[comp.windows.ms] Windows not auto-downloading softfonts

mdcg7180@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael David Carr) (06/04/91)

Has anyone had problems getting Windows to automatically download
temporary softfonts to a Deskjet, like the manual says is supposed
to happen when an application calls for a particular soft font?

I've followed the directions to the tee, but when I go to print
using any [not previously loaded] soft font, I get the printer's
built in font (Courier).  This happens whether I'm using a Windows
app or not.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Michael Carr
mdcg7180@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu

arb@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Andrew Brooks) (06/04/91)

In article <1991Jun3.210027.118@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mdcg7180@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael David Carr) writes:
>Has anyone had problems getting Windows to automatically download
>temporary softfonts to a Deskjet, like the manual says is supposed
>to happen when an application calls for a particular soft font?
>
>I've followed the directions to the tee, but when I go to print
>using any [not previously loaded] soft font, I get the printer's
>built in font (Courier).  This happens whether I'm using a Windows
>app or not.
>
>Any insight would be appreciated.

I'm afraid I can't add any insight, just another version of the problem:

Using ATM, I can get beautiful fonts on-screen at any size, but I still
haven't found out how to get the fonts downloaded to a Postscript laser
printer.  Ideally, you want them downloaded for a particular job as
required, then removed straight afterwards.

Does anyone have any ideas how to solve David's and my problem?

Andrew
arb@comp.lancs.ac.uk

dougs@tvnews.tv.tek.com (Doug Stevens) (06/05/91)

I have had EXTREME frustration with this same problem, in trying to
get the symbol soft font to download to an HP Laserjet II. I found this
paragraph in PRINTERS.TXT:

	Printing with Symbol Fonts and Microsoft Word for Windows
	---------------------------------------------------------
	Before you can print Symbol fonts with your HP PCL printer,
	you must install special printer information files. You can 
	find installation instructions under "Symbol Soft Fonts HP PCL 
	Printers" in the "Information About New Features" section of 
	the README.DOC file for Microsoft Word for Windows version 1.00. 
	
Unfortunately, README.DOC does not contain that information. I've also
found references to the problem on Compuserve, with instructions to
download a DS0226.ZIP, which references some of the following magic
Microsoft names:

	DW0226
	Q66835
	S12895
	"Correcting HP Laserjet III Alignment & Adding
		Font/Symbol Set Support"

Unfortunately, none of these are found or even referenced in the Compuserve
Microsoft library.

If anyone from Microsoft is reading, can you help us?

mikel@dosbears.UUCP (Mike Lipsie) (06/05/91)

In article <1991Jun3.210027.118@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mdcg7180@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael David Carr) writes:
>Has anyone had problems getting Windows to automatically download
>temporary softfonts to a Deskjet, like the manual says is supposed
>to happen when an application calls for a particular soft font?

I must assume you are referring to the HP manual and not any Microsoft
manual.

>I've followed the directions to the tee, but when I go to print
>using any [not previously loaded] soft font, I get the printer's
>built in font (Courier).  This happens whether I'm using a Windows
>app or not.

That's because Windows (and Word for Windows) does not support
temporary softfonts.  In fact, as you examine all the choices
you will notice that Windows considers a font as something it
downloads now (during Printer Setup), at boot-up time, or that
you will take care of.

The ONLY way around this is to use a package like Adobe Type
Manager which will convert not loaded fonts into bitmaps and
print them.

You don't say which DeskJet you have but remember you need quite
a bit of memory to hold a downloaded font.


--
Mike Lipsie
dosbears!mikel@pyramid.com
mikel%dosbears.uucp@ingres.com

akm@obelix.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal) (06/05/91)

In article <1991Jun3.210027.118@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mdcg7180@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael David Carr) writes:
>Has anyone had problems getting Windows to automatically download
>temporary softfonts to a Deskjet, like the manual says is supposed
>to happen when an application calls for a particular soft font?
>
>I've followed the directions to the tee, but when I go to print
>using any [not previously loaded] soft font, I get the printer's
>built in font (Courier).  This happens whether I'm using a Windows
>app or not.

This might be something for the FAQ. The Windows documentation is
wrong/misleading regarding soft fonts and the deskjet. Apparently the
DJ is incapable of having fonts loaded temporarily. The only way that
it can load fonts is permanently. I got into an electronic
conversation wit{ some folks from HP about a year ago about this very
thing, and that is what they told me. They claimed that they had made
this clear when they gave the driver and its documentation to MS, but
MS changed it before releasing the driver.

The whole thing left me very irritated, but unable to have fonts
downloaded temporarily...

The solution is to use ATM or the HP Scalable fonts driver. The latter
is not recommended for the original DJ.

kartik



-- 
Anant Kartik Mithal                                     akm@cs.uoregon.edu
Research Assistant, 					(503)346-4408 (msgs)
Department of Computer Science,                         (503)346-3989 (direct)
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1202

tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) (06/05/91)

> mdcg7180@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael David Carr) writes:
>> I've followed the directions to the tee, but when I go to print
>> using any [not previously loaded] soft font, I get the printer's
>> built in font (Courier).  This happens whether I'm using a Windows
>> app or not.

