Fwd: Re: Footnote Size problem

[Carl Distefano CLDistefano@xxxxxxxx]

Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 12:17:57 EST
From: Robert Holmgren 
Subject: Re: Footnote Size problem

** Reply to note from Bill Troop Sat, 10 Jun 2000 00:32:18 -0400
 
> >I don't see how TrueType can operate outside the M$ GUI context.
 
> Easy, kind of: http://www.freetype.org. A free open source TrueType
> rasterizer/manager that can be ported to any platform.

Hmmm. I'm talking about XyWrite. Can the non-GUI versions adapt a PRN
file to use a "TrueType rasterizer/manager"? Have you got such a PRN
file? That's actually very provocative; maybe that could be done... The
output of TYF would have to be interpreted by the Freetype manager, as
it is by Ghostscript or Goscript. If Freetype can accept standard PCL
or PostScript output, it would be easy; but otherwise, it would NOT be a
trivial task to write a PRN that would provide output that Freetype can
understand, e.g. you need to know the exact commands for microspacing,
for designating fonts, for moving the print head up and down, for
EVERYTHING! "Easy, kind of" becomes "hard, very". Can Freetype render
the text, display it on-screen? Comments?

> >I don't see how you're going to get Adobes to work with NBWin either

> By "Adobes" you mean Type 1 Postscript? Do they
> really not work with NBWin? I thought they automatically
> worked with all Windows programs, provided that you
> either had ATM installed, or had Win2000, which has
> ATM built in. It would be very depressing if Type 1
> didn't work with NBWin.

I was talking about using a PRN printer driver, using _my_ customized
prolog, to generate Postscript. In NBWin v5.004, I was able to command
"UWF 0" to turn off the default of UWF=3 (whatever that means, not
documented; in XyWin you just have UWF=0|1|2) and use any PRN file
instead of Truetype. But in the current v5.005, this command does not
work -- at least, not on my system (with which, admittedly, I've messed
around a good deal, and perhaps screwed something up). I need to do a
plain vanilla install and see if it works -- re-install v5.004, and then
v5.005, and double-check my results. But I suspect that this has been
disabled; NB staff clearly intimated to me that getting PRNs to work was
not something that would be fixed, and indeed that it might be devalued
even further than it's crippled state through v5.004.

ATM may well work with NBWin v5.005. I haven't tried. I want my
prolog! I searched through the entire NB message list for the past 18
months and found exactly nothing regarding PostScript and NBWin. Which
gives you some idea where the NB community is at (sorry, Dorothy, I just
can't bottle it up -- but do you have any comment on these issues? when
you command "UWF 0", do you get any response from v5.005 Editor? even
so much as an error msg? usually there's a ton of activity when you
issue UWF).

To return to point 1): even if you have ATM installed (which I do), a
non-GUI, non-Truetype program needs to generate some sort of output that
can be interpreted by ATM. My question to you is, what is that output?
Where does it come from, if not from a PRN? What existing PRN can I
use? If you have a good PRN, I'd love to see it. Bye.



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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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