#11-pt screen fonts
10 messages in this thread
Yup, I understood what you explained. The "unique and tricky" part is what
I'd love to know… If anybody's got a clue how they read the bitmap back,
I'd be grateful. It's obviously what's in LaserTalk, too. I don't agree
that it's a battle about Display PostScript. What I meant was, if
FontSizer works well, then why are people buying Adobe pre-made font disks,
which only come in limited sizes? With FontSizer-like code built-in, any
Mac/LaserWriter-equipped computer could make its own screen fonts. Most
people don't need 73 point Benguiat, but if they did, it could be made
quite easily.
From my study, I believe that the "unique and tricky" part involves the use
of the FRAMEDEVICE operator built into PostScript. One of the arguments to
this operator is a proc which gets called by SHOWPAGE to transfer the
document from VM to the Laser Imaging machinery. What I want is a
LaserWriter IINTX and LaserTalk for my MAC SE, then I sure I'll figure out
how to send the bits back. Once you get the bits, you can probably print
on any 300 dpi printer if you used the right format.
FYI: I've been working with Xerox LPS printers for 8 years. The company I
work for prints some complex charts with them. Right now I'm building
bridges between Macintosh and Xerox, so that What We See Is What We Get, no
matter what printer. So, I must resolve PostScript, Macintosh and Xerox
Fonts(Let's have lots of fun with Line Layout!). This is not an enviable
task. Until I hit on the LaserWriter as a Print Server idea, my confidence
in eventually perfect results was small for some of the more complex bit
sampling operators, etc. I have no desire to write my own interpreter and
then keeping up with Adobe. I wouldn't mind writing a driver, though.
Knowing Xerox they will probably never admit that PostScript is better than
Interpress (I don't use Interpress, but instead their "secret" metacode.)
In fact, Xerox used some of our tapes to alpha test their newer printers!
Xerox's printers are twice the speed of the Dec's Print Server 40!
If anyone wants someone to put together a Mac-LaserWriter Print Server
combination, please let me know. It can and will be done by someone.
Again, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Ah, I see… LaserTalk might not read the bitmap, it might make replacements
for the stroke and fill commands, and when each is invoked for a letter, it
sends something back to the Mac, and the Mac builds the bitmap. Maybe. I'm
getting into PostScript and Macs from a purely theoretical point of view at
this time, that is, I don't own either one yet, but have been reading the red
and blue books, and every example I can get my hands on. I have never seen an
example of the framedevice and banddevice calls… My issue of MacWeek hasn't
come yet, I look forward to that review.
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See my recent message to Steve Werner to learn a little about the way I'm
attacking all this font stuff… I was amazed, reading Inside Mac, to learn
that no compression is used to store fonts on disk, and that fonts were indeed
limited to only 32K of memory space, therefore limiting fonts in point size
and/or number of characters. This was Volume IV or so, has this situation
changed?
I see your point about Display PostScript, it certainly eliminates the need for
screen fonts.
Inside Macintosh Vol.5 mentions that the largest practical size for a
screen font in the 128K ROMS (Mac Plus) is 127 pt.; and that the Mac II ROM
limits the largest practical size to "about 255 points". I don't know where
the Mac SE fits in (256K ROM, but not a Mac II)?
Suitcase II (by Steve Brecher, released by Fifth Generation) has its own
screen font compression scheme, which I just used and cut total disk space
by 30%! (from 6 megs to 4 megs.) In fact, Suitcase has long been a product
that corrects problems/enhances features that should be standard parts of
the operating system in the first place. I always list it as one of the
first pieces of software any of my clients should buy.
Could you give me a pointer to a place where Mac II color fonts are described?
I'd like to see their format for them, too. I must have been looking at an old
Inside Mac, it makes sense that the 128K ROMs addressed the question of limited
font size.
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Thanks. Here on the Amiga, there are dozens of disks of color fonts available
commercially and in the public domain, some of them quite large (120 pixels
tall or so) and well-colored. It remains to be seen whether the differences in
aspect ratio will prevent their porting to the Mac world.
Have you got a pointer to the PICT and MacDraw file formats, while I'm at it?
I've got a parser that works fairly well on about half of the MacDraw files
I've found. I see to be missing a flag somewhere in the header that flags
whether the data is QuickDraw, MacPaint bitmaps or MacDraw commands.