CompuServe Thread

#PageStream Output

5 messages in this thread
#14857From: Joel HalbertApr 12, 1989 2:02 AM
Justin, I was one of the first to request your brochure, which I received a while back. I will definitely order your program – I'm just waiting for my finances to recover from all the money I've recently "saved" from special offers on Deskjet, M2Sprint, X-CAD, and various other upgrades! I've been reading the Adobe PostScript reference manual (red book) in my little spare time recently, so I'm very interested in using PrintScript to try out some custom programs. Regarding its use for DTP, though, I see the lack of a more complete font library as a potentially severe limitation. As I understand it, even the Times-"like" and Helvetica-"like" fonts you supply don't have the same metrics as the de facto standard Adobe versions. Will you be fixing this and/or adding more of the popular fonts in the near future? Also, I'd like to know if there is any problem using the PageStream fonts that _do_ include downloadable PostScript code (i.e. the non-Adobe-clone fonts). Joel
#14890From: Mark SterlingApr 12, 1989 7:56 PM
I can answer one of your questions. I have tried using a few of the Pagestream downloadable PS fonts with printscript and they do work. They do NOT look exactly the same. I think the problem is that the fonts are simply not accurate representations of the screen fonts in PageStream. As far as I can tell the fault is not with PrintScript. This can cause problems where size and spacing is critical. ….Mark
#14923From: Joel HalbertApr 13, 1989 2:47 AM
Thanks for the information, Mark. You say that the fonts through PrintScript don't match exactly to the screen font appearance. What if you print them directly on your Deskjet (I seem to remember that you are a DJ owner…)? I have done that on mine, and I don't remember thinking that the fonts were radically misrepresented on the screen. Do the PostScript versions look substantially different from the dot-matrix versions?
#14910From: PixelationsApr 12, 1989 9:50 PM
First, the Times-like and Alpine-like fonts are accurate in terms of character widths. They are a bit too "heavy" and lighter versions are being prepared. In addition, we have a number of other fonts being prepared for publication. The only problem I can think of with regard to the PageStream PostScript fonts is that our version of the "findfont" operator didn't accept strings (only names). This will be fixed in the next version, but in the meantime there is a work-around if you see this problem (the error will be TYPECHECK and the operator "findfont"): put a "cvn" operator between the string and the "findfont". This will convert the string to a name, and then we'll find the font.
#14924From: Joel HalbertApr 13, 1989 2:51 AM
Thanks for your reply, Justin. I guess I misunderstood – I thought that the supplied fonts needed different width tables and kerning specs than their Adobe counterparts. If it's only a case of appearing a little too bold, then I could easily live with that for now. I'm glad that you are working on more fonts as well.