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From: fore@athena.cs.uga.edu (Howard Fore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Neat Idea for a System Extension!!!!
Message-ID: <1991Jun7.101930.28539@athena.cs.uga.edu>
Date: 7 Jun 91 10:19:30 GMT
Sender: fore@athena.cs.uga.edu (Howard Fore)
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens
Lines: 37

Here's the idea I had for a cool System 7 sys ext:

With System 6.0.7i and 7.0, hundreds if not thousands of Macintoshes' fonts 
menus will be thrown into disarray with a hodpodge of font formats. In the 
the olden days (which I remember with a grimace) there was the ImageWriter and 
bitmapped fonts (and we liked it ;-) ). Then came the LaserWriter and laser
fonts. Then laser fonts were divided into Type 1 and Type 3 formats (what about
Type 2?). Then the laser fonts were divided further into one each for Bold, 
Italic, Bold Italic, and Roman (Book) faces. Now there is TrueType and Adobe's
latest creation, Multiple Master (is this really any good?). Adobe fixed some
of the problem with their TypeReunion (a truely awesome INIT, oops, system
extension). 

What the world needs now (one thing at least) is a system extension that will
modify the font menu in the same manner as TypeReunion, but it will show what 
fonts are what kind. This would prevent people from spending a long time waitingfor their printout and then discovering that they didnt' use the right stuff.

So how 'bout it folks? Any takers? 

(of course i don't know everything that would be involved in that....i'm not
a programmer.....yet)
 
P.S. Who's going to be the first to suggest some MacSlang for "system 
     extension"? sext...syxt...synsion...sysext...sysion...se...???

P.P.S. The way i envision this se working is by the immediate options under
       the font menu would be hierarchial menus such as "Type 1", "Type 3",
       "Bitmapped", "TrueType", "MultipleMaster", etc. with each of these 
       hmenus containing the listing for the fonts of that type. i.e., like
       TypeReunion.


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Howard Fore   fore@athena.cs.uga.edu    (128.192.4.49)