Hola Javier,

You just invented the Histogram. PaintShop has this function, though I'm not sure whether it gives you an actual pixel count or a relative number, which would be less useful for what you want.

If you want real savings, I'd go with Laser printers. They're faster and have the lowest cost per page possible. Way lower than inkjets.

Did you consider arial narrow?

Another way to save some ink is to set the type to gray instead of black. 80% gray isn't noticeably different from black.

You didn't get an answer because these gringos don't mind spending an extra $20 in ink per year, whereas in Chile, that's probably a lot of money. I'm not familiar with your economy, but I'd dare to say that minimum wage is probably in the $1.75/hour range and the cost of living is probably similar to the US.

Alex


>Last week I posted a message wondering if someone had a recommendation for a light weight font to be used in reports. Ink cartridges are not cheap, and I thought a lighter font could make a difference at the end of the year.
>
>As I got no answer, I tryed to make a few and simple tests. I took 4 windows standar fonts (Arial, Courier, Tahoma, Verdana) and searched for a light weight font on the Internet (in www.myfonts.com and www.linotype.com). There were several very light weight, like "Premier" or "Aroma ExtraLight", but I did not like their numbers or caps.
>I came up with "ITC AvantGarde Extralight", and did not test but liked the typeface of "Lightline Gothic EF" (I just wanted to buy 1 font for testing).
>I don't like Courier for reports, but I took it as a measure of a standar light weight font.
>Verdana is a font bigger than Arial or Tahoma at the same point size, so I reduced it by 0.5 points.
>
>The test consisted on printing a text mixed with letters and numbers (more numbers than letters), then scan the output at 150 dpi, and put the resulting images under a simple program (made in VFP with GPImage library) which went through all the pixels, calculate the "blacknes" of the pixel, and sum it up. The total number could be an aproximation of how much ink the printer put in the printing.
>
>The results were (figures are percentage of "ink wasted" compared to the heaviest font, so the lower the better):
>- Tahoma = 100%
>- Arial = 99.2%
>- Verdana = 96.6%
>- Courier = 82.6%
>- AvantGarde Extralight = 78.5%
>
>If my methodolgy is near right, then using a lightweight font could save me 20% in ink costs. Asuming that only 50% of the output is letters (being the other 50% images and lines), that would be a 10%. If I waste 5 cartridges a year aprox, and each cartridge is US$20, that is a US$10 saving. The more reports, invoices, memos and so on you produce, the bigger the saving.
>
>That's not pretty much, as the font cost me US$22; but the cost of the font is the same for 5 users. As the number of users in your company or client goes up, then the savings can be great.
>
>This doesn't seem to be of the interest of many people (I didn't get any answer, and when searching on the web for fonts optimized for long listings I got nothing), but I think is not a minor issue for corporations, and besides is the kind of arguments CEOs like to hear.
>
>Just my .02