gelphman@adobe.COM (David Gelphman) (08/11/89)
There has been a lot of discussion on the net about the HP DeskWriter printer and outline fonts, so I thought people would be interested in the Adobe Type Manager and its impact on such topics. This week at MacWorld, Adobe Systems is showing the recently announced Adobe Type Manager (ATM) for the Macintosh. What it does: Simply stated, ATM allows PostScript outline fonts produced with our font technology to be rendered on the display and on non-PostScript output devices. This all works transparently to virtually all applications on the Macintosh. For example, suppose I normally use the Stone downloadable PostScript typefaces. The package comes with screen fonts for all the faces in sizes 10,12,14,18,24. Also included are the outline fonts which I just copy into my System Folder. Without ATM installed, Apple QuickDraw will scale the bit images of the bitmap screen fonts if I choose anything besides those sizes I've installed. If you seen bit scaling of fonts, you know the quality degrades dramatically. If you print on a PostScript printer, the LaserWriter driver takes care of downloading the PostScript outline to the printer and the printer uses it to render characters at all sizes with high quality results. With ATM installed, any point size chosen can be rendered on the screen from the PostScript outline in the system folder. If the screen font is available it is used. If it isn't available, ATM reads the outline and renders the characters on the fly. This applies to both drawing on the screen and printing. The quality of characters, even down to 10 points on the screen is excellent. When you print to non-PostScript printers such as the ImageWriter, LaserWriter SC and DeskWriter printers, you get high quality type, the latter two at up to 300 dpi. ATM works with the entire Adobe software library of fonts. This is more than 100 packages of type with more than 400 typefaces total. Linotype, Agfa-Compugraphic, Varityper, Monotype, Autologic, and Morisawa have licensed the Adobe BuildFont(tm) technology so we can expect the number of faces to explode in the future. The first release of ATM will NOT support so-called 'type 3' fonts...they require a PostScript interpreter and ATM is not a PostScript interpreter. I don't know what the plans are regarding this in the future. At MacWorld Boston we are also showing a version of Adobe Illustrator 88 which uses ATM to generate not only uniformly scaled type but also rotated and skewed type. No more transformed bitmaps, just nice smooth type generated from outlines. In other programs where PICTs with text can be scaled uniformly (most Word Processors, etc.), the type is also built from outlines so you get smooth, squished text as appropriate. I hope this isn't too much like an ad, I don't mean it to be. I just want to be informative. The ATM package is $99 retail and comes with 13 outline fonts (Times-Roman, Helvetica, Courier, Symbol, and the Bold, Italic, and BoldItalic variations of the first three faces). These correspond to the 13 faces in all PostScript printers. A separate package will be available which includes the remaining 22 which are in most PostScript printers sold today. I don't know if pricing has been determined. Again, all the faces in the Adobe type library can be used with Adobe Type Manager. I hope this information is useful. David Gelphman Adobe Systems Incorporated
gelphman@adobe.COM (David Gelphman) (08/13/89)
I've received a bunch of mail indicating I forgot to include one vital piece of information about when the Adobe Type Manager will be available. (oops) It will be available October 1989. It will be available through the usual retail channels (I would expect those dealers who carry the Adobe Type Library are especially likely to carry Adobe Type Manager) and direct from Adobe via our Font and Function ordering service. (800-833-6687 from 8am to 4pm PST). Hope this helps, David Gelphman Adobe Systems Incorporated