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From: greid@adobe.com (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts,comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Open Fonts
Message-ID: <629@adobe.UUCP>
Date: 10 Mar 89 19:04:06 GMT
References: <26962@apple.Apple.COM> <25@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Sender: news@adobe.COM
Reply-To: greid@adobe.COM (Glenn Reid)
Followup-To: comp.fonts
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View
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[I've added comp.lang.postscript to the Newsgroups line.]

In article <25@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) writes:
>In article <26962@apple.Apple.COM>, chuq@Apple (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>>The obvious question is "Why bother? What (other than not giving Adobe
>>royalties) are the advantages of Open Fonts over Adobe's technology?"
>
>Royalty is important. I think the cost for all of the Adobe fonts on a
>CD is several thousand dollars. I don't know what the cost would be per
>workstation. With Display PostScript and NeWS, doing the proper thing
>with PostScript fonts is difficult, from a system manager's view.

Notice that Sun is not supplying fonts, but font technology.  The fonts
will still come from the font vendors, who will be interested in
protecting their outlines and in charging royalties.  I would be a bit
surprised if the font format were not encrypted, and if it isn't, you
might see great hesitation on the part of the font vendors in making
their outlines available, since they can't be protected under current
law.

>If I could get 100 new fonts for my workstation, and use them on
>a LaserWriter and typesetter, and have the same environment for every
>other workstation anywhere, I would be more likely to make use of those
> fonts, instead of limiting myself to Helvetica, Courier, and Times.

I think you're describing Display PostScript :-)

Bear in mind that if you want these fonts to work on a LaserWriter and
typesetter, that they must be in PostScript language form, because they
understand only that.  Which brings up memory-se issues and the
difficulties of producing good PostScript language fonts.  I don't know
whether or not the Sun TypeScaling technology includes the PostScript
language code, or just C code.

I suspect that you will have to build a new ("clone") printer to take
real advantage of this technology on printers.  It will certainly be
valuable in NeWS, however, which is probably why it was developed.

Just thoughts,
Glenn Reid
Adobe Systems