"Eco Clean" wrote in message
news | - Jonathan N. Little wrote:
|
| Plethora of like companies out there.

| Thanks for all your advice, which is greatly appreciated. We will be
| sinking these poles in the ground deeply to withstand ferocious winds out
| here, and they must last for years outdoors.

Here's an informative link:

https://www.signs.com/price-calculator/

6 sheets custom vinyl lettering at 12x18, $135.

Are you familiar with commercial vinyl lettering?
It's created on a vinyl plotter, from a sheet
of adhesive vinyl. The letters are cut and then
you apply them from the sheet, so that spacing
is perfect.

Not exactly cheap, but you need to compare
it to the cost of printer ink, spray cans, etc.
I'm guessing that you're already looking at
sinking at least $50 into the project with that
method.

Another way to go about it would be to visit
a local sign shop and see if they'll give you a deal
on it. (I once did that, trading a 6-pack of
homebrew beer for a custom bumper sticker.)

| Up to now, this has been a purely pragmatic question but I'd like to ask a
| theoretical question of you since you brought up the topic vectoring,
which
| I know little about.
|
| I fully *agree* with you that if people print *directly* to the final
| medium, then vectoring is probably critical for smooth edges on the
borders
| and lines, but what about the fonts?
|
| Q: Aren't true-type fonts supposed to fix that ragged-edge problem?
|
It's an issue you have to take in context. There's
a difference between a bitmap enlarged and fonts
printed big in the first place. Remember the link
to software I posted early on? I tried that to make
sure it worked OK. I hadn't looked at it for years.
That uses the most basic Windows API function,
DrawText, to paint text to a DIB or device-independent
bitmap. I created a 600pt A in verdana, then saved
it as a BMP. All raster. The A printed out about 6" high
with perfectly straight edges.

Vector has advantages for flexible sizing of simple
shapes because it uses mathematical formulae to define
the image rather than a grid of color points. But that
doesn't necessarily mean vector is better in a
given usage. And there's also thefactor of getting used
to the software. If that works for you then do it.
If it doesn't, it really dosn't matter.

If you print a typical A of maybe 14 pixels and blow
it up you'll probably get something like an ink smudge.
Or if it's not anti-aliased you'll get a squiggly A. But
with reasonable resizing that's not an issue.

You're also not concerned about slightly fuzzy
edges here.

So don't worry about raster vs vector. Do what
works for the task. Maybe you're enjoying all this
exploring, but it seems to me that you're just wasting
time by going around in circles, looking at each
option over and over rather than systematically
narrowing down the best approach. Maybe it
makes sense for you to do all your exploring and then
come back if there are *specific* questions.