. We found the results from that machine inferior to results achieved on the linofilm phototypesetter using the monowidth typewriter font (Clarinda) as shown in figure 1. Manufacturers of state-of-the-art COM devices can now supply monowidth type fonts capable of producing graphic-arts quality output for program listings and similar material from computer print tapes.

While the monowidth characters normally supplied with most of the COM devices are suitable for program listings, they are not adequate for scientific text as shown in figure 2 or mathematical text as shown in figure 3. Such texts can, however, be generated on many of the current COM devices via programs which utilize Hershey's digitized characters discussed and illustrated in this publication.

The remarkable versatility of Hershey's system is best exemplified by figures 4 et. seq. The first of these (figure 4) is a page taken from one of Hershey's mathematical works (reference 7). The others represent a miscellany of applications taken either from cited references or produced especially for this report. It should be recognized that the character generation which this publication addresses is only half of what is required to produce the finished pages illustrated. The placement of the characters in their precise location on the page must be handled via suitable typographic programs. Such a suit of programs has indeed been developed by Dr. Hershey and are reported in references 2, 3, and 4. They were indispensible in the preparation of some of the illustrations in this publication.

Unless otherwise noted the figures and appendices were produced via the following process:

a) Input was supplied via card deck and magnetic tape to the Hershey typographic system resident on the NBS-UNIVAC 1108 computer to produce a driver tape for the FR-80 COM device

b) The 35mm film produced by the COM device was run through a microfilm reader-printer to produce full size pages.

c) Page numbers were applied by hand and the resulting camera-ready pages were submitted for offset-printing in the usual manner.

For the text we did not make use of Hershey's Typographic System. We used only his character digitization and his COM output routines. The line justification was carried out by an existing typography program, developed at NBS by Mrs. Carla Messina, simply by incorporating Hershey's character widths instead of those normally used on the Linotron 1010.

The text itself was keyboarded on-line to the Department of Commerce's text editing system via an ASCII coded terminal. The corrected text was dumped on a