CompuServe Messages

Jim, Actually, it's not just Amiga programs. Few programs will support the fonts in a LJ or compatible. Ventura Publisher on the PC knows about some of them. The 25-in-1 cart comes with a disk for kludging MultiMate and Lotus to use those fonts but since the applications AREN'T WYSIWYG, it's very easy to get disappointing results. But at least you get them fast. 😀 PageStream knows the letter widths of the fonts it uses but it can't know the widths of the various fonts inside your printer. Without this information, it can't give you an accurate screen display. Generally speaking, most applications that allow font changes either send the text portions as graphics or PostScript. And so you get those two choices when it's time to print. To use LJ's with graphics AND text would require the _application_ to be rewritten giving you a choice of DM, PS or LJ. It's NOT as simple as changing printer drivers, the application has to be smarter. And there would need to be some mechanism for deriving the width tables of your fonts (be they built-in, soft or cart) and feeding them to the various applications in their own file formats. Not simple. Of course, this would open up a multitude of possible errors that might be difficult to diagnose in a support call. The power user might get everything right but the beginning would mostly be baffled. So… the solution is to send everything as graphics so the user gets proper output. I always advise users to ignore the presence of fonts in a printer (unless it's a PostScript printer). One of the sad facts of life when dealing with such printers. I think the presence of those fonts was a good thing when people were using word processors instead of DTP. Especially when the fonts were monospaced and matched the screen characters. With proportional fonts, they cause more problems than they're worth, IMHO. Malcolm