A.G.Bishop@massey.ac.nz (A.G. Bishop) (02/13/91)
Here are the responses to my RFC of about a week ago on ATM.
The consensus seems to be that ATM is great on non-PS printers. You
may not like the wait when printing to dor matrix with it but clearly
you can see how it would look on (eg.) the laser at work using a
quite modest dot matrix at home.
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From: U39648@uicvm.uic.edu (From The Mind Of)
My basic use of Adobe Type Manager is getting fonts, in all sizes, to print on
my printer. Plus, the availability of so many Adobe Type 1 fonts around helps.
How many inexpensive printers do you know of that can print many fonts in ALL
sizes? All of them... that have Windows 3.0 drivers if you use ATM.
The use on-screen for me is a MUCH better attempt at WYSIWYG than Windows gives
by default. Unfortunately, it's still not 100% perfect. (PageMaker tip: when
I'm using ATM, the on-screen appearance gets closer to what gets printed out
the farther out I zoom. So do a "fit in window" view before printing to see if
the larger objects stay around the text as you want them to!)
- Darius
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From: altman@sbstaff2.cs.sunysb.edu (Jeff Altman)
>I ran it, found it slowed my SX down a bit and didn't do a lot else.
How much memory do you have? What have you set the cache to?
Also, compared to what? If you ever use the Windows Vector fonts
I am sure that you will find ATM to be quite a bit faster and more
accurate.
It also depends on what printer you have. The main benefit for me is
that I can write a Report or a Spreadsheet at home (Postscript) and
bring it to the office make some changes and have it print exactly
the way it printed at home.
I also like the ability to create my own fonts and use them in my
system immediately. (ATM uses the fonts, it doesn't create them.)
>What's wrong with screen fonts?
They are misshaped and limited to exact sizes. Therefore, if you
ask WfW for a Helv 9 it will give you an 8 anyway.
- Jeff (jaltman@ccmail.sunysb.edu)
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From: tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen)
I got ATM last week. I've been also using FaceLift for several months now.
A few opinionated opinions will follow... :)
> It also depends on what printer you have. The main benefit for me is
> that I can write a Report or a Spreadsheet at home (Postscript) and
> bring it to the office make some changes and have it print exactly
> the way it printed at home.
Also, both ATM and FaceLift provide flexible on-the-fly fonts for LaserJet-
series printers (and dot-matrix, too, but that's rather painfully slow).
>> Perhaps now as more type 1 fonts are appearing on CICA it might be
>> fun but I still wonder if ATM is worth the diskspace.
Yes, this is the big advantage of ATM over FaceLift, and the reason I bought
ATM when I already had FaceLift.
>> What's wrong with screen fonts?
> They are misshaped and limited to exact sizes. Therefore, if you
> ask WfW for a Helv 9 it will give you an 8 anyway.
However, on the screen 10-point Helv looks better than either 10-point
Helvetica or 10-point Swiss. Despite hinting, good screen fonts are hard to
produce on the fly in small sizes.
As to the FaceLift/ATM comparison, here are what I've found so far:
ATM: + standard PostScript fonts
+ lots of free Type 1 fonts available
- Helv is no longer available! Program Manager and other
apps asking for small Helv sizes get System font
FaceLift: + much better control panel
+ can generate soft fonts
+ better documentation
- slightly slower screen fonts than ATM
If anyone knows how to resurrect Helv in my system with ATM, please let me
know! Right now, if I set SynonymPSBegin=11 in atm.ini, sizes 10 points and
below (and my old soft fonts) all display in the System font in the single
available size.
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From: Terry Jones <tj@utcs.utoronto.ca>
There are a few things I really like about ATM. I use a dot matrix
to proof at home then a laser at work. Even when doing posters the
output is exactly like the laser is going to be. Line ends, height,
italics etc. All on a $200 Star NX1000.
The most important features are the way the formatting is the same
for the dot matrix as for the final printer (PostScript laser or Lino),
especially when using italics and bold.
Go into Write, enter the numbers 127 in 127 point times and then make the
first 2 (12) italics and look at the screen and printer output on a dot matrix
in both high rez and lo rez quality (print). Then turn on ATM and notice that
the screen looks like you would expect it to and the printout changes in
rez NOT shape as happened without ATM.
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From: gt5139c@prism.gatech.edu (PETER L. THOMAS)
>Maybe I'm still fresh and enthusiastic about graphical interfaces but
>seeing the characters the right size still seems fine to me, I'm not
>bothered by the jaggies on those couple of 36pt lines for the title.
I found that when I tried to print a (for example) 72 pt char. w/out
ATM I got nasty garbage. With: beautiful.
>What am I missing?
PS founts on dot matrix printers. Hoo-ray.
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From: Marc Roussel <mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
In article <1991Feb4.205509.6260@massey.ac.nz> you write:
>I ran it [ATM], found it slowed my SX down a bit and didn't do a lot else.
>
>What's wrong with screen fonts?
You probably have a laser printer. ATM probably isn't a big deal when
it comes to the display, but it's a Godsend for those of us too poor to
afford a laser printer. With a dot matrix printer, ATM is one of only
two products that'll produce decent printed output from Windows
applications.
--
Tony Bishop
Massey University @Palmerston North.New Zealand