#Benguiat & good type
2 messages in this thread
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).
I know you're probably up to your eyes in non-disclosure forms, but please
keep us informed about anything you can talk about.
The Adobe ROM upgrade is good news. It always drives me crazy when I try to
kern type in straight PostScript code. The awidthshow, ashow and kshow
operators just are too limiting. Anytime you want to measure the width of a
kerned line of type prior to positioning, you run into problems.
I'm in the process of converting some of our Quadex kerning database over
to LetrTuck and am finding that how things translate is on a face to face
basis. The sans serifs seem to be moving better than the serif families.
I'm writing a little routine to convert from relative units in 54ths of an
em to 1000ths, but it's slow go.
When you're talking about Magna kerns, are you talking about Magna using
the PostScript driver? Since they're using Adobe widths, why wouldn't their
kerns export in perfectly usable shape?