NewDeal Hot Tip 1405
Fonts
Fonts and Document Transferability
A document file created with fonts that other people may
not have is not easily transferred to someone else.
This has been resolved in the font-promiscuous world
of the Macintosh in the following way. Incidentally,
this is a paraphrasing and condensation of guidelines
set out for user groups by the Apple User Group Liaison
(an office of Apple Computer, Inc. that provides support
and materials for user groups).
- If you are creating a document for electronic transmission
(i.e. posting on bulletin boards, online services, Email systems,
the Internet, etc.), and that document's substance is not
chiefly design-dependent, then use one of the PostScript
fonts common to the LaserWriter Plus standard.
- If your document is an example of graphic design or page
layout and must require an unusual font as a significant
design element, then either clearly designate the font in
the file description or include the font with your document
if doing so would not violate the font publisher's copyright
or license agreement.
- If such is available, use one of the several font
and/or professional illustration programs to convert the
fonts to PostScript bezier outlines. If such programs
are used, then no clear designation (or the originating font)
is necessary, and these documents will be easily printed
on PostScript compatible printers.
Unfortunately, not many NewDeal customers have ready use of
font outline conversion software (such as Fontographer 3.3
on the Mac) or professional illustration programs (such as
CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator) although such programs or
similar ones have become more available on the PC for
the Microsoft Windows platform. But neither do most
Macintosh users. Therefore, most users rely upon guidelines
1 and 2 above.
For our purposes, if you intend to share your document
widely, the simplest approach is to use only the standard
fonts that come with your NewDeal software whenever possible.
Otherwise you'll need to provide the name and source of any
special fonts that you use, or else the recipients of
your document file may not be able to see your document
the way you intended.
One last approach is to convert your text to bitmap
format using NewDraw or the Draw layer. This way, the recipient
of your file will not need the corresponding font. This
approach will only work for text in graphic text objects and
may be practical only for the headlines and not the body text
of your document. A drawback here is that the conversion to
bitmap usually results in a loss of resolution. While text that
has been converted to bitmap format may look the same on screen,
it will usually print with a more blocky or stairstepping appearance.
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Last Modified 2 Mar 1999