Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nbires!hao!husc6!endor!olson
From: olson@endor.harvard.edu (Eric K. Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Large Fonts (>24 point)
Message-ID: <3703@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 3 Jan 88 22:47:16 GMT
References: <594@ndmath.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: olson@endor.UUCP (Eric K. Olson)
Organization: Lexington Software Design
Lines: 27

In a recent article Greg Corson writes:
>A related question...can the fonts in the laserwriter be read back out to
>the Macintosh?  If that is possible I could scale the outline fonts and
>create special fonts in any size I need.

The implementation of Postscript in the Apple Laserwriter does not include
a function which reads pixels off the page.  I believe some
other implementations do include this function.  If it did, you could just
image the characters you want and read the bitmaps out.  It is possible
to write such a function using assembly language and a very good understanding
of the internals of the Laserwriter (the person who writes Apple's smoothing
algorithm for the LW could almost certainly do this).  I am not such a person.

The spline data which defines the postscript fonts in the LW is encrypted, and
therefore cannot be easily retrieved (also, the fonts consist of procedures
which adjust the parameters for various point sizes, so the "font data" really
has to be executed by a Postscript interpreter).

So, in summary, direct access of the LW fonts in any form is rather difficult.

-Eric



                      (defun maybe (x) (maybe (not x)))
Eric K. Olson     olson@endor.harvard.edu     harvard!endor!olson     D0760
   (Name)                (ArpaNet)                 (UseNet)        (AppleLink)