🚀 go-pugleaf

Interesting history of ATM from the manufacturers point of veiw, Dov. But rather different from my own experience.

As a graphic designer using Mac, ATM deluxe was perfect for managing fonts -designers are addicted to fonts and must have many available all of the time. The problem is that no design job ever contains more than a few different faces; having long font lists is plain tiresome. Once you have decided on your chosen few it is much better to turn off all of the unneeded fonts to free up the system and streamline the interface -selecting fonts is so much easier from a list of five or six!

The other important function that ATM deluxe performed was nearly unseen by most people and so I can understand why it has no mention here. To open a file on a mac is a simple task -double click the file, the application fires up, and the file opens -well not quite. The file requires fonts to display properly and as I have said, designers cannot put all of their fonts into the font folder (There used to be a 256(?) font limit) nor would it be desirable. Without the correct fonts available a Quark (apologies!) file would inform you that fonts a,b and c were not available and font substitution would occur, with all the ensuing mayhem.

Enter ATM deluxe, which would read the quark file, load the necessary fonts from a remote location outside of the system, and allow the application to display the file correctly -all without so much as a dialogue box! Want more font options? -open ATM click on any font you take a fancy to, and return to your application. Hey presto, fonts A,B,C, and now D,E and F are available. That was designer heaven. A small program going about it's task without needing Gigs of disk space or memory, unlike today's fatboy applications, and it had a nice interface - monkey see, monkey choose!

I recently changed to a laptop running Vista. Once I had stopped laughing at the contents of the font folder, I realised the enormity of the problem; 250+ mutants and mongrels locked into the system font folder! Its like revisiting the 1980's..

Where are you ATM, I need you!