About the forged documents

Chances are, if you're reading this you've already heard about the documents that Dan Rather and CBS presented on 60 Minutes II which purported to show that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard. In my opinion, based on the information I've read so far, these documents are certainly forgeries which were created on a computer. I'm not going to link to all the other bloggers who have posted about this; just click a few links in my blogroll (QandO is a good place to start) and just scroll down.

I do want to address one thing, though. Charles at LGF showed that, if you write one of the documents in Word with the default settings, the spacing and line breaks are identical with the one released by CBS. There was one discrepancy, however, and that had to do with the superscript 'th' which was different in position. When he printed out the document, it looked identical to the CBS document and he chalked it up to the difference between screen and printer fonts.

Having some small expertise in this area (I once did tech support for a major desktop publishing application and fonts was a big support area), I would like to address just why this happens. On a computer (a PC or Mac), you have two different types of fonts in common use. The first is a TrueType font and the second is a PostScript font. These fonts are referred to as "soft" fonts as they are capable of being rendered on the screen by software and downloaded to the printer (depending on the model) for it to use. This is as opposed to fonts built into the printer's ROM, known as built-in fonts or hardware fonts. In the case of Macs and PC's, the software is built into the operating system. The TrueType font technology was licensed to Microsoft by Apple. The PostScript font technology is licensed to Microsoft, and I'm assuming to Apple as well, by Adobe which created PostScript. Prior to Windows 2000, PostScript fonts would only display on the screen through the use of a program called Adobe Type Manager (or ATM). The ATM technology was licensed to MS for Windows 2000 and Windows XP so separate software is no longer needed. In fact, the most recent font format from MS (and I think Macs can use them as well) is called OpenType and is a soft font that includes the font in both TrueType and PostScript formats.

When printing a document that uses a soft font, one of several things can happen depending on what kind of soft font is being used, how the printer driver is configured, and what kind of printer is being doing the printing:

TrueType font

• The font is converted to a PCL soft font when printing to a PCL printer (like many HP Laserjet models, and I think some inkjet printers now as well) and downloaded to the printer. This is done by the OS's font renderer and/or the printer driver.


• The font is converted to a PostScript Type 1 soft font when printing to a PostScript printer and downloaded.


• The font is downloaded to the printer in TrueType format, if the printer supports it.


• The text is converted into bitmap information when printing to printers that don't support downloading fonts (inkjet and dot matrix printers).


• A font that is built into the printer's ROM is substituted for the TrueType font in order to improve performance and reduce the amount of data being sent to the printer.

PostScript font

• I'm not as sure about this one. As I recall, when printing to a non-PostScript printer, regardless of type, the font was converted to bitmap information. Prior to Windows 2000, this required ATM. Windows 2000 and later have that part of ATM built-in.


• When printing to a PostScript printer, the font is just downloaded as is as it's already in the Type 1 format.


• A font that is built into the printer's ROM is substituted for the TrueType font in order to improve performance and reduce the amount of data being sent to the printer.

OpenType font

• As this font format includes both TrueType and PostScript fonts in the same font file, I would guess that the OS decides which of the scenarios above makes the most sense depending on the type of printer.

When the font is substituted with a built-in printer font, the font that is actually used is determined by a table that is included with the printer driver. This behavior can be overridden and the table itself can be modifed by an advanced user.
This is most likely what caused the discrepancy between the screen and printed document that Charles noticed. The font used on the computer was probably Times New Roman and the font that was substituted was Times or Times Roman, or some other variant of Times. Since typefaces are copyrighted, variations from different manufacturers must differ from the original in at least a small way. Arial, for example, is a TrueType font included with Windows since Windows 3.1. It's basically the same as the Adobe typeface Helvetica and, when a document using Arial is printed to a PostScript printer, Helvetica is usually substituted for it since all PostScript printers include Helvetica in ROM.

This is a bit simplified given that I don't want to put you all to sleep and also that it's been over ten years since I worked in that tech support job. A few years ago I did print testing for a Windows application, but I didn't get all that deep into the mechanics. I just made sure it printed correctly to a wide variety of printers and with a wide variety of TrueType, PostScript, and OpenType fonts.