Comments on: Phasing out “PostScript” Type 1 fonts

By: Reality Check

Reality Check — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:16:51 +0000

Reality check, Sept 17, 2009. I bought a PostScript Type 1 font from the Adobe Type Store today. While Open Type fonts are featured, it is now easier than in the past to find and buy Type 1 from Adobe. Vista handles Type 1 fonts just fine. Accessing pi characters using Open Type’s Unicode scheme continues to be a royal pain as Unicode continues to be a step backwards in terms of usability.[We continue to sell Type 1 fonts, but these are intended only for people who are using older software that cannot support modern font formats, such as OpenType. It’s been ten years since we crafted our last new Type 1 font, and the updates and enhancements we’re making on a regular basis apply only to the current (OpenType) fonts.Also, while older (GDI) environments on Vista still support Type 1 fonts, GDI+ and WPF do not. In addition, it seems that Apple’s latest iteration of Mac OS X (10.6) has some issues with Type 1 fonts, sometimes causing reflow for documents authored in earlier versions of the OS. We expect a growing number of applications to move to environments that don’t work well for Type 1 fonts.With regard to accessing pi glyphs via OpenType’s Unicode mapping, which I assume refers to the use of PUA code points, which are used because many pi fonts have glyphs that have no appropriate homes among Unicode’s standard (non-PUA) code points. Type 1 fonts were severely limited in what code points could be used, specifically a subset of 0x00 through 0xFF (256 code points). A technique sometimes referred to as “code point poaching” was necessary, and it had the clear disadvantage in that it falsely assigned attributes to pi glyphs. And, I should point out that pi fonts are not the only culprits of this method of poaching.The intent of using PUA code points for encoding pi glyphs is to ensure that each glyph can be encoded in the most appropriate way possible, and for those not mappable from Unicode, PUA is the only choice. This allows such fonts to be used with the maximum number of applications, including those that have no GSUB feature support or otherwise require glyphs to be directly encoded. We appreciate you raising the pi font issue, and we’d like you to know that we are working on developing keyboard maps so that OpenType pi fonts can more easily be entered via a keyboard. – KL]

By: Scott Prouty

Scott Prouty — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:07:40 +0000

Thanks for the reply. I forgot to mention this in my previous post, but I searched the Adobe web site for this information. Doesn’t Adobe provide documention on how to do this? But maybe it doesn’t even make sense to ask the question if the answer is to convert back to a Type 1 font. Might as well start with a Type 1 font in that case…[I’ll see if I can get somebody who knows about this print stream stuff to comment…. – T]

By: Scott Prouty

Scott Prouty — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:21:21 +0000

How are OpenType fonts accessed in PostScript? I have my own hand-coded PostScript job and an OpenType font file. How can I embed and use that Open Type font file in my hand-coded PostScript job?[Although some other reader may comment, this question might best be asked on the BlueWorld OpenType mailing list or somewhere like that. I don’t know all the details. The short answer with what I do know is, if it’s an OpenType font with TrueType outlines it needs a PostScript wrapper to be sent as “Type 42,” while if it’s got CFF outlines, you need to extract the CFF table and probably decompress that to send it as Type 1 (although PostScript devices can handle Type 2 fonts on the device, not sure you can download them that way). Anyway, you’ll want more details than that…. – T]

By: Thomas Phinney

Thomas Phinney — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 15:17:14 +0000

Phil,You’d use a program such as FontLab to make your own OpenType fonts, or convert Type 1 fonts to OpenType.Regards,T

By: Phil Sawatsky

Phil Sawatsky — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 11:52:03 +0000

I wonder how one would convert their type one fonts into Open Type Fonts?Also, i wonder if there is a way for a Lowly Graphic Designer to create Open Type Fonts of their own?

By: Thomas Phinney

Thomas Phinney — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:06:53 +0000

Henrik,It wasn’t David Lemon who wrote that, but “Anonymous Coward.”Cheers,T

By: Henrik Holmegaard, technical writer, mag.scient.soc.

Henrik Holmegaard, technical writer, mag.scient.soc. — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:31:36 +0000

David Lemon wrote :”NB: I repeat that regardless of the points above, it is great that you and Adobe have the honesty to publish these statements.”Henrik Holmegaard

By: David Lemon

David Lemon — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 10:54:53 +0000

Cari’s question is a good one. Adobe stopped selling multiple master fonts some time ago, and replaced them with OpenType versions. Over time, it’s likely that some applications will stop worrying about any bugs related to handling multiple master fonts.However, the technology is still very useful in limited circumstances. For example, we use multiple master tools as part of our type design process. And inside the PDF code, the notion of multiple master substitution fonts is likely to remain a key component for a very long time to come.- thanks,David Lemon

By: Cari Jansen

Cari Jansen — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:32:47 +0000

How will phasing out multiple master affect the use of multiple master fonts for substitution in Adobe PDFs, as used by Acrobat?

By: Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 18:21:14 +0000

On bogus glyph names: I am tempted to assume that this is not much of a problem with the high-quality Type 1 fonts in the Adobe Type Library or other professional fonts with Western characters, and these are the ones for which migration to OpenType will be expensive. It is hardly an issue when low-quality fonts with bogus glyph names do not render properly, or when problems with fonts for non-Western languages for which Type 1 did indeed not provide appropriate support persist.I agree that making rasterizers robust is a key step regarding security. Even more important is to move font support from the OS layer to the application layer completely. Did Microsoft do this in Avalon? If they did not, there is no point in talking about OS security anymore here as they had fundamentally violated the principle of least privilege. If they did, fonts do not challenge OS security at all.But why are we talking about rasterizers at all? A Type 1 rasterizer is technically equivalent to a CFF/Type 2 rasterizer. Now if you have a CFF/Type 2 rasterizer, all you need to rasterize Type 1 is code that converts a Type 1 font program to CFF/Type 2. This is not wizardry but a standard programming task which requires to read two specifications and to rewrite data linearly. It is also perfectly possible to achieve this with portable code. You also had about ten years to do this so no Microsoft-imposed schedule can serve as an excuse. Actually it is obvious that you already have such code in the AFDKO, and the release notes do not indicate serious problems with it within the last years.Really, the technical issues concerning Type 1 support have been solved so many times in the last fifteen years that any attempt to take them as an explanation here must fail. What remains is that Microsoft is not willing to support Type 1 in Avalon, and that you at Adobe do not “want to actively discourage users from spending money with us” in consequence of it. Honi soit qui mal y pense.NB: I repeat that regardless of the points above, it is great that you and Adobe have the honesty to publish these statements.