Re: Screen Font

[Robert Hemenway]

Dear Robert,

Glad you jumped in. Helped clarify matters. A little, anyhow. If you use
Windows or if you use OS/2 (as I think you've said you do) Adobe Type Manager
(ATM) will generate screen fonts from PostScript outlines. With XyWrite for
Windows, ATM should work. I doubt that it will under OS/2 for XyWrite 4.1. If
there's a way to save ATM's bitmap screen font to disk, though, you should be
able to put the bitmap characters in a font that Ultravision or Hercules
Graphics Card Plus can use.

You can now write outline characters for the printer in Windows on the PC using
Altsys's Fontographer, a program that's been on Mac for some years and became
available for Windows last year. It's the program that the designers at small
digital foundries use. The oldline digitizing programs cost in the five
figures. PC-Connection's price for Fontographer is $259. I'm pretty sure that's
what you want. You can import your present bitmap fonts and convert them to
editable PostScript outlines, then manipulate them and redraw them as you see
fit. It produces both Type 1 and TrueType fonts; does a somewhat better job,
I've read, on the Type 1, since you work in PS then convert to TT and the two
systems use different methods of representing character shapes that are not
altogether compatible. Fontographer does nothing so far as I know with Speedo,
which is Bitstream's proprietary deadend. You'd have to have PostScript or
TrueType on your printer and you wouldn't have screen fonts in XyW's graphics
mode (not, at any rate, until XyWin). There are a couple of other, cheaper
programs but from all I've read Fontographer is by far the most versatile and
the most reliable.

Fontographer and Adobe Type Manager would, I think, give you what you want. In
Windows. Can't speak from experience, though. I've put off getting to Windows,
but it's become necessary for a few things. Will this summer.

There's a pretty Thai font called LaserThai and there are Vietnamese
accented-roman characters that fit with the standard Adobe Palatino font, both
to be had from Linguist's Software, but they're only listed for the Mac. And
there are quite a few Cyrillic, Greek, Eastern European, Turkish, and phonetic
fonts around, mostly for the Mac, a few also for the PC. I _think_ you may be
able to import Mac fonts into Fontographer and export them as PC fonts. Not
sure. I know that you can with Fontographer on a Mac. On CompuServe, you can
ask Earl Allen/Altsys Tech Support (76004, 2071), or ask questions in DTPFORUM,
Sect 12 Type & Typography, or GO MACBVEN, where Altsys has a section.

Hope this is along the lines you want. I'm far from expert in these details;
this is just from what I've seen in the press, on CIS and in catalogs. And
thanks for ROBERT5.09, wh. I'll get to a little later. Regards, RH.