gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (11/18/90)
> Apple should stop worrying about replacing Type 1 with TrueType and put some > serious effort into upgrading the QuickDraw graphics environment and soon... I agree STRONGLY with this statement, but we should remember something. Apple's move to TrueType is THE ONLY reason you can purchase ATM today. Adobe was going to sit on its font technology FOREVER, until Apple announced truetype. ATM is Adobe's last-ditch effort to keep its font standard from being replaced. They sat on their duffs, and were put to shame when Apple wouldn't stand for it. You should have heard John Warnock, president of Adobe, break into tears during a speech about adobe's future directions and font standards, and the Apple/Microsoft pact. It's likely that if Apple abandons truetype, Adobe will recall all versions of ATM 2.0 from the market shelves. Just remember that the init will probably break under system 7.0, with good reason. Adobe needs an incentive to release ATM for system 7.0. That's just the way things work in the cutthroat world of proprietary corporate america. Also, by the way, Adobe has not completely released its algorithms for font scaling. The type-1 hint data structures are known (just some pointers to important locations in the character). How to remove detail from these locations, when the font is scaled down to say, 6 point type, has not been released to the public.
jack@Taffy.rice.edu (Jack W. Howarth) (11/19/90)
In article <70400102@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >ATM is Adobe's last-ditch effort to keep its font standard from being >replaced. They sat on their duffs, and were put to shame when Apple >wouldn't stand for it. You should have heard John Warnock, president >of Adobe, break into tears during a speech about adobe's future >directions and font standards, and the Apple/Microsoft pact. > >It's likely that if Apple abandons truetype, Adobe will recall all >versions of ATM 2.0 from the market shelves. Just remember that the >init will probably break under system 7.0, with good reason. Adobe >needs an incentive to release ATM for system 7.0. That's just the way >things work in the cutthroat world of proprietary corporate america. > I sincerely doubt that Adobe would 'withdraw' ATM in case Apple dropped truetype. I think Warnock has realized that their is more money to be made in a larger market of Adobe PS laserprinters and ATM rasters than in the smaller market they had before. Witness the growth in third party Adobe laserprinters since ATM was released. Also, Adobe has been very generous with font offers in ATM upgrades indicating they are seeing the light that a $50 font can generate more cash than a $250 font in some cases. As to TrueType, even if Apple changes its mind I doubt Microsoft would. Without Truetype, TrueImage is just another postscript clone. By the way have you seen the latest ads for the first trueimage printers. They are software selectable between PCL/Post Script/TrueImage. Anyway, the announcement of TrueType did cause ATM to be released, but I want to see if the arrival of TrueType causes Adobe to bring its fonts down (say to $50) in price. I have looked at third party Bitstream fonts and am less than impressed. Hopefully TrueType fonts will be a bit more competitive. Again, all this is nice, but Apple needs to address the short comings of their imaging system (QuickDraw) soon. With the 68040, we are soon coming to the point where rastering 300 or even 600 dpi to an output device will not be much of a strain on the CPU and the need for on board CPU's on inkjets and laserprinters will decline. Jack Howarth