Mike Lipsie <dosbears!mikel@pyramid.com> writes:
> That's because Windows (and Word for Windows) does not support
> temporary softfonts.  In fact, as you examine all the choices
> you will notice that Windows considers a font as something it
> downloads now (during Printer Setup), at boot-up time, or that
> you will take care of.

That's not Windows; it's either the DeskJet and/or HP's DeskJet printer
driver.  Temporary soft fonts work just fine in Word for Windows -- as 
long as you have a LaserJet!

> You don't say which DeskJet you have but remember you need quite
> a bit of memory to hold a downloaded font.

Downloaded soft fonts actually don't take much memory at all!  For a LaserJet,
a 10-point Avant Garde takes a mere 20K, with a 20-point at 71K, both including
all international characters.  Italics and Bold are extra, of course...

[ \tom haapanen --- university of waterloo --- tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu ]
[ "i don't even know what street canada is on"               -- al capone ]

jfadams@tc.fluke.COM (Jim Adams) (06/05/91)

In article <1341@dcl-vitus.comp.lancs.ac.uk> arb@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Andrew Brooks) writes:
>
>I'm afraid I can't add any insight, just another version of the problem:
>
>Using ATM, I can get beautiful fonts on-screen at any size, but I still
>haven't found out how to get the fonts downloaded to a Postscript laser
>printer.  Ideally, you want them downloaded for a particular job as
>required, then removed straight afterwards.
>
>Does anyone have any ideas how to solve David's and my problem?
>
>Andrew
>arb@comp.lancs.ac.uk

Ditto.  But I believe I found the cause of the problem, at least in my
case.  ATM will properly identify and add fonts to the ATM.INI file,
however, it only adds the screen font entry to the WIN.INI file.

        softfont4=c:\psfonts\myfont.pfm

This entry only points to the printer font metric file.  Upon
printing, only Courier is actually printed using the font metrics of
"myfont".  Revising the line to read

        softfont4=c:\psfonts\myfont.pfm,c:\psfonts\myfont.pfb

fixes the problem and the document printed matches the screen in
Windows.

Of course, this example pertains to ATM using a Postscript printer.  A
PCL printer more than likely uses a slightly different scheme.  Since
ATM generates PCL fonts "on the fly" from the Postscript data, there
may be some connection.
-- 
James F. Adams       John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.        Everett, Washington USA
WORLD:jfadams@tc.fluke.COM
UUCP:{ihnp4!uw-beaver,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,decvax!microsoft}!fluke!jfadams

sw@ (Steve Warner) (06/06/91)

How to get windows to automatically download soft fonts..  And yes,
it works fine with w4w.

Weather or not you use ATM, the postscript driver must be set up
correctly to handle this.  Fonts must be installed with the postscript driver
in win.ini.

Each font must have a number, they start from
1 and go up, the pathname and filename of the metrics file, followwed
by a semi, then the name of the printer font.  Here are the first two
entries for OPTIMA, which are in my win.ini

softfont1=c:\W3\PSFONTS\OP______.PFM,c:\W3\PSFONTS\OP______.PFB
softfont2=c:\W3\PSFONTS\OPO_____.PFM,c:\W3\PSFONTS\OPO_____.PFB

Add as many soft fonts as you like.  It works fine and works well.


Steve

-- 
----
Steve Warner   -  Fremont, CA, USA  etc...
replies to:  sun!indetech!stables!sw    (forget what the header says)

wnp@iiasa.AT (Wolf PAUL) (06/06/91)

jfadams@tc.fluke.COM (Jim Adams) writes:
> Of course, this example pertains to ATM using a Postscript printer.  A
> PCL printer more than likely uses a slightly different scheme.  Since
> ATM generates PCL fonts "on the fly" from the Postscript data, there
> may be some connection.

Unfortunately ATM does NOT generate PCL fonts on the fly, rather it
creates a bitmapped image of the page, and thus produces rather
voluminous, slow-printing output ... 

And I have been unable to get auto-downloading to work to a HP LaserJet with
the Adobe PS Cartridge; of course I added the *.pfb pathnames to the
font entries in win.ini, but nothing works.
-- 
W.N.Paul, Int. Institute f. Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361 Laxenburg--Austria
PHONE: +43-2236-71521-465            INTERNET: wnp@iiasa.iiasa.ac.at
FAX:   +43-2236-71313                UUCP:     uunet!iiasa!wnp
HOME:  +43-2236-618514               BITNET:   tuvie!iiasa!wnp@aearn.BITNET

jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) (06/06/91)

sw@ (Steve Warner) writes:

>How to get windows to automatically download soft fonts..  And yes,
>it works fine with w4w.

