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WARNING : LONGish

In message <1100.26af57d3@waikato.ac.nz>, Lawrence
D'Oliveiro writes :
 
[near total deletion]
What do other people think of the
relative advantages of PostScript  versus TrueType ?

I confess to having a fondness for, and possible bias towards
(though I have NO affliation with ) Adobe, and hence, their
font technology. Adobe are, to me, a company dedicated to
the production of output and imaging technologies, with
good minds, a solid product, and the aesthetic sensitivity
which I would like to see in the industry leader. Also, Adobe
operate industrywide; TrueType and TrueImage, by
contrast, will be personal computer devices only. No doubt
TrueType (though not necessarily TrueImage) will receive
considerable support because of Apple and Microsoft, but I
don't think they can provide broad based technology for the
entire print industry, which Adobe can. Font rasterization
is only part of the technology required to produce a page
description language. The cohesion and quality of the Adobe
solution impresses me. Supporting Adobe's font format is
for me part of the wider issue of who the industry leader in
the field ought to be. I think it should be Adobe. As for the
differences between the font techlogies themselves, I think
it should be a non-issue, at least for some time yet. Here
are some of my reasons, largely from a posting I sent to
CompuServe, but edited to reflect my present views, and
comments, in brackets.

The primary advantage (and disadvantage) of TrueType
over Type I is a font outline capable of modifying itself
according to the size and resolution at which it is to print.
This will provide better control of rasterization effects
(including, for example diagonal hints), and also for the
eventual development of features such as optical scaling
(actually, optical scaling is available for Type I from
Kingsley/ATF, I don't think any application support is yet
available though). Unfortunately, the Line Layout Manager,
which would have provided much needed support for such
advanced features, will not ship with System 7.0 -
meaning the only significant gain to be had in the near
future will possibly be better output at low to medium
resolution (at typesetter resolutions, the quantization
effects of the raster grid are negligible). As an aside, I
personally feel that the quality of screen representations of
work designed for print is unimportant and that screen
fonts designed purely for display applications should be
hand tuned anyway. Unfortunately, the low level of
intelligence of the TrueType scaler/rasterizer means that a
greater amount of work will be required to achieve quality
fonts. I must admit to feeling unenlightened reading the
TrueType specifications; at the level of the language itself,
it would be highly difficult to 'program' the font. I am
however confident that the major type houses will
approach the fonts from a higher degree of abstraction, and
be able to automate the process of outline alteration and
hinting (anyone detect the irony in this, if true ?).
However, I doubt the quick availability of widely available
tools to produce quality TrueType outlines for sometime,
meaning that the smaller type house, and individuals (such
as myself, though fortunately I don't make a living
digitizing type) won't be able to produce quality TypeType
faces for some time to come, ie don't expect the equivalent
of Fontographer 3.0 for a while (Earl Allen, the Tech
Support Rep, told me that I would be impressed with
Fontographer's TrueType handling, when it arrives).
Further, I personally don't believe in the importance of
low-medium resolution output. Either quality is
important, in which case the job will have to be imageset
anyway, or it is not, in which case subtle improvements at
low resolution hardly matter. Therefore, I am convinced
that TrueType offers nothing which would justify the
abandonment of an existing standard; I also expect Adobe to
improve Type I. They have very cleverly provided the
capability to patch the ROM of their printers, or to add new
functionality, and if put under pressure, will improve.
However, I do accept that TrueType provided an essential
impetus, pushing Adobe to open their font format, and to
develop the state of the art. My question at this point would
be : When would the advantages of having a second format
pushing the development of the standard be outweighed by
market fragmentation ? I expect an eventual convergence
towards one or the other of the two font formats. It is not
beyond possibility that TrueType will be that standard, and
for that, if for nothing else, TrueType should remain.

I would like to add a few points, developing some issues
further and adding some additional comments.
Philosophically, I'd like to believe that the problem of
adapting a glyph to the constraints of a raster grid is one
which ought to be tackled by a rasterizer, and not by a font.
I want to think of letters as shapes, and not as programs.
I've also reread a piece by Mathew Carter of supposedly
neutral BitStream, and while I didn't agree with all he said,
he makes points I think bear repeating. Adobe's fonts are
said to require regularisation, and this is said to affect
their quality. I believe that some Adobe fonts were
regularised. However, there is no reason why a Type I font
need be regularised, or hinted, for that matter; the Type I
format manual says that this, and further that
regularisation should be to the minimal extent possible.
Also, an Adobe font may  contain the original outlines, AND
a regularised version (eg Optima). While this may not be
as flexible as the TrueType approach, I am concerned with
the potential difficultly and additional work (and impact on
costs) of programmed outline distortion. I think it
important to realise that discussion of font formats is less
than completely valuable, because (as Earl Allen's reply to
me, (see above), suggests) major font players will
eventually develop tools that abstract the font techology,
and present an entirely different interface to the designer
to one that might be expected given the underlying language.
Perhaps someone with the relevant experience, (say at
Adobe) can enlighten us on this issue. As for the relative
commercial difficulties in updating the PostScript ROM,
Adobe Printers will render TrueType because Adobe have
developed and presented to Apple PostScript operators
designed to rasterize TrueType. (this is, I think, in the
System 7.0 alpha release). It may be possible in software
to add an improved Adobe rasterizer; there may be no need
to change ROMs; I would like to see Adobe take an aggressive
approach on this (albeit one that will not hurt its OEMs),
making available for sale improved rasterizers when the
quantum of difference in quality between the old, and the
new, rasterizers becomes significant.

As for commercial considerations in switching font
formats, "upgrades" from Type 3 fonts to Type 1 costs 30
pounds a package from Monotype, and 10 dollars a font
from Image Club. I don't believe the costs will be extreme,
but by the same token, no less than the costs of upgrading
PostScript, especially since Adobe are now building
drivers (they might, for example, build in certain
capabilities to configure, and patch the printer ROMs, a
step I think they should adopt). I think it more logical and
convenient to upgrade one device than say, 10 products,
especially if from more than one vendor.

Comments welcome. Flames will be redirected to /dev/null.
Nigel Yeoh. King's College London. zdt123@uk.ac.kcl.cc.ash
<overly long signatures are a waste of net bandwidth>