CompuServe Messages

Regarding white counters in letters, ProPage is not unusual in this respect. The following quotation is from a recent issue of Step-by-Step Graphics magazine: "One problem Rice encounters in this process is that when placing art back into a tinted box in Quark, the counters of drawn letters such as "O" or "e" are opaque, effectively blocking out the tinted background. Illustrator, like many of the Postscript draw programs, sees the counters of these letters as vector objects, which by default are usually opaque white. In order to "see through" the letters, two techniques are used by Rice. In Illustrator, the counters can be filled with the same color as the tint in Quark. . . . The best solution is to cut the letter in Illustrator with the scissors tool across one side of the bowl of the letter, join the inside and outside lines, and reassemble it. In this way, the counter will be transparent, and can be placed on top of any shaded or tinted background in Quark." I've been thinking of making a program to process the font files so they'd automatically come out this way, but I just haven't had the time. The resulting fonts wouldn't be suitable for outline lettering. You can't have it both ways. By the way I haven't yet tried the method I just quoted.