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From: elliott@veronica.cs.wisc.edu (James Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Adobe Font Metric (AFM) files / downloading resident fonts
Keywords: AFM, downloading of resident PostScript fonts
Message-ID: <11410@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 4 Oct 90 19:20:17 GMT
References: <1990Oct1.135938.12496@jafus.mi.org>
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In <1990Oct1.135938.12496@jafus.mi.org> eddy@jafus.mi.org (Eddy J. Gurney) writes:
>I use A.T.M., and hence, have all the LaserWriter PS Fonts in a
>directory in my System Folder.  When I create this PS file, it CONTAINS
>the downloadable versions of all the fonts I used in the document, even
>though they're resident in the printer!  So, to save disk space and
>transfer time, I have to move all the fonts to another directory, then
>move them back after "printing" to disk.  A REAL pain - but worthwhile
>for ATM's sake.

>How can I "hack" the LaserWriter drivers to "download" ONLY those fonts
>that AREN'T in the "Standard 35"???  I remember reading that under
>normal printing conditions, it asks the printer "Do you have Palatino?"
>and if it says "yes", it doesn't download it.  Obviously, when printing
>to disk, this approach doesn't work... Any ideas?

Some printer drivers (such as the one supplied with Aldus PageMaker
4.0) are smart enough to know which printers contain which fonts
(using APD files), and therefore don't put redundant downloadable
fonts in the PostScript file when they print. Of course, that doesn't
help when one is not using an Aldus application.

My solution was to write a program I call StripFonts which scans a
PostScript file and removes the fonts which it knows to be built-in.
This can save a lot of space and time uploading.

It actually does more than that. Since I upload to a UNIX machine, I
realized that it was a waste of time to keep uploading the same (non
built-in) fonts over and over again, so there is a UNIX end to
StripFonts too. This utility keeps copies of the uploaded fonts in a
directory on UNIX, and can generate a list of the fonts thus
available. If I download this list to the Mac end of StripFonts, it
will remove those fonts from the PostScript document as well, but in
such a way that the UNIX end will re-include them before printing.

This method reduced a 430K sign to 30K, which saved me LOADS of time
uploading at 2400 baud (especially while I was fine-tuning the sign),
and saves me disk space too, since I just keep the stripped copy
around.

I've got a few friends trying out this program at the moment. I
consider it to be in "beta test" mode, and plan to eventually release
it as freeware. There are a few features I still want to add before an
"official" release, but if there is enough current interest, I could
post the beta copy now.

[As for the question about the .afm files, I don't believe any Mac
application or utility, with the possible exception of the LaTeX
implementations, uses them.]
--
Jim Elliott		      "Like a bridge he'll come between us, not a wall"
elliott@veronica.cs.wisc.edu