🚀 go-pugleaf

Steve "daffy" Hunt writes
> The font is a "Bold Oblique" font, and on examining it I found that it
> has been implemented as a cut-down font with no CharStrings of its
> own.  Instead the whole "Bold" version of the font has been physically
> included in the file, with code to avoid defining it if the printer
> already knows about it.
> 
> There is some code at the bottom that copies (by reference) the
> "nested" font's CharStrings across into the font being defined.

it's called a synthetic font.

> Now that I am aware of this technique I want to update my program to
> cope with it.  I have some questions though:-
> 
> (1) Does Adobe condone this sort of thing, given the strictures in
> Chapter 10 of the Black Book?

yes.  see section 9.1, ``synthetic fonts''

> (2) Can ATM cope with this sort of font?  If not, then presumably they
> will gradually disappear and be replaced by ones that it can cope
> with.  If ATM cannot handle this technique, then I won't either.

yes.  buy a retail copy of atm and see the version of Helvitica-Oblique that  
ships with it.

> (3) Does anyone ever nest fonts MULTIPLY?  If so, this will complicate
> my code, but on the other hand I can't see why you'd want to do this.

not that i know of.  synthetic fonts are used for matrix twiddling.  multiple  
twiddles can be done at one time.  (and, by the way, i doubt ATM would handle  
multiply nested synthetic fonts.)

--
paul haahr		adobe systems incorporated
haahr@adobe.com		...!decwrl!adobe!haahr		+1 415 962 6056