mason@habs11.enet.dec.com (Gary Mason) (08/19/90)
I have a need to develop a special character set (perhaps a dozen or so characters). Those writing in the character set are on any number of different machines (workstations, PCs, Macintoshes, character cell terminals, etc.) using any number of applications available thereon. Those reading are on all of the above systems as well. Those printing the resultant documents have a variety of printers at their disposal. Some of the printers are among the myriad PostScript printers available. The objective is to provide a system whereby the largest subset of readers, and the largest subset of printers, can display documents containing the special characters. My first inclination is to try to solve the problem with PostScript. I can see all kinds of pre and post processing utilities, etc., but have hopes that the situation may be simpler than that. For all those who can load the fonts of their choice, and who have applications that output PostScript, the answer would seem to be to provide each with a font for their systems, making certain that the special characters occupied the same positions in each version. Then, with the normal amount of hacking (if any), all documents from these systems would be printable by all the printers, provided that a font was provided to download to their printers before/with the document. [I fear that most character cell terminals are right out of luck no matter what.] One of the problems is that the applications available for each system differ, and the fonts available today that possess the character set required are not consistent in the placement of the characters within the fonts. Developing a new one (which is a viable option) is bound to match some, and not others. Now I wonder...is there an easier way? Can an actual set of strokes to define the special characters be output as a graphic, rather than as an entry into a font table? Can that be done in the middle of a string of characters in any given font? It seems that macros might be part of the answer, but I know nothing about the macro capability of PostScript. If this were the way, I assume that the font in use wouldn't make any difference, and that when the writer wished to output a special character, they would create the syntax for the macro call to produce the appropriate graphic. It would be a bit cumbersome, but would provide more universality to the document thus produced than is available today. It also seems as though the text processor being used would be responsible for actually outputting the construct represented by the macro, which would be a problem. Any help (in understanding or examples) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks...Gary mason@habs11.enet.dec.com