Saturday 26-Jul-2008
A glitch with CSTriumvirate intellifonts that I didn't notice 'til now. This is in reference to Amiga PageStream4 4.1.5.6 (30/01/2003).
I'll summarize it first and then expand on it:
THE PROBLEM:
a)CSTriumvirate weights/style italic and bold-italic are missing in the intellifonts drawer. These have never been distributed (unless perhaps they were originally available with Pagestream 3?).
b)When PS output is directed to a postscript file or to a printer with no resident fonts (that is, with fonts embedded --- I use a custom ppd file for that, with all font references removed so as to force embedding), Triumvirate-Italic and Triumvirate-BoldItalic appear only as Triumvirate-regular. It does work correctly as a non-embedded font, but they become Helvetica.
CONCLUSIONS:
I've reached some conclusions on the Triumvirate Intellifont to postscript problem, and narrowed down somewhat the nature of the problem:
a)Pagestream uses one font to generate both the normal and oblique version for on-screen viewing and for printing non-postscript printers. This works fine on-screen and for printing to laserjet compatibles.
b)The postscript versions Pagestream generates are faulty. 1)They are not correctly named, and 2)the fonts that should be oblique are not oblique. Perhaps there is a postscript "oblique-isizer" function that is missing in these fonts? Is there such a thing?
c)I tried loading these generated postscript fonts, correcting the name and applying a slant. It works, but only partially. There is some custom encoding that doesn't seem to work. Processing the resulting pages with a postscript viewer or with ghostscript fails due to some matrix error warning. (I used Typesmith for this).
d)Generating a different font (at least with Typesmith) doesn't work. That is, I created a font with Fontname TriumvOblique, Familyname TriumvOblique and Full Name TriumvOblique as well as the bold variation, Fontname TriumvOblique-Bold, Familyname TriumvOblique and Full Name TriumvOblique-Bold and I didn't entirely succeed. That is, I saw what I wanted on screen (partly) and saw it in the postscript output until the rasterizer encountered the aforementioned matrix error.
e)For some reason Pagestream shows the CSTimes font in place of the Triumvirate font in the insert character dialogue. It also wants to substitute CSTimes screen font at certain magnifications.
f)It is not successful to simply create an oblique version of the intellifont. Pagestream is generating a faux-oblique version of the font from the normal one. Creating an oblique version causes font doubling in the font menu. Also, Pagestream fails when creating the postscript instances of these fonts.
g)I can't get character mapping to work for bullets, curly quotes, ellipsis, etc. --- all that extra stuff --- with custom fonts I generate. I did manage to get it to work with a custom bar code font I made, but I don't exactly remember how I did it, except that I gave each character a custom name.
Is it possible to obtain a chart of Pagestream's current character map?
WORKAROUND?: I think a work-around is if someone would generate correctly character-mapped postscript fonts to replace the oblique Triumvirate fonts that Pagestream 4 generates on-the-fly, it would be possible to embed the oblique/italic triumvirate font and have it actually work. Currently it is only possible to get a correct italic triumvirate font (helvetica actually) in the postscript output if the standard fonts are NOT embedded.
Fonts needed to replace the faulty postscript intellifont substitutes are:
93710.pfb.. /FullName (CS Triumvirate) readonly def. /ItalicAngle 0 def. /FontName /CS-Triumvirate def.
NOTE: This one should be /FullName (CS Triumvirate Italic) and /FontName /CS-Triumvirate-Italic def.
93712.pfb.. /FullName (CS Triumvirate Bold) readonly def. /ItalicAngle 0 def. /FontName /CS-Triumvirate-Bold def.
NOTE: This one should be /FullName (CS Triumvirate Bold Italic) and /FontName /CS-Triumvirate-Bold-Italic def. Or, should that be /FullName (CS Triumvirate Italic Bold) and /FontName /CS-Triumvirate-Italic-Bold ?
