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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