#TrueType Fonts on Amiga?
21 messages in this thread
I just got an ad for TrueType fonts as part of a product called Typecase
from SWFTE International, Ltd. Can TrueType fonts be used on an Amiga?
(The product says it's for a Windows environment, so I'm really not sure
why it came to me.) If so, are TrueType fonts usable by PageStream?
John
TrueType fonts are not used by any Amiga programs that I know of, and there
are no conversion utilities for these available on the Amiga yet. There are
converters on the PC and Mac in which you can convert them to PostScript
fonts.
Michael Soft-Logik
Thanks, Michael. I suspected as much. Since I don't have the converters
available, there isn't much sense in my buying the fonts. I've heard some
people say that Truetype will replace within a year because of the power of
Microsoft. Any opinion?
John
There's a lot of weight behind Adobe, too. I don't like the look of the
TrueType fonts that ship on the Mac, for instance, and there's really very
little technical advantage of TrueType over Type 1.
John,
I heard somewhere (DTP Forum?) that some SB's prohibit TrueType. I've also
heard people, read: Windows users ;), praise them highly. It'll be
interesting to see what develops – or fails to.
Malcolm
Windows users are surprised by a lot of things; heck, they're still
impressed with DOS boxes running in the "background." 🙂 Not all that many
apps really used ATM and Type 1 before TrueType came along, so I'm sure
*any* outline font technology seems like magic to former DOS-heads. Did
you see that there's "TrueType for DOS" out now? Someone back-grafted it
onto WordPerfect and Word for DOS.
John,
Nope, hadn't noticed. Doesn't surprise me at all in either case though. I
have to admit that my awareness of the PC ended simultaneously with my
PC-oriented job. 😉
Malcolm
They do seem to access considerably faster than CG fonts. I've got one setup
wwith a split hard drive, the access times for a TType font is instant, while
there is always a noticeable delay when selecting a CG font. The processors
both run at the same mhz, if that matters…
Andrew,
Don't know what this is in reference too. Did you mean to send it to me?
Malcolm
Hmmmm it may have been to the person you replied to earlier. Sorry.
Andrew,
Of course this is nitpicking and real world performance is indeed better
but to get a true measure of the relative rendering speed of the two
systems you have to render all of the character set in a specific font and
size that has not been previously cached. Apple with TType and Adobe with
ATM have both implemented a character by character font building strategy.
This has the net effect of making rendering times appear very fast. The
AmigaDos call builds the entire font before returning making it a sure bet
that any font will take a while to render.
Randy Brooks
New Horizons Software, Inc.
I doubt that TrueType will take off. Actually, in a heated dispute between
Apple and Microsoft, Apple has decided to drop truetype from future OS
revisions. It will be a Windows only font and thus disappear as the Mac is
still the dominant platform for DTP.
-Jonathan
Jonathan,
If what you say about Apple dropping Truetype is true, I will rejoice. I
thought I would never find myself objecting to competition in the market
place, but I have found the whole TrueType episode to be one greedy grab by
MS and Apple to capture the lucrative typface market. The chaos in the
industry has been very annoying.
The Adobe type 1 standard is now public domain. There is absolutely no
reason not to standardize on type 1. I think the consumer has actually lost
with the broader selection of 'standards.'
Rich
I didn't really think TrueType was catching on that much until I saw the
Type 1 fonts disappear from the local shelves and all these TrueType fonts
start showing up at places like Office Depot. Who knows where it will all
end up. For now, TrueType hasn't touched the Amiga, but we'll see.
Michael
if I'm doing this right, this goes to Soft-Logik Tech Support 76004,1676.
Thanks for your reply. Someone uploaded a pot load of (appa rantly) public
domain fonts, converted from Mac. I got a message from Michael the SYSOP,
and I began to figure as much, that the file (pfm
?) that the Font Manager couldn't see wasn't extracted from whatever the
font conversion program MAC uses before it was converted to an Ami
ga file. Thanks for your reply. The mystery is less clouded. Maybe
they'll show up again in the library in a form that can be used./exit
Greg:
Which font files were you having trouble with?
batha.lha, bangle.lha, two off the top of my head. Ill go look at the
library and let you know some of the rest. thx.
Greg:
I've had no luxk with using the TYPE I's you mentioned in PageStream. The
fonts were mostly created with Fontographer 3.2… some AFM's were created
with 3.2 while their corresponding PFB was created with 3.3 and in some
case the AFM says ADOBESTANDARD encoding, while the PFB says APPLESTANDARD
encoding… I don't know if that makes a difference. I'm afraid one of the
postscript gurus on here like Mike Todd will have to take a look at these
files and give us a clue as to what's going on.
thanks for letting me know. I rarelyget into the forum (it's a long
distance call for me) but i think I'll do so more often as problems ar
ise. later: greg
Yes, the different encoding does make a difference. They should both be
saved with the same encoding method. The one with Apple encoding should be
loaded back into Fontographer and saved with Adobe Standard encoding.
Just for general info…
Altsys, the maker of Fontographer, recommends in their manual that users
save their fonts with Apple encoding rather than Adobe Standard Encoding.
(Unless the user plans to use the font on a PC.) Adobe Standard Encoding is
what is used for most Amiga fonts.
Michael Soft-Logik
Thanks for the input Mike.