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From: hammen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Robert Hammen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript,comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Font Pricing
Message-ID: <1990Sep08.111132.10740@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 8 Sep 90 11:11:32 GMT
References: <862@grenada.UUCP> <1990Aug3.014801.24448@caen.engin.umich.edu> <1990Aug4.031659.23902@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu> <1990Sep4.141603.28009@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Reply-To: hammen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Robert Hammen)
Organization: Unemployed Mac Fanatics, Inc.
Lines: 42

>Bitstream has a strong interest in seeing TrueType established as a 
>major font format.  By strongly positioning themselves as the 
>pre-eminent TrueType font supplier (as Adobe is positioned as the 
>foremost Type 1 font vendor) by offering their fonts cheaply, they stand
>to benefit greatly if TruType takes off.

I think you've brought up an important point here. TrueType is important
to Bitstream primarily for market reasons. Bitstream, being somewhat of a
late entry into the Mac font market, has had their problems penetrating the
design and typesetting end of the market (the people inclined to buy whole
typeface libraries), for the simple reason that Adobe was their first, and
that most people were using Adobe fonts (if you're a service bureau, you buy
what your customers use). Many service bureaus have recommended against
using Bitstream fonts, since they are a bit inconvenient to download to the
font storage disk of an imagesetter (not supported by Adobe's font downloaders,
and the Apple one is very buggy and not compatible with those from Adobe).

Getting back to the issue of TrueType vs. Type 1 font pricing: there are 
currently many Type 1 compatible font production tools (those used by Adobe,
Bitstream, The Font Company, etc., as well as Fontographer 3.1, FontStudio, 
and the forthcoming Kingsley/ATF Type Designer I). Many of these will be 
updated to deal with the TrueType format, when a TrueType-compatible 
operating system is released by someone :-). The key question will be "how
good are the TrueType fonts compared to their Type 1 equivalents?" The main
issue will be hinting, which is done in the PS interpreter (in the case of
the Type 1 fonts) and is done in the font (in the case of TrueType). The
TrueType hinting language is thorough but complex. One font vendor (who does 
not want to be identified) said that it might take twice as long to produce
superhinted TrueType fonts than to produce their Type 1 equivalents, and,
were that the case, he'd be inclined to charge twice as much for them. The
Altsys folks claim that their automatic TrueType font hinting will be at
least as good as Type 1. I guess we'll see...

The conclusion from the above: it will probably take at least as much 
effort, if not more, to produce a TrueType font than to produce its Type 1
equivalent. Therefore, if the TrueType fonts cost less to the user, it will
be for marketing reasons rather than technical reasons.

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/ Robert Hammen | Macintosh enthusiast & publishing guru, looking for a job /
/ hammen@ddsw1.mcs.com | 70701.2104@compuserve.com | GEnie: R.HAMMEN        /
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