Type 1 Specs
3 messages in this thread
Thanks, Pete, for your lucid and well-informed remarks. The Apple/MS coalition
_was_ a splash of cold water in Adobe's face; the release of Type 1 information
will make life easier for everybody.
It really remains to be seen if the new PDL has any inherent advantages in
performance. Frankly, I doubt it – they're going to have to resolve the same
issues in achieving true resolution independence. Either that, or make certain
restricting design assumptions (take the 640K DOS RAM limitation, for
historical instance of "assumptions" that now drives everybody crazy).
You do, of course, have an inherent bias against ATM's use of Type 1 fonts;
your livelyhood is strongly rooted in a product which almost _is_ the Type 3
specification. Actually, my response is "How many Mac users out there have
substantial libraries of non-Adobe fonts?" I dare say not a great percentage of
the market – yet. No, I'm not happy with the Type 1 restriction of ATM, either,
though it is my feeling that after the "opening of the technology" and under
user pressure, Adobe will eventually allow ATM to access Type 3's. (Isn't
Metamorphosis supposed to fix that, anyhow?)
I'm not saying that the anti-trust action would succeed, but it could be a
strategic roadblock, just like Apple's little tiff with MS about Windows. It
would be just enough to buy more time to get the next level of technology
launched. Your auto biz analogy is interesting, but this situation is more like
Ford and GM merging resources to stomp on Chrysler simply because they had the
market dominated in front-wheel drive cars.
The battle has been too long and too hard for me to harbor delusions that the
dual standard will be user-transparent. The hand-wringing has only begun.
…mm
It's ironic to me that _Apple_ should go after another company because they a)
keep their technology proprietary and b) charge outrageous prices. Can you
foresee the day when Apple finds itself in Adobe's boat against someone else
for the same reasons? I can.
Regards – Jay
You've kinda stumbled into the other part of the motivation for Apple/Microsoft
alliance (other than "squash Adobe"). If Apple did a proprietary PDL, it
wouldn't go beyond Apple hardware. Same for Microsoft, whose market is deeply
rooted in 80×86 (MS-DOS, OS/2). The "generalist" vendors such as Linotype, QMS,
et al, would have little motivation to invest engineering and marketing
resources in niche markets defined in this protective and proprietary way.
One of the big, big successes of PostScript is that it is a truly
hardware-independent language. Even more so than Unix/C, which were _supposed_
to be platform-independent, but ended up with implementation problems in
dependent library supersets and the requirement for non-trivial amounts of
hardware resources.
Actually, this is in itself an indictment against the Apple/MS venture. Adobe
had no particular axe to grind in the creation of PostScript, which is greatly
evident in its industry-wide acceptance. Apple and Microsoft have a _definite_
agenda to service, and it's not necessarily the creation of a new advanced PDL,
unfortunately. I don't particularly see the Suns, IBMs and NeXTs of the world
jumping behind this unholy alliance. As much as Scully and Gates think they may
have computing wrapped around their little fingers, I strongly suspect they're
in for a rude awakening.
While there are several of you knowledgable folks out there who strongly
disagree, I will stick to my guns: we've seen this scenario before – the
Apple/MS PDL has all the makings of another OS/2.
…mm