🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1234@adobe.UUCP> bezanson@adobe.UUCP (Brian Bezanson) writes:
>In article <2463@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> desdemona!vita@steinmetz.UUCP (Mark F. Vita) writes:
>>Oh, come now.  Almost every LaserWriter in existence that I know of
>>has been upgraded to a Plus.  At this point, people expect to have
>>Palatino, Bookman, etc. available *at a minimum*.
>
>First, there are a lot of original Apple printers that haven't been upgraded.
>Secondly, LinoTronics, Varitypers, ImageWriters, and any other QuickDraw

I maintain that there are actually *very few* classic LaserWriters
left around, relative to the number of LW+'s (not to mention NTs and
NTXs).  It's in about the same category as the 128K Mac.  And as I
said, for those few people who do have classic LaserWriters, it makes
much more sense for them to upgrade the LaserWriter and have the fonts
(and new Postscript interpreter) in ROM than to spend $200 for each
and every Mac that wants to use the new fonts.

>printer that will use ATM doesn't come with those fonts. We'd have to get 
>every LaserWriter plus owner to somehow send us an Apple registration card 
>and receipt to show us that they have the fonts in ROM.

Why?  You're not requiring people to send you an Apple registration
card to prove that they have Times, Helvetica, Courier and Symbol.
These are copyrighted Adobe fonts, are they not?

>>This is a basically a non-issue as far as most Mac users are
>>concerned.  It just isn't worth $200 to get a few extra random
>>characters.  
>
>The market (and response from that market - our customers) has been 
>tremendous. The two millions plus owners of ImageWriters can now get great 
>fonts, that look great for a small investment. Most people we talk to at 
>Seybold think $100 for ATM is a steal and the extra $200 for the "Plus 
>Pack" is worth it for the benefits they get.

I don't see how your response has anything to do with the point I was
making.  You said that even for LaserWriter Plus owners, there is
incentive to pay $200 for the new Adobe fonts since they contain
characters that were omitted from the LW+ ROMS for space reasons.  I'm
saying, hogwash; the benefit of having a few extra obscure characters
is not even remotely worth the $200, the required disk space, or the
hassle of having to download the fonts all the time.

As for your point about ImageWriter owners, I don't think that the
$300 necessary to get a standard LaserWriter-equivalent set of fonts
is a "small investment", especially considering that ImageWriter
itself only costs about $500.

And remember that the type of people attending a Seybold conference in no
way represents an accurate cross-section of Mac users.  Most of the
people at such conferences represent Deep Pockets for whom $300 is
small change, and who are used to getting gouged by type vendors
anyway.

>>Also, I wish Adobe would stop saying that there are "13 fonts"
>>included with ATM.  It almost sounds like Adobe is trying to imply
>>that the whole LaserWriter Plus set is included.  Let's get real; it's
>>four (4) fonts, with stylistic variations.  Now, I know we can argue
>>about what technically a "font" is, but let's be realistic: to the
>>general public, the concept of a "font" is "Palatino" vs.
>>"Helvetica", not "Times Slanted Bold Oblique" vs. "Times Bold
>>Condensed Rotated" or what-have-you.
>
>We are using the correct definition of a font. Each one is a true font,
>coming with a bitmap and outline. The variations of fonts (like roman,
>bold, italic, bolditalic) together make a font family. If you look at any of
>Adobe's, Linotype's, or BitStream's catalogs, you'll see they use this same
>'font' definition. Apple's sales literature for the LaserWriter mentioned it
>coming with 13 fonts - the NTX brochures talk about the 35 resident fonts.

*Sigh*.  I really didn't want to get into an argument about the
definition of the word "font", but here goes.  My claim is that to
everyone except typography weenies and marketing bozos, a "font" means
what you Adobe types are referring to when you say "font family".

Picture the following scenario.  You walk up to a guy who is editing a
document in Helvetica, lean over his shoulder, and say "Please change
the font."  So he goes up to the Style menu and picks "Italic".  What
would you do?  Probably give the guy a noogie, right?  "No, you idiot,
I said change the *FONT*."  And what if he turned to you and said,
"Well, technically, you know, I did, in fact, change the font."
Probably another noogie, right?  I think you see my point.

Yes, I realize that there are other vendors (Apple, Bitstream) who are
guilty of this same sort of deception.  I guess marketing types are
the same everywhere (i.e. larger numbers look better in advertising
copy than smaller numbers).  This is the same reason you see 10-speed
blenders where one of the speeds is "OFF".

>I'm sorry you don't like that Adobe isn't giving away the "Plus Pack", but 
>with more future ATM customers being users of non-PostScript printers w/o
>these fonts it just wouldn't make good business sense.

On the contrary, it makes great business sense, since otherwise it
raises the cost of ATM for people like myself to $300.  By "people
like myself", I mean people who use (non-archaic) LaserWriters at
work/school, but have ImageWriters at home, and would like very much
to have the same font set in both places.  At $99, it's a great deal;
at $300, it's just too bloody much money.

Don't get me wrong, I think ATM is a nifty piece of software.  It's
just that for what I would get for $99, it's almost useless.  I use
Times a fair amount, Helvetica rarely, and Courier and Symbol almost
never.  So for $99 I might get better looking Times output on my
screen/ImageWriter.  I can do almost as well by getting the free Adobe
screen font version of Times.  True, ATM would also give me the
privilege of using fonts I might purchase from the Adobe Type Library,
but at Adobe's prices, I don't think I'll be buying many of these for
home use any time soon.

It comes down this: if I got the LaserWriter Plus font set with ATM,
I'd buy it.  If not, I probably won't; I can just suffer until Apple's
(free) outline font capabilities come along.  And I bet there are a
LOT of other Mac users who will make a similar decisin.

----
Mark Vita                              vita@crd.ge.com
General Electric CRD               	..!uunet!crd.ge.com!vita
Schenectady, NY