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From: kenh@eclectic.COM (Ken Hancock)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: FontMonger conversion to TrueType
Keywords: FontMonger, TrueType, Garamond
Message-ID: <187@eclectic.COM>
Date: 26 May 91 15:57:11 GMT
References: <19746@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Organization: Isle Systems - Waltham, MA
Lines: 39

In article <19746@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue) writes:
>I just bought FontMonger, an application which can convert fonts among
>PostScript Type 1, Type 3 and TrueType formats.  It has the proverbial
>"user interface from Hell" and generally useless documentation, but
>nevertheless it DOES do the job of converting Adobe Type 1 PS fonts
>to TrueType.  (very slowly!)

I don't think the user interface is that bad...it could be improved in
places, the standard files could be used, and things could be cleaned
up in a few places and it would help a lot...

>The other puzzle concerns the behavior of MS Word 4.0b.  (This is
>under System 7.0, BTW)  Because I didn't like the look of the rendered
>TT Garamond fonts at 12 points, I decided to install the 12-point screen font.
>I did this by dragging the appropriate bitmap into the System File.
>When I brought up Word again and tried to type, I got some really
>bizarre behavior.  The cursor insisted on staying at about a 72-point
>size. 

The large cursor is most likely because the character metrics are being
generated by the TrueType outline.  FontMonger takes a very conservative
approach to converting fonts -- it takes the largest character extents
and uses that for the leading so that no ascender will ever overlap
a descender.  I see this as slightly undesirable, but not awful, since
99% of your applications allow you to control leading.

Check out either next week's or the week after's TidBITS for a review
of FontMonger vs. Metamorphosis pro.  It's in the works.

Ken



-- 
Ken Hancock             | INTERNET: kenh@eclectic.com 
Isle Systems            | Compuserve: >INTERNET: kenh@eclectic.com
Macintosh Consulting    | AOL: KHancock 
                        | Disclaimer: My opinions are mine,
                        | your opinions are yours.  Simple, isn't it?