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From: dbs@dungeon.pa.dec.com (dan sears)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts,comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: AFM revisions
Message-ID: <4568@bacchus.dec.com>
Date: 25 May 90 18:33:32 GMT
References: <2820@adobe.UUCP>
Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com
Reply-To: dbs@dungeon.pa.dec.com (dan sears)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 25


>>How are changes in an Adobe AFM file accounted for in an Adobe Font? Are
>>there updates to the font itself? 
>In a word, yes. The changes in the AFM files are simply reflections of
>changes in the font with the corresponding version number.

PostScript fonts and the printers they run on are not cheap.  Downloadable
fonts usually cost more than $100 each and Adobe PostScript printers sell at
a premium of well over $1000 to non-PostScript printers that use identical
marking engines.  Having invested large sums of money in PostScript fonts
and printers, it seems reasonable that a customer can expect a font upgrade
option that is at least slightly cheaper than repurchasing the font *for each
printer*.  The vendors of popular software packages like WordPerfect, Lotus 123
and Adobe Illustrator-88 have such policies.  Is there such an upgrade policy
for Adobe fonts?

>As Dan seems to have guessed, it would be best to use the downloadable
>version in such a case. This is easily done by manually downloading the font
>to the printer; PostScript will check fonts in RAM before using fonts in ROM.

In a small configuration of a single computer and a single printer, this is
a straightforward task.  But in a large network of several printers and
computers this quickly becomes a big system management problem.  Do you have
any advice on how to deal with this problem other than to upgrade every
printer in lock step?