[comp.lang.postscript] Font book

woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) (04/09/90)

Having just recieved my copy of the Type 1 font spec, I note that the
cover has some nicely colored dotted lines. Why not call it the "dotted"
book.

It is well worth the money.  There are, however some omissions.  There
is abolutly no discussion of the metrics entry.  I still have not found
any information on altering the left sidebearing of a character.  One of
the colored books gives a hint that the metrics entry can be more than just
a single number, it can be a 2 or 4 element wide array.  It does not
seem to work for me, and I certainly was hoping that the font spec would
shed some light on it.

The FLXPROC given in the back of the book, uses 2 undocumented operators.
Now, given that the code was published, people invited to use it, it seems
that this should be sufficient to establish the need to document the
2 operators.  setlck and setlock.  So my question, what are these, and
what place do they play in FLXPROC?  It was good to see confirmation of
much that I had doped out.  It was also good to find out the bushels of
stuff that I had not completely doped out.  
Now, what about type 5 and 6 fonts?.  And, why does the decryption
routine, processtring from the font initializer have 2 OTHER keys
that were not documented?  The first 4 bytes that the decrytion throws
away, and that the algo that was published on usenet throws away, were 
used to cause multiple encryptions of the  same file to have diffrent
values.  Is this what locked early fonts to particular laser printers?

Due to a snafu down at Adobe shipping department, which has since been
corrected, I was shipped a FONT instead of the font book.  I took the
time to read the shrink wrapped licence agreement, and noticed that
Adobe clearly states that the licensee cannot modify the font in any
way for any reason.  This conflicts with the statement that was made
across the net.  I am assuming that what was posted, supercedes the
shrink wrapped wording.  is this correct?

Go scratch your curiosity bump, and get the type spec book.  There
are lots of goodies there.

Cheers
Woody

amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (04/09/90)

In article <1142@chinacat.Unicom.COM>, woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @
Eagle Signal) writes:
> [...] setlck and setlock.  So my question, what are these, and
> what place do they play in FLXPROC?

They are (two names for) the operator that triggers hint replacement (see
the bottom of page 69).
 
--
Amanda Walker, InterCon Systems Corporation
--
"Y'know, you can't have, like, a light, without a dark to stick it in...
 You know what I'm sayin'?"     --Arlo Guthrie