If the line of text were printed with stroked characters at 18 raster units per character, then 1296 raster units would be required per line of text. This is not too many characters per line. Although the number of characters per line is less than 72 for the texts of the American Institute of Physics3 or the American Mathematical Society4, it may be more than 72 for the texts of the Cambridge University Press17.
Requirements
It seems apparent that the S-C 4010 and the S-C 4020 cathode ray printers do not have small enough plotting dots and large enough rasters to meet the requirements for the printing of mathematical texts. The S-C 4060 cathode ray printer could meet the requirements if the plotting dot were truly 2 raster units in diameter and the starting and stopping of vectors were controlled to within a raster unit.
CHARACTER DESIGN
Design Criteria
There would be no problem in copying any existing character if the cathode ray printer did not have a finite plotting dot and a finite raster size. The problem of design arises from the need to make a compromise between the three factors of smallness, smoothness, and legibility. It is desirable to make the characters as small as possible so that as many characters can be printed on a line of print as possible. It is desirable to make the edges of curved lines smooth so that characters may have a professional appearance. It is essential that there be no loss of legibility because of bridging or filling of small gaps. The finest detail in any character of an alphabet sets a limit on the smallness of character for the whole alphabet.
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