\centerline{\bf uk\TeX ug meets again} \smallskip \noindent The third Meeting of the UK \TeX{} Users' Group was held at the University of Aston, on 11 October 1989. The programme was presented in two parts, Fonts: how they are created and Fonts: how they are used. As one of those attending said, this was a nice \TeX{} meeting -- \TeX{} didn't get mentioned by the speakers until after tea! \smallskip \leftline{\sl Summary of papers} \noindent David Kindersley -- `Making letterforms': this talk was built around a set of marvellous 35\,mm slides showing the various kinds of lettering that he had designed and carved. In particular these illustrated the freedom available to a designer making a fairly short inscription which could be seen as a work of art as well as conveying a message in words. Among the additional freedoms were the ability to superimpose letters within a word, to make minor adjustments to the sizes of the letters so that the words would fit the space and the chance to create a backward sloping italic to fit a design. Against that had to be set the necessity of making systematic adjustments to letter sizes so that words could still be read on, for example, a horizontal memorial set into the floor. David Kindersley also talked about his search for an algorithm to ensure correct letter spacing in typesetting. This is built on the basis that letter spacing should be applied to groups of three letters -- the middle of the three should be in the optical centre -- and that it is possible to compute a `centre' for each letter in a fount. His method ignores the bounding rectangle which was imposed on metal type. Paul Bacsich (Open University) -- `\PS\ needs MoreMaths': a talk illustrated with overhead projector slides, spoke about his project to design additional characters to be used with \PS\ so that output to be printed in a combination of Times and Symbol (for the Greek letters) could also include as many maths symbols as Computer Modern. His particular aim was to have available in Times\slash Symbol\slash MoreMath a set of pi characters comprising all the pi characters in Computer Modern, the relevant ISO standard and the \sgml\ list. Apart from needing to design the actual characters in some cases, it was necessary to find the baseline of the font and, even more important, its maths axis so that all the characters may be set properly. Sarah Winthrop (Linotype) gave a short introduction to typography -- communicating by means of the printed word. She included a brief history of type, including the system devised by Frutiger for the Univers font family of using a two-digit code to indicate the style of the face, e.g., roman, italic, condensed, (second digit) and the weight: anything from ultra light to extra black (first digit). She also explained the reason why different sizes of type generally need different designs within the same typeface. Andrew Boag (Reading University) used 35\,mm slides from two carousels -- so that he could show two slides together when needed to illustrate his talk, `Creating Letterforms'. He also circulated a handout. His talk was based on seven points describing what type is and therefore what type design is, and what those seven points mean for the type designer. His illustrations showed screens from various type design programs. James Mosley -- `Type, evolution and examples' had been billed as talking about digital type, but assured the audience that he would in fact be talking entirely about analogue type! He started by talking about the constituents of the (English) character set -- the capital and lower case letters and the digits; the \& and other oddities. He reminded us that Western languages were unique in using two forms for each letter (upper and lower case). The upper case letters were based on Roman inscriptions, particularly the letters used on Trajan's Column; lower case type was originally designed to mimic fifteenth and sixteenth century handwriting; and the digits were based on Arabic shapes. All these shapes, together with some oddities, had been incorporated into the original typewriter and had moved into the standard computer character set from there. There had been various experiments in typography, such as monoline type with no distinction between upper and lower case. Another experiment was the use of sans serif fonts. He showed a slide of a book published in 1900 using a sans serif font -- although the page was very decorated. James Mosley then showed slides of some of the earliest examples of features that are part of modern typefaces: a Greek inscription from 340 {\sc bc} showed undoubted serifs; an illustration from 1200 {\sc bc} showing characters made by a reed pen or brush showed shading -- the change of thickness in the character shape, and an inscription found in Pompeii shows a thick\slash thin contrast in upper case letters. We were then shown pictures of the original types and their twentieth century versions of the typefaces Bembo, Garamond, Plantin and Grandjon\slash Galliard. These were followed by slides showing copperplate, and the Baskerville type face, developments of which include the advertising fat faces and Bodoni. The final slides showed traditional punch cutting, as still carried out at the Imprimerie Nationale, and the later technique of drawing the type on paper followed by automatic cutting. Andrew Trevorrow -- `Drivers revealed' started the second part of the programme by demonstrating his own \OzTeX{} and Victor Ostromoukhov's Mac\MF, using an Apple Macintosh SE and a Dataframe projector. As usual, the projected image was just a bit too dim for comfortable reading. He showed the results of running the previewer trip test, which resulted in a few pages on all of which the printing was way out of the page area Rod Mulvey (CUP) described the \TeX{}-to-Type system which has been developed at the Printing House of Cambridge University Press. They typeset their work on a Monotype Lasercomp at 1000\,dpi using an extended range of \TeX{} fonts. CUP will supply \TeX{} design packs based on well-tested macros which include their preferred book design. To get \TeX{} to use the Monotype typefaces in place of Computer Modern it had been necessary to compile \tfm\ files for the Monotype fonts, bearing in mind that Monotype only supply the width of the characters, not their height. Sebastian Rahtz (Southampton University) on `\PS\ is good for you': spoke about the problems encountered when trying to use Computer Modern fonts with other \TeX{} fonts, such as the sans serif, and at sizes other than their design sizes. Although it should be easy to give \TeX{} a different set of \tfm\/s in order to set in a different typeface, there was quite a lot of CM-linked information built into \TeX{}. Most of this was in the maths setting parts of \TeX{}. If you want to use fonts other than CM, there are three approaches: \item{\it1:} If using |lfonts| -- strip out the CM fonts and replace them with what you want; \item{\it2:} Redefine the fonts and the macros; \item{\it3:} Throw away all the Knuth font information and redo it (this approach is described in detail in \TUGboat 10(2)). In `\PS\ meets Computer Modern' Les Carr (Southampton University) talked about his attempt to convert Computer Modern fonts into \PS\ fonts. It had seemed an attractive project as both \MF\ and \PS\ use Bezi\`er curves. The idea had been to refine the \MF\ descriptions to get the information that \PS\ needs; this worked up to a point, but the whole project proved impossible. In fact, short of scanning images of the individual characters into \PS\, there was no way of moving from \MF\ to \PS. Phil Taylor (Royal Holloway and Bedford New College) -- `Computer Modern meets \PS'. Phil Taylor had been involved in the production of a book that used the Times typeface for text, Computer Modern for maths and Adobe Symbol for Greek and similar. The real problems came with the maths setting, as in the book all the equations were in capital letters, not the lower case envisaged by Knuth. To get the mathematical symbols in to the right places in relation to capital letters, he had written a splendid macro that when presented with a relevant symbol raised it by the correct amount to match the capital letters. \rightline{\sl Carol Hewlett}