Re: Printers, Fonts, Networks

["Arlen P. Walker" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

       Our Technical Communications group is faced with a quandary. Our company
      is going to a Windows NT network environment. According to our
      information technology people, we can only use TrueType fonts in this
      environment.

I am willing to believe that they can set the environment up so that you can
only use TT fonts. I am not willing to believe, however, that they have no
choice but to set it up like that. The reason I say this is because I regularly
print Type 1 fonts (as well as TT, sometimes in the same document) to queues set
up on an NT print server.

As a matter of fact, I just got off the phone with our NT whiz here, and he says
he's never heard of anything like that.

Perhaps there's some information missing here. Are they setting up NT on your
workstations as well? (If so, someone who runs NT will have to answer whether
ATM comes in an NT flavor, as I'm using a Mac.) What kind of printers are you
printing to? What are your workstations?

If there's no ATM for NT, perhaps what they're trying to say is that you can't
get wysiwyg display from type 1 fonts. (A problem, but not a show-stopper.)

If they set it up so your print driver won't (or can't) automatically download
the required fonts, then perhaps you should get a hold of a printer utility
which can download the fonts manually (the laserwriter utility for Macs ships
free with the printer, for example) and do things manually.

"TT Only" is a religion a lot of people outside the publishing industry have,
because they see it as easier, and the fonts can be as clean and good-looking as
type 1 fonts are. And since it's supported by Microsoft, the logic goes,
everyone in the world prefers it to any other product. This isn't the case, and
the MS bigots in your firm had better come to grips with the realities of being,
in this case, on the minority platform.

If your printers are Postscript, then it might help to use this tactic. Since
the printer uses PS, your system will have to download a TT-to-PS interpreter in
order to print any document with a TT font. Why not skip the interpretation
process and print postscript fonts directly. It will speed up throughput,
because instead of downloading a TT font *plus* a TT-to-PS interpreter, you'll
only need to download a PS font and the printer will know what to do with it. If
they counter with the statement that the interpreter only needs to be downloaded
once, then tell them the font also only needs to downloaded once, and 6 PS fonts
*has* to take up less printer memory than 6 TT fonts *plus* the interpreter,
therefore it's a more efficient use of resources.

Besides, when you use fonts which are in the printer's ROM, the printer is using
PS to print a layout you designed with TT, so you may not get what you want as
hardcopy output. (No, Times Roman TT does *not* have exactly the same font
metrics as Times Roman PS. I once made the mistake of thinking it did, but I
quickly found out that Times is not Times is not Times, to paraphrase Ms.
Stein.)


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 124

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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