wct1@unix.cis.pitt.edu (William C Tom) (09/06/90)
Does anyone have experience using Adobe Type Manager? I've seen the ads selling it, but I'm not sure that it has been released yet.
a752@mindlink.UUCP (Bruce Dunn) (12/03/90)
I just installed ATM. The installation is easy, but the program has a number of annoying glitches that lessen its usability. 1) When using the font selection box on Word for Windows, the box claims that fonts which are available from the printer (ie. cartridge fonts) are now all printable in all sizes from 6 to 48 point. Of course this is nonsense. You have to remember what the actual font size is of a cartridge font, independently of the display of point sizes in the list box. 2) Helvetica and Times Roman fonts are duplicated somehow (both Helv and Helvetica, and Tms Rmn and Times Roman appear in the list box of Word for Windows). 3) Although point sizes of 6 are listed for supported fonts, the screen fonts are limited to 8 point and larger. Thus asking for 6 point Helvetica gets you 6 point printing, but an 8 point incorrectly spaced screen display. This can be fixed however by changing the point size listed in the SynonymPSBegin= line of the ATM.INI file to 6. 4) Inspite of the advertising on the package which promises better screen fonts, some screen fonts are worse with ATM turned on than with it turned off. I frequently use 10 point Helvetica bold. Using Window's built-in Helvetica screen fonts, the screen output is quite acceptable. With ATM turned on, the bold Helvetica display is quite ugly, with very poorly formed letters in many cases. I suspect that the ATM fonts might actually be a better approximation to the printed output, but the original Windows fonts are far easier to look at. 5) The first time Windows has to display a given font, there is a substantial pause (presumably while the screen font is calculated). This is particular noticable when turning to the Fonts section of the Control Panel, where it takes ages to display the font samples at the bottom of the display box. -- Bruce Dunn Vancouver, Canada a752@mindlink.UUCP
a752@mindlink.UUCP (Bruce Dunn) (12/05/90)
> = original posting by myself (Bruce Dunn) + = reply by Clancy Malloy > I just installed ATM. The installation is easy, but the program has a > number of annoying glitches that lessen its usability. > > 1) When using the font selection box on Word for Windows, the box > claims that fonts which are available from the printer (ie. cartridge > fonts) are now all printable in all sizes from 6 to 48 point. Of > course this is nonsense. You have to remember what the actual font > size is of a cartridge font, independently of the display of point > sizes in the list box. + Read the Manual :-) ATM has the ability to create a typeface in any + size. That is the basic function of ATM. It creates typefaces for both + the screen and the printer. If you have the "use bitmap font" box + checked, ATM will use them. If not, it will create them. Clancy, I *have* read the manual but you have not read my posting. I have no trouble with ATM creating Helvetica, Courier and Times Roman type in all sizes from 6 point to 48 point. It works fine, and will print out any of these three fonts in any selected size (and does it beautifully). What I object to is that after ATM is installed and I use Word for Windows, WfW starts lying to me about my cartridge fonts on my HP IIP Laserjet printer. I have a "Great Start" HP cartridge installed, which gives me (among other things) a 12 point Letter Gothic typeface. Before I installed ATM, WfW would correctly show me that "Lrt Gothic" was only available in a 12 point size. After installing ATM, WfW claims that "Ltr Gothic" is available in 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 30, 32, 36, 40 and 48 points. This is nonsense - ATM does not generate Letter Gothic fonts (at least not the basic ATM package). Selecting Letter Gothic 6 point, Letter Gothic 12 point, and Letter Gothic 48 point from WfW all given a 12 point printout, because the font is defined at the printer. I still have the cartridge font but must in effect put a post-it note on my computer telling users of WfW that no matter what the list boxes in WfW say, Letter Gothic is only available in 12 point. > 2) Helvetica and Times Roman fonts are duplicated somehow (both Helv > and Helvetica, and Tms Rmn and Times appear in the list box of > Word for Windows). +Again. Read the Manual ;-) ATM sets aliases for Helvetica and Times. To +remove them, just change the ATM.INI file. The manual is far from clear on how to make the changes you suggest. I have tried removing the alias lines that say Helv=Helvetica and Tms Rmn=Times. The list box in WfW still separately lists Helv, Helvetica Tms Rmn and Times. Do you have any other suggestions as to how to achieve this? Since my original posting, I have found that the two font incarnations appear to be related as follows. Both Helv and Helvetica print out the same material on the printer, in any specified point size. Helvetica appears to always use screen fonts generated on the fly by ATM, while Helv appears to use the original Windows screen fonts (which are in many cases superior in readability to the ATM screen fonts) for all point sizes which are less than the number specified