#Benguiat & good type
25-Sep-89 01:15:49
Sb: #12930-#Benguiat & good type
Fm: Scott R. Leyes 71041,121
To: Jon Hodges 76276,3102
I spent a good chunk of time in 'Frisco at a PPA tech committee meting, and
KERNING (+ other major typographic points) was on everybody's minds.
While the programmers are likely going to make their products more
functional, it's probably going to be up to us poor schmucks who set this
type to push for and pioneer ways of improving it. It's not as easy as
"converting" Magna kern pairs to the Macintosh; there are lots of
PostScript and Mac-specific problems that have to be dealt with too.
There are signs of improvements:
— Apple's Layout Manager (part of System 7.0), while it will probably
be a horrible mess at first, will give applications better routines to
handle things like kerning and justification;
— Adobe is working on the next overhaul of their PostScript ROMs, and
it will likely involve much-improved text handling (which will open the
door to more sophisticated routines to be written).
— Software developers (large and small) are heeding the call of the
typesetters, and are coming up with some innovative solutions (they're not
perfect, but they're another step in the right direction). More later.
Of course, we've all heard this before…the software developer's refrain:
"WE'RE WORKING ON IT."
But I see some nice stuff coming up (maybe sooner than you think).