Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!adobe!bezanson
From: bezanson@adobe.COM (Brian Bezanson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: ATM (Adobe Type Manager) Problems
Keywords: Adobe ATM Type
Message-ID: <1321@adobe.UUCP>
Date: 16 Oct 89 23:12:57 GMT
References: <45@fleet.UUCP>
Reply-To: bezanson@adobe.UUCP (Brian Bezanson)
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View
Lines: 47

In article <45@fleet.UUCP> mel@fleet.UUCP (mel) writes:
>While our user group was given a preview of ATM (Adobe Type Manager) we
>noticed that type had somewhat irregular spacing between letters in all
>of the word processors that we tested it with.  The same text placed into
>Pagemaker looked fine.  Printed output did reflect the same spacing
>irregularities as shown on the screen - meaning Pagemaker's output was
>fine but the word processors kept the erroneous spacing. 

  This isn't a problem of ATM, but more a limitation on applications. If you
use programs like FullWrite, PageMaker, WriteNow, XPress, MacWrite II 1.1,
Word 4 (except on the imagewriter), and a few others that use fractional
width spacing (recommended by Apple since the MacPlus first appeared), 
everything looks great. Older versions of Word, Write, MORE II, etc... don't
use fractional widths and rely on a simpler placement of text. If you take a
pixel and scale it out 12 times, you could assume that taking it's width and
multiplying by 12 would work/look fine - which is basically what QuickDraw
scaling does. With ATM (and later with System 7), you get back a more precise
font. Part of that precision is that the width isn't just a multiple of a
smaller size (i.e. a 12 point m, that was 6 pixel wide before, at 72 points
it isn't 36 pixels wide (6 width x 6 enlargement) - it is really 31 pixels
wide). 
   The application using non-fractional widths will use the old width
information, and you'll get these spacing gaps. Those that use fractional
widths will appear correctly. If you would take a sample of a page done on
one of your 'problem' word processors and print it out with and without ATM,
hold the two pages on top of each other and in front of a light. You'll see that
the characters are laid down in the same spots, their widths are physically
different because one is the jaggies scaled up and the other is outline, but 
the application receives width information identical whether ATM is on or off.
   In this case you'd like the spacing of the jagged text, with the 
quality of the ATM text. The solution is to use an application that supports and
uses fractional widths. Hope this answers your question.

----
   On a similar note: to all of those users who have sent me direct mail with
questions regarding ATM (and there were more than a few) - thanks for asking
and I hoped I answered your questions. I sent out answers to every question
I received. If you sent one to me, but never received an answer - my apologies.
I sent a few responses to net-land as a whole and the others I tried every
way I could, but our mailer kept rejecting some and they never made it.
If you still have an open ATM question, send it to me again with some 
alternate access paths or if the question is of general knowledge, post it here.ATM shipped today, so we can start looking for questions/reactions from the
real users of ATM.
-- 
Brian Bezanson                                          bezanson@adobe.com
Adobe Systems Incorporated           The opinions expressed above are my
                                     own and may not represent those of Adobe.