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From: crum@lipari.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop,comp.text,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.next,comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Macintosh page composition programs
Keywords: Quark Xpress, Aldus Pagemaker
Message-ID: <15700@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 7 Mar 89 08:44:43 GMT
References: <530@h-three.UUCP> <26710@apple.Apple.COM> <4924@mnetor.UUCP> <1441@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Sender: news@oberon.USC.EDU
Reply-To: crum@lipari.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum)
Lines: 17

But but but, what about kerning?  The "student" version of Xpress I
used at the University of Utah didn't seem to do automatic kerning as
Pagemaker seems to, albeit Xpress had a painful manual kerning option.

Does either utilize the PostScript kshow operator?  This brings up
a higher-level philosophical point.  Shouldn't fonts be distributed
with kern tables created by type designers?  I don't think kern tables
of any sort come with the Adobe fonts.  Correct me if I am wrong!

I was rather surprised when I found that even the demanding aesthetic
taste of Steve Jobs tolerated the omission of kerning.  I expected NeXT
software to use kshow with pretty kerned characters exclusively.  But
then, I expected the NeXT DPS server to anti-alias outline edges as well.
Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised when we receive release 0.9.

Gary Crum
Southern Cal