Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!adm!cmcl2!yale!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu!gaynor From: gaynor@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Jim Gaynor) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps Subject: Re: Type Reunion opinions wanted Keywords: Type Reunion, Type Manager, Suitcase II Message-ID: <1990Nov15.141545.15598@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu> Date: 15 Nov 90 14:15:45 GMT References: <2811@esquire.dpw.com> <4320@lib.tmc.edu> <39731@ut-emx.uucp> Sender: news@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu Organization: The Ohio State University Lines: 97 Nntp-Posting-Host: right.magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu In article <39731@ut-emx.uucp> clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Kathy Strong) writes: >In article <4320@lib.tmc.edu> drg@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu (David Gutierrez) >jwrites: >>Type Reunion? Haated it! >> >>2. In order to choose any style of a typeface, you *had* to use a submenu, >>i.e., in order to choose Times Roman you had to pull down the Font menu, >>go to Times and then slide over to the submenu and choose Roman. It sounds >>like a small inconvenience, but it got on my nerves real fast. > >When using fonts with the "standard four" styles (normal, bold, italic, bold >italic), you should NOT have the screen fonts for all four styles installed. >Install ONLY the normal font. If you want to bold or italicize it, do so >through your application's equivalent of the style menu. If you follow this >rule, the only fonts that Type Reunion will assign submenus to are the ones >that DON'T follow the "standard four"--Eras, for example, which comes in >(I believe) Light, Book, Medium, Demi, Bold, and Ultra. Or Futura and >Futura Condensed. The big font families are the ones that Type Reunion was >created to handle. > >By the way, this assumes you are using Adobe Type Manager as well--so that >you can get good screen representations of your bolds and italics even without >screen fonts installed. In my font menu of 30 or so families, only about >eight have submenus. (Of course, being a fiend for extrabolds and lights, >those are the eight I use most often...) Ok. Right! I've played a -lot- with Adobe Type Manager [ATM] (haven't had a chance to get at 2.0, though), Adobe Type Reunion [ATR] and Suitcase II (with associated utilities, like Font Harmony). Start with Suitcase II. Indispensable. Period. And one of the bells and whistles I find handy with Suitcase II is its ability to build a font menu consisting of the the actual typefaces. (Just like what MacWrite II does). It's useful for when you're just pondering "Hmm... what'll look good with this?" ATR, since it completely takes over the font-menu creation, disables this feature in Suitcase II as well as MacWrite II's similar feature. Plain Chicago font menus. Ick. By the way, another nice feature of Suitcase II is to show which Postscript font description file is associated with which bitmap. It can really be handy. But totally unrelated to the subject at hand. Now, Font Harmony, which comes with Suitcase II. It combines a family of bitmaps into one coherent file, so that rather than have Palatino Book, B Palatino Bold, O Palatino Oblique, and BO Palatino Oblique, you have just Palatino. But when you Style Palatino into Italic, you get the O Palatino Oblique bitmap, rather than a simple slanted version of regular Palatino. So, who cares? Well, if you're using ATM, when you call out for a bold face or oblique, ATM builds it -if- you don't have the bitmap installed. If you're impatient (like I am) and/or use slower Macs (like I have to) it's nice to have the bold and oblique bitmaps in the frequently-used 10 and 12 point sizes. Otherwise, you have to wait on ATM to draw the styled type. Let's see if I can bring this all together now. If you're using ATM, it's nice to have the 10 and 12 point bitmaps of the typeface in -all- styles so you don't have to of the typeface so you don't have to wait on ATM to draw them. So, know you have all these styled bitmap fonts in your menu. If you use Font Harmony on the typefaces, you automatically get the styled bitmap with you style the normal typeface, and the WYSIWYG font menu feature of Suitcase II and MacWrite II is still available to you. If you use ATR, you have to go down the menu and then juke over to the secondary menu to get the styled typeface. And the WYSIWYG font menu feature of of Suitcase II and MacWrite II isn't available. For these reasons, I don't use ATR. Some Notes: o Font Harmony also works on Demi typefaces, I've found, often combining the Demi and DemiOblique together. o These arguments assume you aren't using a "cranking" Mac such as a IIfx or IIci, where the wait for ATM is negligible. Also, the increased speed of 2.0 might make ATM negligible on everything but a Classic and LC. If this is the case, then the styled bitmaps aren't needed (we used them because we didn't want to wait on ATM, remember?), and most of the argument above is moot. That is, unless you -really- like WYSIWYG font menus. o I am in no way associated with Adobe, 5th Generation, or Apple Computer. Nor are these the opinions of The Ohio State University or Academic Computing Services. My opinions. Mine mine mine mine! -- Jim Gaynor - Systems Analyst 1 + "This is Serious. He is Lost. The Ohio State University ACS-FM-OCES | We must begin the Search at once." gaynor@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.ed | -Rabbit, from gaynor@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu + "The House at Pooh Corner"