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In contrast, printer fonts for the popular Apple LaserWriter were based on PostScript Type 1 outlines, resulting in excellent output at all printer sizes, but failing on the 72 dot per inch Mac screens.

Here Adobe provided hand tuned bitmaps to cover the small screen fonts, and ugly scaling of any other size on the screen was also provided.

Outline fonts have a set of drawing instructions for lines and curves to create a shape for each character ( a " glyph ").

By following the drawing instructions, the computer creates an " outline " shape at a specific size, and then " fills " it with ink.

But this only works down so small, and then Adobe secretly included hints to reach around 18 point.

Below this size in the Mac Postscript could not provide on the fly quality outline font scaling.