PS Fonts, Listing Util.
15 messages in this thread
OK, I broke down and bought a LJ4MP. This sweet puppy looks like it's
going to solve all the printing headaches I have with the Amiga (of
course, I had to pay $400 extra for the priviledge — MS Windows likes the
non-PS LJ4M version just fine). Screen dumps and such look gorgeous even
without any tweaking. I *really* wish I'd had this before I sent my first
manuals to the printer.
Now that I've got PS, I'm looking for a few pointers. Right now I need a
utility which dumps text (i.e., program listings) to tiny PS. I've seen
plenty of utilities which do this for Preferences printers, etc., but I
want one which speeds up the process by sending everything as PS commands
to the printer. Graphic dumps are awful slow.
I'm also looking for a good source of quality PS fonts. Since I'm not a
design professional but am using them for professional output, I don't
want to just download tons of PD fonts. I don't have time to mess with
conversion, either. I want fonts in the right format for FinalWriter and
PgS without any nonsense. I'd like to buy a package of high-quality fonts,
preferably with some kind of accompaning type sheets like the ones in the
back of my PgS manual. It looks like Soft-Logik used to sell packages
like this, but doesn't anymore.
Suggestions?
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
Fonts: the only font package we currently sell is the B&P Serials II
Typecollection, a CD-ROM of 1000 PostScript Type 1 fonts. The fonts are stored
in Type 1 and TrueType formats, and it's an ISO-9660 disk so you can use it on
a Mac, PC or Amiga. It comes with a CD-ROM size book that has a type specimen
page for each font family. (A larger version of the type specimen book is
available separately in a binder. I use the type specimen book even when I'm
selecting fonts from other vendors because it is nicely laid out.) The CD-ROM
sells for $500. We also will copy it to a Syquest or hard drive for a small
fee. We are trying to put together a smaller collection for those who don't
want or need a 1000 fonts, but we won't have one available in the near future.
You can purchase really cheap fonts in PostScript format at places like CompUSA
(you have to dig around for them, since most are TrueType now), but they are
really lousy quality and I don't recommend them. If you're using fonts for
professional use (ie, your manuals), I highly recommend purchasing a couple of
Adobe families. There is nothing quite like an Adobe font, (except for other
expensive font houses as well ;-). They are truly excellent fonts. Mind
boggling expensive, but nice. Look into getting a family that has an expert set
available, so you can get that later on. (Expert sets should work with
PageStream3—they can't be used on an Amiga right now.) Expert sets contain
titling, small caps, flourishes and other special characters.
Cheers,
Michael @ Soft-Logik Publishing Corp.
I already have a couple of Adobe families built into my printer. I have a
Windows driver disk and three disks for Mac that came with the printer.
The Windows disk doesn't appear to have any font files. The Mac disks are
advertised as containing screen fonts. If I had TypeSmith and a way to
read the Mac disks, I'd just convert those screen fonts and I'd at least
be cruising with the internal fonts?
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
Dale-
For FinalWriter at least you can get NimbusQ packages that fit your
specs, and from what I understand you can download them as if they were
PS, and then maybe PgS could use them. SoftWood (I guess you must know if
you have FiW) sells those.
Otherwise, why not just contact Adobe, or BitStream – houses like those
are the big Type1 vendors. Much of their stuff is $$$$, but Adobe sells
several packages fairly cheaply (in the $100 range, above or below I don't
remember) that are basic but very nice.
Paul
p.s. What manuals are you printing? (Just curious)
When I print with FinalWriter, it does appear to download the NimbusQ
fonts to the printer, because things are *much* faster than a graphic
dump.
I guess I'd rather not invest in a font technology that no one besides
SoftWood appears to use.
That's two votes for calling Adobe, though…
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
Actually, GeoWorks and the AllType utilities over in MS-DOS use Nimbus
fonts, too, among others. But Nimbus certainly is a something of an
orphan. Nevertheless, I find that Nimbus fonts from Final Writer are
transformed to Postscript when I choose that output, and that they print
out very speedily with extremely good quality. PS fonts, as a rule, aren't
quite as good. The AllType package for PCs (if you can still find it)
included a Nimbus converter from other formats, as I recall.
