Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!intercon!news
From: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Royal vs Adobe
Message-ID: <1990Apr10.154031.10203@intercon.com>
Date: 10 Apr 90 15:40:31 GMT
References: <1516@mountn.dec.com>
Sender: usenet@intercon.com (USENET The Magnificent)
Reply-To: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Herndon, VA
Lines: 31

There are only two fundamental technical differences between TrueType and
Adobe's Type 1, as I see things:

1. TrueType fonts can contain information in addition to character glyph
   descriptions, such as ductility, contextual forms, kerning, and ligatures.
   This is mainly of use to the as-yet-nonexistent Line Layout Manager, but
   will become more important as time goes on, especially with non-Roman
   writing systems.  In my view, this is TrueType's biggest win.

2. Apple has chosen to place imperative hints into TrueType font descriptions
   themselves, whereas Adobe Type 1 fonts use declarative hints which are
   interpreted by the rasterizer.  This makes Adobe fonts easier to generate,
   but Apple fonts are more flexible.  Of course, Adobe Type 3 fonts give you
   as much control as you could ever want, so this may end up being a
   non-issue.

I think that speed issues are a red herring.  Apple's code is probably more
highly optimized (especially for 68000 class machines) that the current ATM,
but Bezier cubics aren't *that* much slower than quadratics (especially if
you use something like forward differences), and having fewer control points
pretty much balances things out.

I think they'll co-exist, on the strength of Adobe's font-production software
if nothing else.  Apple has a lot of catch-up to do before they can compete
with the stuff that Adobe licenses to places like Linotype...

--
Amanda Walker, InterCon Systems Corporation
--
"Y'know, you can't have, like, a light, without a dark to stick it in...
 You know what I'm sayin'?"     --Arlo Guthrie