MORE DISCUSSION:
1) Font files CSTriumvirateItalic.type and CSTriumvirateBoldItalic.type are missing from Intellifonts drawer. The CSTimes and CSGaramond files on the other hand do have all four weight/style combinations and therefore do reproduce in postscript output when fonts are embedded. CG fonts found in the Intellifonts drawer are:
CSTimes.type CSTimesBold.type CSTimesBoldItalic.type CSTimesItalic.type CSTriumvirate.type CSTriumvirateBold.type GaramondAntiqua.type GaramondHalbfett.type GaramondKursiv.type GaramondKursivHalbfett.type
2) Pagestream does produce four downloadable .pfb (postscript) font files in the intellifonts drawer to correspond to the triumvirate files, but these do not produce the italic style when embedded in the postscript output. The pair of CS-Triumvirate-Bold have identical names, identical full-names and no italic angle.
93709.pfb.. /FullName (CS Triumvirate) readonly def. /ItalicAngle 0 def. /FontName /CS-Triumvirate def.
93710.pfb.. /FullName (CS Triumvirate) readonly def. /ItalicAngle 0 def. /FontName /CS-Triumvirate def.
93711.pfb.. /FullName (CS Triumvirate Bold) readonly def. /ItalicAngle 0 def. /FontName /CS-Triumvirate-Bold def.
93712.pfb.. /FullName (CS Triumvirate Bold) readonly def. /ItalicAngle 0 def. /FontName /CS-Triumvirate-Bold def.
3) Editing the pfb files to insert an italic angle has no effect.
4) If fonts are NOT embedded in the output (accomplished with the use of a custom ppd file in which standard fonts are listed) then the triumvirate files become helvetica in the resulting pdf file distilled from the postscript output. This works, but if someone has a helvetica font that differs from the standard postscript font, you can guess the outcome.
5) Pagestream2 also only had 2 weight/style files in its CSTriumvirate drawer, but in the PSF drawer it had four complementary files (not certain now how these worked, but IIRC they had something to do with postscript output):
SLTriumvirate-B.PSF SLTriumvirate-O.PSF SLTriumvirate-BO.PSF SLTriumvirate.PSF
So what is the solution? Are the missing CG triumvirate fonts available somewhere? Is there an easy way to edit the files to make them work? Would changing the font name of one of each pair solve it?
I could edit the pfb files and/or the CG files with Typesmith, but I suspect the characters will be limited to typesmith's 255-character set. I would probably have to use a text editor.
I'm also not sure whether to load with typesmith encoding or custom encoding; typesmith says the CG files have custom encoding. Typesmith warns that the matching postscript fonts also have custom encoding.
See also online:
--- In PageStreamSupport@yahoogroups.com, "watchsask" <ejunrau@...> wrote: > > --- In PageStreamSupport@yahoogroups.com, "watchsask" <ejunrau@> wrote: > > > > I think I just hit on the solution. I'll test it and let you > > know how it works. See also, > > > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PageStreamSupport/message/19901 > > > > > Okay. Reporting back on how that worked: > > With Intellifonts it wasn't completely successful. > > It did work to create an obliqued version of Triumvirate that is its own > family (CS TriumvirateObl and CS TriumvirateObl-Bold) with uniqueIDs of its > own. And these fonts display and print fine to a laserwriter > (non-postscript) compatible printer. > > But it fails when generating postscript from the intellifonts. Pagestream > fails to generate the matching postscript (*.pfb) files that are actually > used to print postscript. > > Best solution, I guess, is to generate type1 postscript files of the above > instead of intellifonts. That will work fine for generating pdf compatible > postscript that will allow emedding fonts, but loses the advantage that > intellifonts offer of speedy screen display. It also loses the advantage of > being able to generate some of the characters beyond the standard 255 > characters. > > I will report this as a bug, but I don't expect it will get any attention > since I believe intellifonts are being abandoned in favor of truetype. > > -Ernest >
-Ernest Unrau Morden, Manitoba CANADA email: ejunrau@mts.net
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