majumdar@garnet.cs.yale.edu (aloke majumdar) (02/13/91)
In my few months of exposure to Appleshare networks, I have been encountering one particular problem in numerous forms, viz how to maintain font consistency in an application that's on a shared fileserver. I wonder if anyone has found good ways to solve this problem. I'm not a regular reader of this newsgroup, so... I apologize in advance if this is a well known and discussed problem Please send me e-mail if you can respond; I will summarize what I learn to the net. Here is an example of the problem: a user inputs her document on a network copy of word on machine A which has font X in the system file. She then goes to machine B attached to the laserwriter and prints the same file using the same network copy of word. Unfortunately, machine B doesn't have the font X (or worse, has a different "version" of it, more on this below) and therefore the appearance of the document is markedly different. Desolation. The only "fix" I have so far is to use the Font/DA mover to install the font directly in the application. This seems to be the first place that many applications search for fonts. If this search strategy is hard-wired into the system, or is even a general guideline, I think the fact should be more widely publicized. The problem with this "fix" is that it leads to unnecessary duplication of fonts across applications. It would be nice if there were some mechanism to allow network copies of applications to be able share resources. Some kind of a "network system file" seems to be called for. If you've experienced similar problems, I'd like to know how you approached them. If a more general "fix" is in the works, I'd like to know about that as well. On a related note, I'm puzzled by the behaviour of some fonts. I don't know if fonts come in versions like software does, but I have seen two fonts with the same name print differently. The problem I noticed cropped up with 2 different copies of Microsoft Word v 4.0 that both had access to a 12 pt Times Roman font. One had the font installed in the application and the other was getting the font from the system folder. A Times Roman document printed differently in the two cases. The difference seemed to be in the leading and kerning. I'm aware that these are normally considered to be part of the font description and also that some programs allow one to manipulate these explicitly. As far as I know, word does not allow one to do this. The possible reasons for the discrepancy could be 1) the two copies of word have different default settings for kerning, etc. (although there is no mention of this in the documentation) 2) the fonts themselves are somehow different. 3) something else I'd be interested if anyone has any helpful explanations or suggestions about the source of this discrepancy. Thanks in advance Aloke Majumdar
majumdar@garnet.cs.yale.edu (aloke majumdar) (02/13/91)
In my few months of exposure to Appleshare networks, I have been encountering one particular problem in numerous forms, viz. how to maintain font consistency in an application that's on a shared fileserver. I wonder if anyone has found good ways to solve this problem. I'm not a regular reader of this newsgroup, so... I apologize in advance if this is a well known and discussed problem Please send me e-mail if you can respond; I will summarize what I learn to the net. Here is an example of the problem: a user inputs her document on a network copy of word on machine A which has font X in the system file. She then goes to machine B attached to the laserwriter and prints the same file using the same network copy of word. Unfortunately, machine B doesn't have the font X (or worse, has a different "version" of it, more on this below) and therefore the appearance of the document is markedly different. Desolation. The only "fix" I have so far is to use the Font/DA mover to install the font directly in the application. This seems to be the first place that many applications search for fonts. If this search strategy is hard-wired into the system, or is even a general guideline, I think the fact should be more widely publicized. The problem with this "fix" is that it leads to unnecessary duplication of fonts across applications. It would be nice if there were some mechanism to allow network copies of applications to be able share resources. Some kind of a "network system file" seems to be called for. If you've experienced similar problems, I'd like to know how you approached them. If a more general "fix" is in the works, I'd like to know about that as well. On a related note, I'm puzzled by the behaviour of some fonts. I don't know if fonts come in versions like software does, but I have seen two fonts with the same name print differently. The problem I noticed cropped up with 2 different copies of Microsoft Word v 4.0 that both had access to a 12 pt Times Roman font. One had the font installed in the application and the other was getting the font from the system folder. A Times Roman document printed differently in the two cases. The difference seemed to be in the leading and kerning. I'm aware that these are normally considered to be part of the font description and also that some programs allow one to manipulate these explicitly. As far as I know, word does not allow one to do this. The possible reasons for the discrepancy could be 1) the two copies of word have different default settings for kerning, etc. (although there is no mention of this in the documentation) 2) the fonts themselves are somehow different. 3) something else I'd be interested if anyone has any helpful explanations or suggestions about the source of this discrepancy. Thanks in advance Aloke Majumdar
psych@watserv1.waterloo.edu (R. Crispin - Psychology) (02/15/91)
In article <MAJUMDAR.91Feb12143455@garnet.cs.yale.edu> aloke_majumdar.cis@yccatsmtp.ycc.yale.ed writes: > > In my few months of exposure to Appleshare networks, I have been >encountering one particular problem in numerous forms, viz. how to maintain >font consistency in an application that's on a shared fileserver. I wonder if >anyone has found good ways to solve this problem. I'm not a regular reader of >this newsgroup, so... Much stuff deleted... Sorry for the followup. Reply bounced my response back to me. I had the same problem with our office network. We are using MacJanet rather than AppleShare but the solution should work with AppleShare. We purchased Suitcase for each Mac. I put a copy of all the fonts and DAs that we use on a read only volume on the server. Each user gets attached to this volume automatically when they log on. Suitcase is then configured to open these in shared mode at startup. Non of our machines have their own Hard disks and so once they have logged on the users switch launch a finder on their network volume. If users have a harddisk of their own this method will still work but the users will have to actually do the access each time the machine is restarted. Richard Crispin Phone: (519)888-4781 Dept. of Psychology EMail: psych@watdcs.uwaterloo.ca University of Waterloo psych@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca Waterloo, Ont. Canada N2L 3G1