Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!adobe!dkletter From: dkletter@adobe.COM (Akbar & Jeff's SUPPORT GROUP for the vaguely dissatisfied) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Font menu SANITY!! Message-ID: <1971@adobe.UUCP> Date: 13 Mar 90 05:47:53 GMT References: Reply-To: dkletter@adobe.UUCP (Akbar & Jeff's SUPPORT GROUP for the vaguely dissatisfied) Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View Lines: 93 In article ls1i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Leonard John Schultz) writes: >I have alot of screenfonts, but the way the Mac puts different styles >into the font menus is very confusing. > >where Times just shows up as Times. > >My question is, why do the different styles for some fonts show up in >the font menu and others don't. The menu gets increadibly cluttered >with a significant number of fonts. > >Also in the Font/DA Mover, the italicized and bold styles show up in >those styles for some fonts (like Times) and show up in their names (B >*whatever* Bold I *whatever* Italic) in other fonts (like Letter >Gothic). > >How can I make all of my fonts behave like Times?? good question. i will attempt to answer... your Adobe typeface bitmaps (or "screen fonts") contain all kinds of information such as and FOND ID and kerning information, but it also has a list of PostScript names and "Apple Menu Names". each application handles fonts a bit differently than the other. Adobe Illustrator, for instance, parses the PostScript font names for it's font menu whereas most other applications like MacWrite use the Apple Menu Name, which Apple has documented how to do so. the problem is that some applications like Microsoft Word used to go about it in a different way then most. one of those ways was to have a font menu that was so narrow that you'd get a list that would look essentially like this: Letter Goth ... Letter Goth ... Letter Goth ... Letter Goth ... without the B or I or BI "prefix" and it would be impossible to tell just which is the plain face and which is the bolditalic face, etc. since we couldn't just leave our typefaces as they were (because Word is too popular to cry "not our bug") we had to at least do something to fix it (even if it was a problem that really wasn't ours). we came up with "font prefixing" method which essentually meant that when you went into your MS Word font menu, things would look more like this: B Stone Sans ... I Stone Sans ... Sb Stone San ... and so on... a nice simple solution, no? however, Microsoft has finally changed their font menu-ing system and so this fix isn't really neccessary any longer. we've begun to drop the use of prefixes with our newer typefaces in recognizing this. however, as you have noticed, the Font DA mover still does something similar to what MS Word did. well, because there will be no Font/DA mover in System 7.0 and because if you click on the desired face, you can see just what the full name is at the bottom, we've decided that it is possible to live with that minor headache for the time being. when we will go back and change our older typeface packages to reflect this dropping of the prefix change will happen, i don't really know for sure. you see, the problem we're facing now is the issue of backward compatibility. if we were to drop the prefixes from our older typeface packages, we could find ourselves facing a hoard of unhappy customers. why? because their old documents created with the prefixed fonts won't be able to find these "new" non-prefixed font names because they are essentually different. life also would become so much more so complicated if the document is a newsletter with many different typefaces and styles in varying point sizes. unfortunately, you're still left with the problem of the fact that your font menu is alphabetized and so all the 'B blahblah Bold' fonts are put together, etc. and that makes your font menu a big long mess. one suggestion that has been mentioned is that you could condense your NFNTs into one single face in the menu. you would still be faced with the problem that your application would not recognize this new font for your older documents created before that change was made to the font. so you give up having a long menu, but have to accept another "minor" problem detail. most of this sounds like mostly hacks and i for one, realise that it's asking a bit much of the customer but we're hoping that they can bear with it until we come up with a better solution. anyways, the reason why your Times may not have the Prefix is simple, you are probably using the Apple versions which only have the plain faces and do not have the prefixes. our version of Times (that comes with ATM) does indeed have the aforementioned prefixes. i hope this has helped and hasn't caused any further confusion! 2;^) later.--d --- "Yeah... but does it work?" -- Allan Holdsworth