Count another vote for the ProStream font packs, here. Good, cheap PS
stuff.
Screen fonts in PS format as you've found on tbe Mac aren't sufficient,
usually. When they're rendering they look to the hard fonts in your
printer. If not there, they go to a crummy default, like the Line Printer
font. So, e.g., if you have a Palatino screen font and Palatino as a hard
font in your printer, you should be set. If not, you've got trouble.
You'll need not just the screen font but also the … what do they call
it? "Metric" font file? Something like that. Sorry; I always forget.
I print docs out in booklet form graphically, too. But I know of no
utility to do the same in PS. I suspect it'd be a simple matter to set up
a FW default document that would run side by side pages in landscape mode.
Then it's just a matter of picking a small font and loading in the text.
FW will translate a number of formatted docs, such as from Wordperfect, in
case you're trying to preserve formatting.
I don't want to invest in Nimbus Q because PageStream won't use it and
neither will any other software I might use besides FW.
As far as dumping docs and program listings, FW is overkill. I want a
fast cli command. I think I have a friend who wrote a fast ARexx macro to
generate a PS program to dump, so I'll have to see if that does the
trick.
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
Dale:
If you come up with a meas for quickly doing type1 modelsheets, I'd be
very much interested in getting a copy.
-Pat "Cruising the North Coast
on Autopilot"
Final Writer's NimbusQ fonts aren't standard NimbusQ fonts.
-Pat "Cruising the North Coast
on Autopilot"
Dale-
The flagship of the font community is Adobe. That's like buying an Otis
elevator. Pricey, yes, but it's the finest quality in the world.
How (and what) are you doing as graphic dumps? What is it you're used to
and happy with?
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
>How (and what) are you doing as graphic dumps?
I might have confused you by putting two pretty unrelated problems into
one message.
For dumps, I have program listings or whatever that I don't need to be
pretty (they're just for me), but I do want to save paper and be able to
see a lot at once. When I was at Commodore, I used a bunch of options to
lpt to get a printout that came 2 or four pages to one side of a physical
page, and double-sided that. Obviously I'm not going to get the double
sided part (unless I want to run the paper through twice), but I'd like to
get at least two pages to a side.
There a several Amiga utilities which do this with the (slow) preferences
printer. They also tend not to handle lines longer than 70 or 80
characters very well. I want a PS version.
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
Dale,
Does it have to be a PostScript program for tiny docs? What's wrong with
PCL?
There are a couple of programs I use – DocDump (and a driver for the LJ4 I
made up for this program – it works okay, the driver could use fine tuning
for 'booklet' style printing). Also, there is MiserPrint. Works pretty
good, too. Check the libraries.
SoftWood has four font packages for sale. I bought all of them when I
could get them for half price. Pretty wide assortment in there. These
are NimbusQ fonts, so they will only work with Final Writer or Final Copy.
Would be nice to have a program to convert these to PS format so ProPage
could use them, also.
73, Kelly
Nothing wrong with PCL 5 (I want my 600dpi!). I'll give DocDump a try
with your driver (I think I tried DocDump on my DeskJet, but that's a
whole different ball of wax).
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
Dale,
For "quickie" text dumps, I've been using a program called PSPrint
which was written (a while back) by Paul Higginbottom when he was at C=.
I know that it was included on some of the DevCon disks (Atlanta, maybe?)
and I think that it has been distributed on the nets as well. It may be
in the libs here.
It does a good job of two-up landscape printing, which is what I mainly
use. Also does other things, like 4-up (for the terminally near-sighted).
I just direct the output directly to PAR:, bypassing the preferences
driver.
hope this helps….
– BobR
Bingo! That's just the kind of thing I was looking for and it is on
Atlanta. It lets >80 column lines go right off the page, but it'll do for
now…
Thanks
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com