Thread View: comp.lang.postscript
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Started by Steve "daffy" Hunt
Wed, 02 Sep 1992 18:15
Question about "nested" Type-1 fonts
Author: Steve "daffy" Hunt
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1992 18:15
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1992 18:15
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A question for Type-1 gurus. (My apologies if this topic has been discussed recently, but I've not been keeping up with this newsgroup recently.) I maintain a piece of software that converts Type 1 fonts into Acorn's proprietary font format. Because it does not incorporate a full PostScript interpreter (or anything remotely close!) it relies on fonts conforming to the simplified and predictable form described in Chapter 10 of the "Adobe Type 1 Font Format" book. Recently one of our developers showed me a font which fails to convert. 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. 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? (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. (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. Thanks in advance for any info! -- Steve -- Steve Hunt steve@acorn.co.uk
Re: Question about "nested" Type-1 fonts
Author: Paul Haahr
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1992 23:47
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1992 23:47
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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
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