Good afternoon
Please excuse me if this is the wrong list to be posting this on -- or
better yet, let me know where I _should_ be posting.
I am a PostScript support analyst for a niche publishing software design
company. We're getting requests from Asian clients, so our software has
to output Unicode/CID fonts in our PostScript documents. In the course
of testing this, I've installed Mac OS 9 with the Chinese support
package including the fonts Apple Li Sung Light, Beijing, Taipei and
Song. For testing purposes I've also installed Munhwa (in all honesty,
I'm not sure that's Chinese; it may be Korean), as well as the middle
eastern fonts Geezah, MonotypeGurmukhi, GurmukhiMTS, ArialHebrew and
NewPeninimMT.
Of the middle eastern fonts, only Geezah shows up in Illustrator 7, and
none appear in the font menu in Illustrator 8. When I attempt to use
Geezah, I get the message
You won't be able to print with Geezah or stroke
its characters because the font's outline file is
missing or ATM is turned off.
Of the Chinese fonts, all of them are visible in Illustrator 7 and 8,
but only Apple LiSung Light is useable; the rest get the above error
message. Curiously, if I choose Munhwa, it turns into Taipei.
Quark Passport 4.1, conversely, recognizes the middle eastern fonts, but
only Munhwa from the east Asian. It also indulges in some character
substitution on the font menu, but if I print to file (embedding the
fonts) and distill on Windows, most of the characters appear as expected
(I don't know which of them aren't working, because I can't
transliterate Quark's character substition).
The font resources all seem to be the same for each of these fonts;
there's a font suitcase (larger for the Asian ones of course) and a
secondary resource for each of them, the only difference in the Apple
CIDfonts being that LiSung Light's suitcase is 8.4 Mb and the other ones
are less; Song is next at 6.4 Mb, while Beijing and Taipei are 1.5 Mb
and 2.5 Mb respectively. Munhwa's suitcase is only 1.4 Mb, but its
secondary is 4.4 Mb, so its resources are evidently split differently.
Now, it's a good possibility my version of ATM is too old; it's version
4.5. But acting on a hunch, I checked the AdobeFnt.lst resource in
System>Application Support>Adobe>Type Spt. There are some interesting
differences. Apple LiSung Light appears to be much the same as the rest
of my Type1 fonts, but the rest are all have missing or garbled
information.
---------------------------------------
%BeginFOND
FONDName:Apple LiSung Light
FONDSize:699
PostScriptFont:0,LiSungLight
SFNTFont:0,11891
%EndFOND
%BeginFont
Handler:FONDHandler
FontType:TrueType
FontName:LiSungLight
FamilyName:Apple LiSung
StyleName:Light
FullName:Apple LiSung Light
FamilyNameNative:Apple LiSung Light
StyleNameNative:
FullNameNative:Apple LiSung Light
WritingScript:TraditionalChinese
FONDName:Apple LiSung Light
FONDStyle:0
%EndFont
---------------------------------------
%BeginFOND
FONDName:Beijing
FONDSize:652
SFNTFont:0,28672
%EndFOND
%BeginFont
Handler:FONDHandler
FontType:Invalid
FONDName:Beijing
FONDStyle:0
%EndFont
---------------------------------------
%BeginFOND
FONDName:ΓΝ“…
FONDSize:5413
PostScriptFont:0,Geezah
SFNTFont:0,17842
%EndFOND
%BeginFont
Handler:FONDHandler
FontType:TrueType
FontName:Geezah
FamilyName:Geezah
StyleName:Regular
FullName:Geezah
FamilyNameNative:ΓΝ“…
StyleNameNative:
FullNameNative:ΓΝ“…
WritingScript:Arabic
FONDName:ΓΝ“…
FONDStyle:0
%EndFont
---------------------------------------
Editing the AdobeFnt.lst is futile, of course; it appears to be written
by the OS at startup, and no amount of fiddling will get it to change
how Adobe applications recognize the font resources. On the other hand,
if Apple's font resources are built properly, they shouldn't be getting
"invalid" font types or character substitutions on the font infomation
... or am I kidding myself?
Of course, in writing the PS directly (octals in the text string, etc.),
the only Asian font that generates any kind of glyph in Illustrator is
Apple LiSung Light. Maybe ... it's the only one that conforms with Adobe
Technical Note #5014, the Adobe CMap and CIDFont Files Specification?
Any ideas?
-- Most respectfully,Gunnar Blodgett Production Analyst Pre Print, Inc. (780) 488-6688 x 7862
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:00 EDT