>Weather or not you use ATM, the postscript driver must be set up
>correctly to handle this.  Fonts must be installed with the postscript driver
>in win.ini.

>Each font must have a number, they start from
>1 and go up, the pathname and filename of the metrics file, followwed
>by a semi, then the name of the printer font.  

A slight expansion on the above comments...

Printers which support downloadable fonts such as PostScript or PCL printers
need to be able to tell Windows three things:

   - The name of the typeface (and its family)
   - The size (height and width) of each character
   - What (if anything) to send to the printer to perform the download

The character size is necessary to permit a program to determine where line
breaks are needed since there is no absolute relationship between the height
(point size) of a font and the width of any specific character.  (In fact,
the TmsRmn typefaces in the K and Z cartridges have different widths in each
size!)

The drivers do this using the SoftFontxxxxx= lines of WIN.INI to communicate
this data to the printer drivers.  'xxxxx' can be between 1 and 32768 (?)
for a PCL printer (its value becomes the "font number" in the printer); I'm
not sure what the limits are for PostScript.  The numbers need not be
contiguous; in fact they will not be if you use the Soft Font Installer to
delete a font from the middle of an otherwise congiguous sequence.  I use
this to help manage the (far too many) fonts I keep in WIN.INI by grouping
typefaces into blocks of numbers: 100-149 for TmsRmn; 200-249 for Helvetica,
etc.

The syntax of the SoftFontxxxx statement is:

  SoftFontnnnn = pfm.file.name  [ ;soft.font.file.name ]

(extra spaces for readability here only)  The first parameter is the PFM
(Print Font Metrics) file which contains information about the size of
the characters covered in this soft font.  It is the existence of this
file which tells Windows applications that this particular font is available
for use, and what its name is.

The second parameter, if it is present, tells the printer driver that
whenever a print event is begun which requires this particular font, the
file named here must be downloaded to the printer.  For PCL printers 
the HPPCL.DRV code first sends a PCL order which tells the printer that
it is about to receive soft font number nnnn (the number from the SoftFontnnnn
keyword), then sends the named file.

If the second parameter is absent, then Windows assumes that the printer
has already been loaded with this font, and the Windows printer driver
has no responsibilty for downloading the font.

If you use the Soft Font Installer to add a PCL font to Windows (I don't
have enough experience with PostScript soft fonts to address them) then
the installer reads the font file and creates the necessary PFM file;
the WIN.INI file entry is then created using the lowest unused value for
nnnnn and both the PFM and font file names are placed on the line.
If you check the "permanent font" box (now, or at some later time) the
second parameter (the font file name) is removed from the entry and is
stashed elsewhere in the printer entry of WIN.INI to allow it to be
recovered if you later declare that the font should be treated as temporary.
This is the reason you may see the soft font names on lines other than
ones starting with SoftFontnnnnn.

For an Official Microsoft Discussion (tm) see the text beginning on page
83 of the Windows Resource Kit.

Joe Morris

mikel@dosbears.UUCP (Mike Lipsie) (06/06/91)

In article <1991Jun5.101310.2496@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) writes:
>> mdcg7180@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael David Carr) writes:
>>> I've followed the directions to the tee, but when I go to print
>>> using any [not previously loaded] soft font, I get the printer's
>>> built in font (Courier).  This happens whether I'm using a Windows
>>> app or not.
>
>Mike Lipsie <dosbears!mikel@pyramid.com> writes:
>> That's because Windows (and Word for Windows) does not support
>> temporary softfonts.  In fact, as you examine all the choices
>> you will notice that Windows considers a font as something it
>> downloads now (during Printer Setup), at boot-up time, or that
>> you will take care of.
>
>That's not Windows; it's either the DeskJet and/or HP's DeskJet printer
>driver.  Temporary soft fonts work just fine in Word for Windows -- as 
>long as you have a LaserJet!

Ah!  Windows doesn't let you do anything with temp fonts for a DJ
but the HP documentation that came with the printer does have some
temp font management stuff (I assume it is enough.)  I conclude
that it is the "fault" of the driver writer (HP?).

>> You don't say which DeskJet you have but remember you need quite
>> a bit of memory to hold a downloaded font.
>
>Downloaded soft fonts actually don't take much memory at all!  For a LaserJet,
>a 10-point Avant Garde takes a mere 20K, with a 20-point at 71K, both including
>all international characters.  Italics and Bold are extra, of course...

Well, it's a lot of memory for a stock DeskJet (which has 16K, I think).
I am unable to download much more than stock TimesRoman and Helvetica
(12pt) with the memory cartridge.


--
Mike Lipsie
dosbears!mikel@pyramid.com
mikel%dosbears.uucp@ingres.com

taj@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu (06/21/91)

May I add a third version (this could be the most ignorant question ever
on windows) :  CAN I USE ATM TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM FONT ? HOW ?
It's not a big deal, I just don't like the default Windows 3.0 font.