Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!voder!apple!stearns
From: stearns@Apple.COM (Bryan Stearns)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: FONT/DA mover and NFNTs
Message-ID: <7673@apple.Apple.Com>
Date: 14 Mar 88 18:20:51 GMT
References: <13326@comp.vuw.ac.nz> <5162@uwmcsd1.UUCP>
Reply-To: stearns@apple.UUCP (Bryan Stearns)
Organization: Apple
Lines: 40
Keywords: FOND, FONT, NFNT
Summary: Be careful what you wish for.. you may get it.

In article <13326@comp.vuw.ac.nz> newbery@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Michael Newbery) writes:
>1) PLEASE Apple, could you fix FONT/DA mover so it knows about NFNTS?

Alright, already.

Font/DA Mover version 3.8 will support movement of fonts stored in NFNT
resources. Under certain conditions (mostly related to resource-ID collisions
with other NFNTs), it will even "convert" a font to an NFNT in the process
of moving it.

I just finished a draft of a technote covering the issues related to this
change, for font producers and font-editor authors. As soon as it finishes
with the normal review cycle, it will be released with the next regular batch.

Version 3.8 will be included in the next release of the system tools, which
should be available within a month or so. No, this system release will
probably not include any fonts stored as NFNTs, but at least clever ResEditors
like yourselves will be able to hack around with them; also, font producers
can start selling fonts stored as NFNTs.

(The key advantage to storing fonts as NFNTs instead of FONTs is that they
don't have the resource-ID-encoding restrictions that FONTs do. Thus, you
can have 15872 families in a font file that consist of NFNTs only [in addition
to the 256 FONT-based families you can have now]. Also, we can have styled
fonts, so that you see a better representation of bold Times than the
QuickDraw smearing algorithm's attempt, without having to choose a separate
font family: no more BI Times Bold Italic, etc.)

Pleeze, be patient and wait for the release: don't clog my mailbox with
requests for "beta copies", etc. I'm too busy testing it to send it out.
Also, the technote will be out in due time; please don't ask for that
either. I'm posting this just to let you know that we do pay some attention
to what's needed in the real world.

No, there isn't a version 3.7. Don't ask.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan Stearns                                            Apple Computer, Inc.
Macintosh Applications & Utilities Group         20525 Mariani Ave, M/S 27-AK
stearns@apple.COM, stearns%apple@CSNET-RELAY              Cupertino, CA 95014
{nsc,dual,sun,ucbvax!mtxinu}!apple!stearns "Laugh while you can, monkey boy!"