From: bkph@kauai.ai.mit.edu (Berthold K.P. Horn)
Subject: Re: ATM or Truetype-which to choose?
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Lines: 50
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: kauai.ai.mit.edu
In-reply-to: davidgl@microsoft.com's message of 06 Apr 93 02:37:30 GMT


`In article <1993Apr06.023730.5094@microsoft.com> davidgl@microsoft.com (David Glenn) writes:

	...

	Again, not true. The characters in a TT or Type 1 font depend on the 
	maker. If someone converts a Type 1 font to TT they'll only get the
	characters in the font of orgin. TT allows for much more flexibility
	in this area as well. You can have thousands of glyphs in a TT font
	file (Mac/PS/Windows/Unicode char set) and use the characters
	appropriate for the particular platform you are running the font on.

Well, yes, both Type 1 and TrueType fonts can contain lots of characters.
And in both cases plain text fonts will be reencoded to Windows ANSI
in Windows, and to Mac standard roman encoding on the Mac. 
No difference there between T1 and TT!   

And as for fonts with thousands of glyphs, right know these are a liabiliaty
rather than a great new thing.  Reason is that a font with 3000 characters
is very large, and if you can only access 224 of them you are paying a heavy
price in downloading time and printer storage.  (And at the moment there
is only one program of that uses `partial font downloading')

	For instance, all or our fontpack 2 TT fonts have the Mac/Windows
	char set in them. The metrics of the fonts are such that if the font
	is brought over to the mac the user will have access to the full mac
	char set. 	

Yes and T1 text fonts all have the `ISO Adobe' character set, which is
a superset of Windows ANSI and Macintosh standard roman enocding.

The question is whether you can get at the glyphs.  In Windows, for example,
you cannot get at the ligatures `fi' anfd `fl' (both T1 and TT)even though a
font may very well have them.

ANd, while it is somewhat painful to reencode a Type 1 font and to create a
new Windows metric file (PFM) for it, there are utilities out there to allow
you do this.  How do I reencode a TrueType font?  How can I get at the
`fi' and `fl' ligatures in Windows (or on the Mac)?  Are there utilities
that make it possible to circumvent the hard-wired Windows ANSI encoding?


   > Regards,                                            1001-A East Harmony Road
   > Bob Niland                                          Suite 503
   > Internet:  rjn@csn.org                              Fort Collins CO 80525
   > CompuServe: 71044,2124                              (303) 223-5209


Berthold K.P. Horn
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
