km@mathcs.emory.edu (Ken Mandelberg) (12/17/90)
There's a group on campus that has made the "Goudy" font, their
standard document font. When they send me a document they
include the font as part of the document, since they know its
not installed in every printer on campus. They apparently have
licensed Goudy for the whole campus. There are Adobe and Allied
copyright notices in the font header.
The problem is that although it will print on my Apple LW NTX,
I can't preview Goudy on my Sun. When I inspect the document
I see it is a FontType 1, and the guts of it is a long eexec.
I don't know exactly what a FontType 1 is, the Adobe redbook
only talks about type 3.
My impression that any eexec code is Motorola and Adobe specific
and will not run on anything but a Motorola based Adobe Postscript
controller. Is that correct?
Finally, is there a more portable version of Goudy?
--
Ken Mandelberg | km@mathcs.emory.edu PREFERRED
Emory University | {rutgers,gatech}!emory!km UUCP
Dept of Math and CS | km@emory.bitnet NON-DOMAIN BITNET
Atlanta, GA 30322 | Phone: (404) 727-7963asmith@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Adam Smith) (12/18/90)
km@mathcs.emory.edu (Ken Mandelberg) writes: > The problem is that although it will print on my Apple LW NTX, > I can't preview Goudy on my Sun. When I inspect the document > I see it is a FontType 1, and the guts of it is a long eexec. > > I don't know exactly what a FontType 1 is, the Adobe redbook > only talks about type 3. > > My impression that any eexec code is Motorola and Adobe specific > and will not run on anything but a Motorola based Adobe Postscript > controller. Is that correct? > This is an important matter that needs to be addressed directly by someone. What the original poster has assumed to be machine/executable code is, if my guess is correct, a compressed version of the font. It's the result of an algorythm that keeps file sizes small. A Postscript font on a Macintosh will be compressed using this method, and can be "expanded" using a utility like "UnAdobe". Doing this results in a PostScript file of ASCII characters that is the Type 1 PostScript font program. This makes the file semi-portable. I have run UnAdobe over a number of fonts and managed to move them to an IBM and download them from there to a PS printer successfully. When I inspected my IBM-based PS fonts I discovered that they too were compressed, but, I assume, by a slightly different method. So expanding the font file is the first step. The expanded font file, from my experience, will behave fine in some situations (d/ling through "PSExec" to the PS printer) but not in others (other programs that have to paccess the info in the file). If my guess is correct, what is needed is a utility that will compress and expand font files into and out of the formats that various platforms expect. If I've got this wrong I would very much like to have it explained by someone. The other half the problem of porting fonts from platform to platform is font metrics. The .AFM file is (again I'm operating under a personal assumption here) a generic set of font metrics. It is the kerning and letterspacing info in a plain form. This info is also in Mac screen fonts, Windows .PFM files and the SUN equivalent of same. What is needed here is another utility that will convert Adobe's .AFM file into the format that is needed by the various platforms. Well, that's me taking some wild guesses at what's going on. This issue is going to become more and more pressing as people start wanting to use their fonts across multiple platforms without having to buy 5 different formats to satisfy their needs. I sincerely hope that we can at least start to resolve this issue once and for all. I'm almost as tired of reading the postings about this as I am tired of wondering how to do it myself. ======================================================================== Adam Smith Genius - Graphic Artist - Bad Mood Guy The Chameleon Papers Vancouver, BC CANADA "I'd give my eyeteeth to have a Macintosh--unfortunately, due to Apple's pricing policies, that's not enough" ========================================================================