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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!mcdphx!mcdchg!ddsw1!hammen
From: hammen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Robert Hammen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.fonts
Subject: Re: PostScript vs TrueType?
Message-ID: <1990Aug14.124450.7262@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 14 Aug 90 12:44:50 GMT
References: <9583@goofy.Apple.COM> <406@three.MV.COM> <9724@goofy.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: hammen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Robert Hammen)
Organization: Personal Publishing Magazine
Lines: 32

In article <9724@goofy.Apple.COM> chewy@apple.com (Paul Snively) writes:
>> Does this mean that the fonts will be down loaded as the curve equations,
>> and a postscript program will be sent along to convert the equations into
>> bitmaps?  Or are the bitmaps going to be generated on the Mac and then
>> downloaded to the printer/typesetter (expensive, especially on something
>> like a 1200 dpi device)?
>My understanding (I'm not a gnarly printing dude, so don't quote me on 
>this!) is that the curve equations will be downloaded to the printer along 
>with machine code to do the rendering.  So the printer will still do the 
>rendering, but will do it as fast as its processor can.

From our "experiments" with System 7.0, this is exactly what seems to be
the case. When a TrueType font is called for the first time, a message
pops up in the status window saying "Downloading font scaling code."

This is the better way to do things (who would want to wait while your 
Mac generated bitmaps at 3386 dpi and shipped them down the network to
your imagesetter?). We'll just have to see how fast this font-scaling
code is compared to the PostScript font rasterizer.

Another question is compatibility. We've got a bunch of PostScript clones
in-house for testing purposes, and they both failed to work with the font
scaling code (and the more ironic thing is that one of them uses the Bauer
PS clone that's the basis for Microsoft's TrueImage!). It's very important
for this code to work on non-680x0-based controllers, now that Adobe has
introduced many of these.

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