sjs@spectral.ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer) (10/01/89)
Does Transcript support font downloading? The PostScript page-description structuring conventions are clearly designed to support such a function. If so, can a TranScript user buy Adobe fonts and install them on the (UNIX) printer server? If not, why not? Stan Switzer sjs@bellcore.com
bezanson@adobe.COM (Brian Bezanson) (10/04/89)
[Note: This reply is being posted at large because Stan's mail system had problems - maybe it will be useful for others.] In article <17753@bellcore.bellcore.com> you write: >Does Transcript support font downloading? The PostScript >page-description structuring conventions are clearly designed to >support such a function. > >If so, can a TranScript user buy Adobe fonts and install them on the >(UNIX) printer server? > >If not, why not? Stan, Since a PostScript font is basically some PostScript code, you can use transcript to download it to the printer. Currently we sell fonts for the Mac & MS-DOS environments and recently VMS and NeXT. These formats are all encripted in some way to protect the font data (the people we license the fonts from request that in the contracts). What needs to be done is to decode the font and then download that code. We do provide information on how to write a decoder and you can do the rest. The decoded file can't be stored on disk because that would violate the agreement, etc... But then just bringing the font to a UNIX box would violate that. Frame (makers of FrameMaker ships a utility to do the Mac/PC conversion and downloading - and they have a special license w/us to do it legally). So you can either do it yourself (with help from documents from our file server) or get the utilities with FrameMaker (for a Sun if that is what you're using). Hope that answers your question and provides some help. -- Brian Bezanson bezanson@adobe.com Adobe Systems Incorporated The opinions expressed above are my own and may not represent those of Adobe.
bezanson@adobe.COM (Brian Bezanson) (10/04/89)
In article <1258@adobe.UUCP> bezanson@adobe.UUCP (Brian Bezanson) writes: >[Note: This reply is being posted at large because Stan's mail system had > problems - maybe it will be useful for others.] Ooops a few mistakes after a flurry of ATM /Adobe announcements! > Currently we sell fonts for the Mac & MS-DOS environments and recently >VMS and NeXT. These formats are all encripted in some way to ^^^^^^^^^ Please replace all 'encripted' with 'compressed'. Adobe gives you info on how to decompress the files - not decript (well not yet :-). My apologies for the errors. Hope the corrected information helps. -- Brian Bezanson bezanson@adobe.com Adobe Systems Incorporated The opinions expressed above are my own and may not represent those of Adobe.
sjs@spectral.ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer) (10/04/89)
In article <1258@adobe.UUCP> bezanson@adobe.UUCP (Brian Bezanson) writes: > [Note: This reply is being posted at large because Stan's mail system had > problems - maybe it will be useful for others.] > > In article <17753@bellcore.bellcore.com> you write: > >Does Transcript support font downloading? The PostScript > >page-description structuring conventions are clearly designed to > >support such a function. > > > >If so, can a TranScript user buy Adobe fonts and install them on the > >(UNIX) printer server? > > > >If not, why not? > > Stan, > Since a PostScript font is basically some PostScript code, you can use > transcript to download it to the printer. OK, thanks. But I knew that already. What I was wondering was if Transcript, based on the information in the %%DocumentFonts: and %%PageFonts: comment conventions would query the printer to see if it already knows about the font, and if it does not, download the font on behalf of the queued job. Basically, I'd like to be able to construct a document the same way regardless of whether I am talking to an NTX/II or a basic LW. The Red Book is fairly explicit about the intended use of these comment fields. I was just wondering if TranScript did anything about it. A second-order question is whether, when the format of non-encrypted fonts is made public, there will be a general convention for where the downloadable fonts are placed, where the metrics can be found, etc. so that various tools such as print daemons (i.e. TranScript) and text-handling tools (TeX, ditroff/dit2ps, FrameMaker, NeWS, various Hyper DooDads, Display PostScript, X (theoretically, an X server could render PostScript fonts), etc.) could be working from the same font specifications rather than having their own redundant or, worse, inconsistent, version of the same information. Or is it the PC-style ``one user, one application'' mentality again? Stan Switzer