Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!udel!eplrx7!leipold
From: leipold@eplrx7.uucp (Walt Leipold)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Installing Fonts & DA's in applications
Message-ID: <1990Mar8.202458.22809@eplrx7.uucp>
Date: 8 Mar 90 20:24:58 GMT
References: <39241@apple.Apple.COM> <1990Mar6.112240.1783@hellgate.utah.edu> <39273@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: usenet@udel.EDU
Reply-To: leipold@eplrx7.UUCP (Walt Leipold)
Organization: DuPont Engineering Physics Lab
Lines: 54

In article <39273@apple.Apple.COM> mjohnson@Apple.COM (Mark B. Johnson) writes:
>Do you always believe everything Inside Macintosh says, especially a volume
>which was written and has not been revised since 1984?  Times have changed
>as systems have changed.  We've documented the reasons for this in Technical
>Notes for some time now.
>
> [deleted descriptions of why not to store fonts in applications
> or documents...the gist of the discussion is that some recent system
> 'enhancements' have made this kind of flexibility impossible...]

As hard as Apple's been pushing the object-oriented applecart (if you
like mixed metaphors), it's really sad to see them copping out on
something like this.  "Don't you _dare_ put fonts in application or
document files!"  Right.  The orthogonality of resources was one of the
beauties of the original Mac system; you could put any resource
anywhere, and it would get used at the appropriate time.  And the user
didn't even have to _know_ about it; the machine just did it right.
This was one of the concepts that actually made programming the Mac
easier.

Orthogonality and flexibility were Good Things back when the elegance
of the Mac meant something, but now Apple sells enough of 'em that they
don't have to bust a gut to keep things elegant and simple.  And even
though Apple pays lip-service to an object-oriented philosophy, with
its emphasis on encapsulation, you'd better not try that encapsulation
with your bridge or chess application.  No, it's too much trouble for
Apple to keep things simple, and elegant, and orthogonal.  They're too
busy with their lawsuits over Look & Feel.

(And of course, limiting private fonts means that you can't carry
an application which needs these fonts around on a floppy unless
it's a system disk, so the poor schmuck of a user has to either
run the Installer every time he makes a copy of his program or has
to run Font/DA Mover every time he moves his floppy to a different
machine.  Great.  Thanks for looking out for the little guy.)

[Flame off]

Sorry, it's been a bad day.  

>-- 
>Mark B. Johnson                                            AppleLink: mjohnson
>Developer Technical Support                         domain: mjohnson@Apple.com
>Apple Computer, Inc.         UUCP:  {amdahl,decwrl,sun,unisoft}!apple!mjohnson
>
>"You gave your life to become the person you are right now.  Was it worth it?"


-- 
"As long as you've lit one candle,                         Walt Leipold
you're allowed to curse the darkness."       (leipolw%esvax@dupont.com)
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