Varityper
At last September's Seybold Seminar, John Warnock of Adobe pointed out that
a good font scaling algorithm could be written in PostScript and used by
non-Adobe fonts. In fact, he said that Adobe's algorithm was originally
created and tested in PostScript code; it was implemented at a lower level
in order to improve rasterizing speed in the "special case" of fonts.
Creators of clone interpreters will eventually include their own
(proprietary) scaling "hints", at least for moderate-resolution machines.
The "big secrets" are how to create an Adobe-style font, complete with the
hooks into Adobe's hinting algorithm, that can run on Adobe interpreters,
and how to create a clone interpreter that can read Adobe fonts and take
advantage of the hints. Warnock claims that Adobe's font encryption will
make these both very difficult.