in the SynonymPSBegin line of the ATM.INI file. As ATM initially sets itself up, this number is 9. This means that if you specify the Helvetica typeface you can get on-screen fonts to match any size of printout you desire, but you are stuck with the ugly ATM fonts. If you specify the Helv typeface, you get better looking screen fonts for 8 point, but you can't get a screen font for 6 point type because Windows doesn't have a 6 point screen font (look at the description of the font sizes available using the fonts section of the Control Panel) Above 9 points, Helv uses the ATM (ugly) screen fonts. Tms Rmn and Times are similarly related. If this all seems confusing, that is exactly my complaint. The manual is no help whatever on these matters. > 3) Although point sizes of 6 are listed for supported fonts, the > screen fonts are limited to 8 point and larger. Thus asking for 6 > point Helvetica gets you 6 point printing, but an 8 point incorrectly > spaced screen display. This can be fixed however by changing the point > size listed in the SynonymPSBegin= line of the ATM.INI file to 6. +Again. Read the Manual |-) ATM will allow you to change the how small +you can create a screen font. I have read the manual. That is how I started to experiment with the SynonymPSBegin line in the ATM.INI file (read my posting). Again the manual is very obscure. My point is not that ATM can't be made to generate a screen font for 6 point type, but that when installed out of the box it does not do so for some of the "duplicated" fonts (see above) and substitutes an 8 point screen font. There is no warning either in the manual or on-screen that the incorrect screen fonts are being displayed and that the word processing is not WYSIWYG. The manual is not particularly forthcoming about these problem. It's only comment about the function of the SynonymPSBegin line is "The ATM program will substitute a font specified as a Synonym when the font size is larger than the size specified with the SynonymPSBegin parameter." > 4) Inspite of the advertising on the package which promises better > screen fonts, some screen fonts are worse with ATM turned on than > with it turned off. I frequently use 10 point Helvetica bold. Using > Window's built-in Helvetica screen fonts, the screen output is quite > acceptable. With ATM turned on, the bold Helvetica display is quite > ugly, with very poorly formed letters in many cases. I suspect that > the ATM fonts might actually be a better approximation to the printed > output, but the original Windows fonts are far easier to look at. +This really depends on what you have for a screen. If you have CGA, you +are probably right. However, I have 1024x768x268 SVGA with a 16" SVGA +monitor. With this setup, ATM does a much better job. I finally have +W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G., kerning and all. I am using both standard VGA and SVGA at 1024x768x16. The first is probably the most common setup for Windows, while the second matches your screen resolution. In either case, in the smaller screen font sizes such as 8 and 10 (particularly in bold and italics) the screen fonts generated by ATM are in many cases ****worse*** than the standard screen fonts that come with Windows for the Times Roman and Helvetica. The latter are presumably hand-tuned to look good, perhaps at the expense of not quite exactly duplicating the printed output. Look for example at an upper case M in 10 point Helvetica Bold, with ATM both off and on. The problem is particularly annoying for bold Helvetica, as Windows seems to use this font for many of its display boxes (such as the "This will end your Windows session" box). > 5) The first time Windows has to display a given font, there is a > substantial pause (presumably while the screen font is calculated). > This is particularly noticable when turning to the Fonts section of > the Control Panel, where it takes ages to display the font samples > at the bottom of the display box. +Dare I say it? Okay, I will. Read the Manual {-) If you increase the +size of the cache to a large enough number, this should go away. I have read the manual. What I more, I have used the program. My comment stands. The font cache is a cache, and is not filled until the program is forced to generate a font by an application. My posting specified that the ***first*** time a given font is displayed, there is a substantial delay. This delay is not eliminated even when the font cache is raised to 1024 K from the 96K default, as a font is not calculated until it is first needed. My current configuration of ATM has the SynonymPSBegin line set at 14. This gives me the following choices for (as an example) Helvetica type, as selected from the "Font" Box of Word for Windows Helv: Uses the better looking hand-tuned original Windows screen fonts for point sizes 8 to 14. Does not suffer a delay for screen font calculation for these sizes (screen fonts are prebuilt in *.FON files). Uses ATM screen fonts for point sizes above 14. Cannot display a 6 point screen font as this is not in the original Windows set and ATM is prevented from using ATM screen fonts below 14 points. Prints all fonts sizes beautifully, but when 6 point type is selected the screen font used is 8 point and the screen thus does not