Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!captkidd
From: captkidd@athena.mit.edu (Ivan Cavero Belaunde)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Adobe Type Manager
Message-ID: <14699@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 27 Sep 89 18:24:06 GMT
References: <15514@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <1179@adobe.UUCP> <5516@wiley.UUCP> <2463@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <125093@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>  <1236@adobe.UUCP> <20062@usc.edu> <13818@well.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: captkidd@athena.mit.edu (Ivan Cavero Belaunde)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 45

In article <13818@well.UUCP> capslock@well.UUCP (Allen Crider) writes:
> Free? Very few "Royal" fonts are going to be free. Ever since Apple's
>announcement of System 7, I've gotten the impression that people think
>fonts will be absolutely free. 
>  What I really hate is the idea of having to buy Royal Palatino, Royal
>Avant Garde, Royal Baskerville, five varieties of "Royal"
>Garamond. I already own these in Adobe PostScript.

I believe the plan is to include Outline fonts definitions for the
standard LW+ fonts (and possibly the other fonts [NY, Geneva, Chicago]
as well) with System 7.  Furthermore, since Apple's making the font
specs public and joining forces with Microsoft in establishing it
as a standard in both Mac and IBM OS/2 platforms, I would expect
conversion programs (PS Type 3 and even Type 1 fonts to Apple Format)
practically overnight (especially the Type 3 conversion).  I mean,
what are you going to do?  Using ATM in conjunction with System 7 will
probably wreak havok with the Layout manager, and if you stay in
System 6 you give up all the other powerful features of System 7.
I find the conversion program a much more likely and useful alternative.

>Apple Computer has stated they will only provide a
>few fonts to be released with System 7. The rest will come from foundries
>like Bitstream or typesetting machine manufacturers such as Linotype
>and Varityper. They ain't gonna let 'em go cheap!

Yup, that's true.  What I'd like to see is a semi-automated Fontographer.
Right now it allows you to load in scanned images, run them through
Auto-Trace, and produce PostScript characters.  The thing is, it's
*extremely* tedious to do this with every character.  It would be
nice to see smart software which would take a scanned image, attempt to
split it in "character cells" and then allow you to correspond the cells
to appropriate characters (and of course with pre-defined character order
layouts as well).  After that it would chug away, Auto-Tracing the
characters and finally spitting out an outline font.  After all, there
are several type books in the market, which are filled with nothing but
samples of type.  Can you see it?  Go to the bookstore, drop $30 on this
book, scan the pages in, and in a couple of days, you can have a *huge*
type library.  I don't foresee any legal problems either, since this
seems to be "fair use" of the material - after all, the end result is a
printed document with those fonts, and graphic artists have been doing
that for years already.

-Ivan

Internet: captkidd@athena.mit.edu