isle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ken Hancock) (08/04/89)
Now that Adobe has finally switched over to shipping their fonts in NFNT format, I thought many problems would be solved. Then someone told me that the bitmap files that Adobe is shipping still contain a FOND resource for each styled font. (See Technote #198. This is labeled as the WRONG way to do it... There should only be one FOND for the font family). Would someone who has the new Adobe files please verify if this is true and e-mail? I'll summarize to the net. Thanks in advance -- Ken Ken Hancock '90 | E-mail: (BITNET/UUCP/INTERNET) Computer Resource Center Consultant | isle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu ------------------------------------+--------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER? I don't get paid enough to worry about disclaimers.
briand@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM (Brian Diehm) (08/05/89)
>Now that Adobe has finally switched over to shipping their >fonts in NFNT format, I thought many problems would be solved. > >Then someone told me that the bitmap files that Adobe is >shipping still contain a FOND resource for each styled >font. (See Technote #198. This is labeled as the WRONG >way to do it... There should only be one FOND for the >font family). Yes, Adobe does this. They do it, I believe, for a couple of reasons - one, it gives you a choice because it isn't that difficult to remove the extra FONDs, and two, because they have some very complex font families, with many more weights than just roman and bold. I agree with you, this is the WRONG way to do it. The PostScript alliance is distributing them without the extra FONDs. However, all you have to do is to use ResEdit to delete the extra FOND resources. Nothing more than that. -- -Brian Diehm Tektronix, Inc. (503) 627-3437 briand@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM P.O. Box 500, M/S 39-383 Beaverton, OR 97077 (SDA - Standard Disclaimers Apply)
bezanson@adobe.COM (Brian Bezanson) (08/05/89)
In article <14827@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> isle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ken Hancock) writes: >Now that Adobe has finally switched over to shipping their >fonts in NFNT format, I thought many problems would be solved. Some are, but NFNTs are not a perfect solution. ID conflicts were reduced and the fonts are in the new format. [NFNTs have a slight problem, the new numbers are for the FONDs and Adobe has registered there fonts with Apple and has unique IDs from Apple. But off of this base FOND you have your style links to the NFNT fonts to display the font. The problem here is that for one FOND (with a registered ID), it can have 20 faces or more - my example is 10,12,14,18,24 point in plain, bold, italic, bold-italic, and these NFNT numbers aren't registered and are randomly changed by the Font/DA mover when you copy fonts to a new suitcase (see technote 198). So if you use MasterJuggler or Suitcase to access your fonts, the base FONDs are okay, but the font files may have conflicting NFNT numbers. This is where MasterJuggler 1.5's auto NFNT renumber is a savior. You can also get a simliar effect by using Suitcase II's Font Harmonizer and selecting all the font files and harmonizing them.] >Then someone told me that the bitmap files that Adobe is >shipping still contain a FOND resource for each styled >font. (See Technote #198. This is labeled as the WRONG >way to do it... There should only be one FOND for the >font family). >Would someone who has the new Adobe files please verify >if this is true and e-mail? I'll summarize to the net. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I guess I'm summarizing here :-) In the ideal world there would be only one FOND - if the ideal world all applications support using fonts by font name (TechNote 191) and all fonts were only 4 faces (plain, bold, italic, bolditalic). Unfortunately, this isn't true. When the choice was made to go from FONTs to NFNTs, a lot of decisions were made. Should we do it? How do we best support the current user base? How do we not break applications that people have (Word 1.x, PageMaker 2.x, etc...)? The hardest part was deciding whether to go with 'short menus' - where you have the single FOND that knows about the style links, but it was designed for a 4 face family, and most of the new fonts on the market have more faces than that (semi-bold, semi-bold italic). With this situation you have two short menus, one for [plain, bold, italic, bolditalic] and another for [semi-bold,semi-bolditalic]. But wait, some designers would want their font weights combined differently - switch the semis and bolds around. And then if someone originally uses an old FONT - which were in the 'long menu' style, and is using an application that correctly remembers font names, he takes this to his local service bureau and they have NFNTs, will it work? If the service bureau has NFNT long menus, yes, because the names are the same, if they have short - no, because there is no way to make the name 'B 1Stone Serif Bold' to '1Stone Serif' with the Bold style option. So the decision was made - for user safety - to update to NFNTs, but keep the long menus. This meant that we made 6 fonts for a family like Stone Serif [plain, bold, italic, italic, semi-bold, and semi-bolditalic]. When placed in a single suitcase you get 6 FONDs. The main family maps to the main four [plain, bold, italic, bold-italic]. The Italic FOND has links to bolditalic, the same style information is kept for the other faces. No one has any easy answers on how to solve this problem with multiple weights. The ideal solution would be for applications to remember fonts by PostScript name (then users can name the screen fonts how they like and there won't be conflicts when taken to someone elses machines - where they named them differently). And the font and style choices would be like those in smart art, where it shows the family name, and build the style list from the FOND which shows all styles/ weights possible. Well this has probably been a longer response that most wanted, but I wanted to be clear on what is involved with fonts - a lot. ---- Brian Bezanson bezanson@adobe.com
frank@mnetor.UUCP (Frank Kolnick) (08/05/89)
In article <14827@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> isle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ken Hancock) writes: >Now that Adobe has finally switched over to shipping their >fonts in NFNT format, I thought many problems would be solved. Well, it cleans up *their* act, and admits the potential for application manufacturers to clean up theirs. I upgraded to Adobe's new screen fonts a few weeks ago. Only one of the dozen or so apps I use regularly use didn't break, and one one broke beyond repair. As for the rest, only time will tell (Microsoft?). > >Then someone told me that the bitmap files that Adobe is >shipping still contain a FOND resource for each styled >font. (See Technote #198. This is labeled as the WRONG >way to do it... There should only be one FOND for the >font family). I didn't check them all (there's 16 diskettes worth, and I didn't install all of them), but the couple dozen I did check had one FOND per family. I imagine Adobe was consistent throughout the rest. -- Frank Kolnick, consulting for, and therefore expressing opinions independent of, Computer X UUCP: {allegra, linus}!utzoo!mnetor!frank