Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!rpp386!woody
From: woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Lasertalk (was Re: Bitmap of PostScript code..)
Summary: you can grab fonts off hd
Message-ID: <17972@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: 19 Feb 90 01:19:53 GMT
References: <2783@bacchus.dec.com> <6722@internal.Apple.COM> <1990Feb16.190232.16224@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: River Parishes Programming, Plano, TX
Lines: 46

In article <1990Feb16.190232.16224@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) writes:
> In article <2783@bacchus.dec.com>, kent@wsl.dec.com (Christopher A.
> Kent) writes:
> > The folks at Emerald City have licensed the right to make use of some
> > undocumented, unsupported hooks in the LaserWriter PostScript
> 
> Not strictly true. What you get for you money (assuming you've bought a
> traditional PS printer) is a general-purpose computer with an embedded
> operating system and language interpreter, that happens to be
> specialized to controlling a printing engine. If I choose to use it to
> do number crunching (assuming I have a lot of spare time), that's up to

Yup, yea, verily indeed.  It's nice to know that someone else can see
forest in spite of the trees.
p

> fonts built into the PS interpreter in other ways. Appears? I can't say
> I recall seeing a copyright notice (?) supplied with any PS printer
The outline shape can't be copyrighted anyway, as we have all 
seen in the prior net postings.

> So what? They now provide software to render the same fonts as bit maps
> on other devices, such as Macintosh screens (Adobe Type Manager).
> 
> A Font Foundry? I'm not so sure about this. You could print out
> characters in a dozen sizes and scan them in if all you needed to
> implement a font was a bitmapped version.

and the bit map is the shape, and this cannot be copyrighted.  In addition
if you have a hard-disk version, you can read the font bitmaps off the
hard disk anyway.

> The point we are gettng to is this: people need to convert PS to
> bitmaps. A PS printer can already do this. It's not the fastest way of
> doing it, but it ought to be a reasonably simple hack to upload a bitmap
> from the printer (as LaserTalk does), compared with writing a whole PS
> interpreter. So what is the REAL reason Adobe doesn't want us to do this?

Who knows, perhaps a desire to control the market, to call the shots, to
make money.  But probably because it would  violate  device independance,
the holy grail of printerdom.  Not all printers can do it, but the majority
can, and people need that ability.
c
t
Cheers
Woody