Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!bellcore!spectral!sjs
From: sjs@spectral.ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Does Transcript support font downloading?
Message-ID: <17783@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 4 Oct 89 16:30:11 GMT
References: <17753@bellcore.bellcore.com> <1258@adobe.UUCP>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: sjs@bellcore.com (Stan Switzer)
Organization: Bellcore
Lines: 47

In article <1258@adobe.UUCP> bezanson@adobe.UUCP (Brian Bezanson) writes:
> [Note: This reply is being posted at large because Stan's mail system had
>  problems - maybe it will be useful for others.]
> 
> In article <17753@bellcore.bellcore.com> you write:
> >Does Transcript support font downloading?  The PostScript
> >page-description structuring conventions are clearly designed to
> >support such a function.
> >
> >If so, can a TranScript user buy Adobe fonts and install them on the
> >(UNIX) printer server?
> >
> >If not, why not?
> 
> Stan,
>   Since a PostScript font is basically some PostScript code, you can use
> transcript to download it to the printer.

OK, thanks.  But I knew that already.  What I was wondering was if
Transcript, based on the information in the
  %%DocumentFonts:
and
  %%PageFonts:
comment conventions would query the printer to see if it already knows
about the font, and if it does not, download the font on behalf of the
queued job.

Basically, I'd like to be able to construct a document the same way
regardless of whether I am talking to an NTX/II or a basic LW.

The Red Book is fairly explicit about the intended use of these
comment fields.  I was just wondering if TranScript did anything about
it.

A second-order question is whether, when the format of non-encrypted
fonts is made public, there will be a general convention for where the
downloadable fonts are placed, where the metrics can be found, etc. so
that various tools such as print daemons (i.e. TranScript) and
text-handling tools (TeX, ditroff/dit2ps, FrameMaker, NeWS, various
Hyper DooDads, Display PostScript, X (theoretically, an X server could
render PostScript fonts), etc.) could be working from the same font
specifications rather than having their own redundant or, worse,
inconsistent, version of the same information.

Or is it the PC-style ``one user, one application'' mentality again?

Stan Switzer