rcoprob@hdetud1.tudelft.NL (Rob van Hoboken) (07/11/90)
Our group designs, writes and supports programs, running on IBM mainframes. These programs are all designed to print output on IBM 3800 type laser printers, taking maximum advantage of the 3800 monospace technology for creating images with graphic features. Drawn lines, boxes, schematic diagrams and even a wiring diagram for the components in our mainframe complex have all been composed using the box characters defined in EBCDIC, i.e. a long horizontal and vertical bar, 4 right angled corner characters, 4 T-shaped and one +-shaped connecting characters. All our documentation work is done on PS/2s running Lotus Manuscript and printed on Apple Laserwriters (or a Linotronic typesetter). In Manuscript we found exactly the right blend between structured text composition (extremely useful for large documents using a standardized layout), manipulation of pictures and formulae, and previewing. I really recommend Manuscript for this type of work. In the past we have had three options for documenting the looks of our mainframe programs, none of which was satisfactory: 1. take output printed on the 3825, using scissors cut out the portion of interest, paste this piece with glue into the printed postscript output and send it to the printing shop. This approach also failed with some of the high speed photocopiers that don't take kindly to stiff (multi-ply) paper. 2. include the IBM mainframe output in Manuscript, substituting corner and T characters into + signs, change the bars into dashes, and print it with the Courier font. We want to get rid of this method because: a. Courier looks skinny compared to the IBM fonts of the same point size b. you cannot create drawn line this way (they become dashed line) c. + signs are not a substitute for box characters 3. using Freelance create a drawing that looks like the drawing printed on the mainframe. Lots of work, never exactly similar, and it doesn't even look as good as real IBM 3825 output. 4. (never done this, but a theoretical possibility) scan the output electronically and include the image file. After this long-winded intro my actual question. I need a postscript font that looks a bit like the IBM 'Gothic' as we know it on the 3800 line of printers. The font marketed by Adobe as 'Letter Gothic', by the way, doesn't look nearly as fat + good as the 'IBM gothic' :-) The font should contain the box drawing characters (1 horizontal and 1 vertical bar, 4 corners, 4 Ts and one +) and of course be monospaced. It should be an outline font (not a bitmap!) and be scalable (or available in several pointsizes). It should be down-loadable into the Laserwriter. Could anyone please provide me with pointers in this area, preferably to people or businesses having a font like this? I would also appreciate pointers to and stories about font contruction tools (for postscript outline fonts) that can be used on DOS or OS/2 (on a PS/2). I need this kind of badly, and of course quickly. Please drop me a note to my userid, I will summarize to the net. Thank you for any cooperation! Rob van Hoboken Delft University of Technology rcoprob@hdetud1.bitnet or rcoprob@hdetud1.tudelft.nl