folta@tove.cs.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) (06/07/90)
I just got TypeStyler for my birthday, and I would like to share my initial observations with anyone who might be contemplating purchasing it. 1. I like the program. It is easy to use and has reasonable power. 2. The names and layout on the menubar don't quite click with me; they don't seem "intuitive" to me. 3. TypeStyler now works with Adobe Type 1 fonts. BUT, it does so by converting them to SmoothFonts first (as a separate process, not on the fly). Each SmoothFont takes up about 50K of diskspace, so any font (e.g. Futura Extra Bold) you convert now takes 3x the space (~30K PostScript + ~50K SmoothFont) 4. It is a shame that you need a separate program to manipulate fonts. It would be nice if FreeHand 3.0 would allow you to turn PostScript letters to outlines on the fly! 5. Either TypeStyler or MACL 1.3.2 caused our IIci to crash after using them for a while. The Finder seemed to think we had plenty of free RAM--which we should have--but launched applications disagreed. With more time, we will isolate which is the culprit. -- Wayne Folta (folta@cs.umd.edu 128.8.128.8)