Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!caen!dali.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!hsdndev!dartvax!mars!nic!eclectic!kenh From: kenh@eclectic.COM (Ken Hancock) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Unified Postscript Fonts {Was: Neat Idea for a System Extension} Message-ID: <237@eclectic.COM> Date: 17 Jun 91 17:43:54 GMT References: <1991Jun7.101930.28539@athena.cs.uga.edu> Organization: Isle Systems - Waltham, MA Lines: 31 In article robertk@rkrajewski.lotus.com (Robert Krajewski) writes: >The real solution is to fix the problem at its source. There is a way >to unify the description of a Macintosh Type 1 font so that the family >variations do not appear in the enumerated list of fonts to begin >with. Some vendors unify their fonts in this manner, but Adobe >doesn't. I have Gill Sans and Perpetua from Monotype; the former is >not unified but the latter is. I have to disagree here. Harmonizing families isn't the way to go because it restricts you to 4 fonts/family: plain, italic, bold, bolditalic. Take Helvetica. You have Light/LI/Plain/PI/Bold/BI/Black/BI. You could harmonize them into two families, say Helvetica Light and Helvetica. Bold the light and it gives you black. But this becomes much more complicated when you start talking Semibolds or even numerical weights (as seen in Multiple Master demos). The best solution is to have true style menus. None of the standard QuickDraw BS -- if the chosen family has Light, Black, Semibold, Bold, etc., show them all in the Style menu. Apple currently has sample code which does exactly this for TrueType fonts. The logical extension would be to have developers have this code for both TrueType and bitmap-driven (Type 1) fonts. 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?