match the output. Helvetica: Uses the ATM screen fonts throughout. Must spend several seconds calculating screen fonts each time they are first called up. In the smaller sizes, the screen fonts are ill-formed and harder to read than the (presumably) hand-tuned fonts supplied with Windows. What I would really like is to have only one choice offered me in Word for Windows (call it either Helv or Helvetica). It would use ATM for the 6 point screen font (lacking in the original Windows package), the pre-built, no-delay, better looking screen fonts for 8, 10, 12, 14, 18 and 24 points, and ATM for 16, 20, 30, 32, 36, 40, and 48 points (for which prebuilt fonts are not available). If anyone can tell me how to achieve this, I would be delighted to receive the information. Overall, ATM seems to do a flawless job in determining what to send to my Laserjet printer to get the specified fonts. The output is beautiful, and the printing is reasonably fast. ATM however is miserably integrated into the Windows environment, at least when used with Word for Windows. Its manual is obscure, and does not deal with the problems described above in any coherent manner (or in some cases in any manner at all). -- Bruce Dunn Vancouver, Canada a752@mindlink.UUCP
preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov (David R Preston) (12/07/90)
In article <4053@mindlink.UUCP> a752@mindlink.UUCP (Bruce Dunn) writes: > >> I just installed ATM. The installation is easy, but the program has a >> number of annoying glitches that lessen its usability. I've always heard "never buy anything from Microsoft that ends in 0", maybe the same is true for Adobe (1/2 :-) Maybe it won't be too long before ATM 4W 1.1.... Let me say first that I like ATM; it does what I wanted it to do, which is print in any size from any type 1 font. I don't have a postscript printer, I have an HP Deskjet+. The Deskjet+ has built-in courier fonts, 6 & 12 point, 5, 10, 16.67, & 20 pitch. I have purchased HP Helvetica & Times Roman softfonts, which have to be downloaded when the machine is booted, in the sizes you want to print, dependent on how much memory the printer has. When I installed the softfonts, screenfonts were automatically installed. The first thing I did when I installed ATM was make sure that I knew exactly what was being printed. I killed all the synonym and alias stuff, and made sure the names of the soft fonts were different from the ATM fonts (Times Roman & Helv Vs. Times & Helvetica). First I printed out various fonts to make sure I had the above right. I did. Then I noticed that the menu claimed that courier 5, 10, 16.67 & 20 pitch could be printed in any size from 6 to 48. This is wrong. This is a bug. Then I started paying attention to what the screen looked like. The hinting for doing Helvetica on the screen at less than 14 points is simply wrong; some of the lines in the characters don't even meet, and some of the characters look like they're touching. The capital M looks just as bad at 1024 x 768 as it does at 800 x 600, I haven't tried it at 640 x 480 (by the way, I'd like to know what graphics board the guy with 1024 x 768 x 268 is using; he's got 12 more colors than most of us :-) I can't wait until I get the scalable HP Deskjet driver and TrueType.... Maybe I'll run it all through Goscript :-) -david preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov B4 f+ t- k+ s-/+ r P8/3 S6 b+/- g- l-/+ y- z/! n o+/++ x a+ u v-- j++ D. R. Preston 584 Castro St. #614 SF CA 94114 USA
tj@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Terry Jones) (12/08/90)
Bruce Dunn makes some good points about ATM. There are weaknesses and the documentation isn't exactly up to programmers reference manual specs. But I am not sure Adobe wants it to be that way. Perhaps they will Publish some other documentation giving more detailed information about all the options in the ATM.ini files etc. I have to agree that the documentation is sparse. Much of the discussion concerned how good things looked on screen. The complaint is that Helv looks better than Helvetica at small point sizes. I think the answer to this is obvious, ATM does a good job making Helvetica at small point sizes. Microsoft has a font called HELV that has a shape that happens to look better on screen at 72 dpi than does Helvetica. I find that in most cases ATM does about as good a job as possible in faithfully reproducing the proper shapes of characters on low resolution devices INCLUDING screens. Obviously hand tuned fonts can look better than machine tuned fonts. But, the Windows fonts that may look good, are not accurate. Its comparing Apples and Oranges. tj P.S. If you want another weakness of ATM (and I am an ATM fan) try installing something like CASLON 540 when you use a PostScript printer. ATM doesn't know whether that font is installed on your PostScript printer, but assumes it is. You get Courier. You have to edit win.ini to add the pointer to the .PFB file on the end of the line. A bit crude I would say.
jbaker@coral.bucknell.edu (02/14/91)
Well, it appears that the Adobe Type Manager debate is over Now I have a question Does anybody have an original copy of ATM that they would like to sell? If so, please write me ASAP with your asking price Thanks Jason jbaker@coral.bucknell.edu