Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!agate!bionet!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!hammen
From: hammen@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Robert J. Hammen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Screenfonts: Adobe or Apple?
Message-ID: <344@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Date: 11 Jan 89 23:47:48 GMT
References: <8711@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: news@csd4.milw.wisc.edu
Reply-To: hammen@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Robert J. Hammen)
Organization: Bulfin Printers
Lines: 53

In article <8711@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> hastings@scam.berkeley.edu (Mark Hastings) writes:
>
>	After looking at the recently posted Adobe screenfonts (from the sumex
>archive), I found that I preferred them to the standard Apple screenfonts.
>But before I start using them full-time, I wanted to ask a few questions:
>
>  1.	Why are they different?  Politics?  Artistic differences?

The Adobe fonts are "tuned" more to reflect what your actual line lengths
will be off a PostScript printer. In addition, Adobe offers screen fonts for
the bold, italic, and bold italic versions of the Apple LaserWriter fonts.
These, once again, provide more accurate spacing than when you use the
Apple fonts (to make one of the Apple fonts italic, the font is "slanted"
on the screen; this looks terrible, is hard to edit, and does not correspond
with what a printed line of this text will look like (in some cases)).

>  2.	Which is more accurate in terms of the actual spacing on a 300dpi page?

See above.

>  3.	Why did Adobe drop the 9 point fonts?  Ok, a few of the fonts have
>	  a single 9 point resource, but only in the basic style... 

Because it's difficult to develop 9 point faces that look good on the screen
and are accurate. They only did them for a few faces, anyway.

>  4.	When I used the Font Harmonizer utility from Suitcase II,
>	  which supposedly fixed up some resources in the Adobe fonts, the
>	  suitcase file still contained resources for the semi-bogus 7, 8 & 9
>	  point fonts, yet they weren't advertised as available in programs 
>	  like Word 3.  Does that mean I have to fool around with the Font/DA
>	  Mover to get them added to the FOND resource?  (I don't have my
>	  suitcase II manual handy, or else I'd check there).

Yes, what you have to do is copy all of the fonts in that file into a new
font file; this will fix up the FOND resource so that the 7,8,&9 point
faces are now referenced along with the other sizes.

This is one of the primary advantages of Suitcase II over its competitors. It
has a much better manual (at least when dealing with fonts), powerful font
utilities (Font/Sound Valet for compression, Font Harmony for font repair,
NFNT conversion, and ID conflict resolution) and so on. One of the only 
problems with Adobe fonts is the fact that their resource maps are defective,
since the screen font files are created on a Sun, and not a Mac. Font Harmony
is capable of fixing these problems (which can make the Font/DA Mover do
nasty things when you try deleting things from an Adobe font file).

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