ANNOUNCEMENT & ALERT!! Windows'95/98 Adobe PostScript Drivers

[Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx>]

If you are not generating PostScript in a Windows'95/98 environment,
you may safely delete this message. Otherwise, please read this
message as it contains information about new driver capabilities
and an alert about serious problems recently discovered!!

====================================================================

Last week, new versions and packaging of the Adobe PostScript drivers
for Windows were posted on the Adobe web site at:

<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/pdrvwin.htm>

The same driver package was also delivered with FrameMaker 6.0 for
Windows. It is a "universal" installer which installs AdobePS 4.4
under Windows'95/98, AdobePS 5.1.2 under Windows NT 4.0, and an
updated PSCRIPT.DLL driver under Windows 2000 (this is the driver
that was the result of the joint Adobe / Microsoft development
effort and with the update, is functionally equivalent to 
AdobePS 5.1.2+). This installer provides the means of both
updating the driver and creating new printer instances based upon
PPD. (This provides the first such capability under Windows 2000).

====================================================================
FEATURES
====================================================================

For Windows'95/98 users, AdobePS 4.4 has the following new
features and differences:

(1) A "true gray" feature for text and line art. Under Windows'
imaging model, black and shades of gray are expressed as colors
with equal percentage of red, green, and blue. The generated
PostScript for such black and gray shades has been done with
RGB PostScript instead of grayscale PostScript. This is not
particularly efficient and for some color PostScript printers,
resulted not in black or gray being printed, but in "rich black"
or "rich gray" being printed ... equal parts of cyan, magenta,
and yellow, possibly mixed with black. The "true gray" feature,
if selected (default is NOT selected), causes the driver to
replace all situations with R=G=B (equal parts of red, green,
and blue) with the equivalent grayscale value. Use of this
new feature with color printers (and with generation of PDF
files) is most highly recommended.

(2) This driver REQUIRES Adobe Type Manager if you are printing
any Type 1 fonts. ATM is not required if you are only using
TrueType fonts.

(3) The "substitution table" and "always use TrueType" font 
options have been replaced by two options ... "Substitute 
printer fonts for TrueType fonts when applicable" and "Do not
use printer fonts".

When selected, the first of these options causes TrueType fonts
that are known to have exact matching metric and style printer 
equivalents to be replaced by use of the printer font ("Times Roman"
in the printer substitutes for "Times New Roman" in the document; 
"Helvetica" in the printer substitutes for "Arial" in the document; 
etc.). When unselected, no font substitution occurs.

The second of these options, "Do not use printer fonts" when 
selected allows you to effectively bypass any printer-resident
font. All text is printed with fonts downloaded from the user's
computer. This option is useful when you have any doubt as to
what fonts and/or versions of same are actually resident on
the printer and you must exactly match what you have on the host.

====================================================================
ALERT -- MAJOR PROBLEM IDENTIFIED!!!!
====================================================================

HOWEVER, in post-release use of the AdobePS 4.4 driver within Adobe
(by yours truly) and at least one of our advanced users (thanks, Shlomo),
we have found an extremely serious problem.

Use of any of the Base 35 fonts in printers that don't have such
fonts (such as the Acrobat Distiller which only has "Courier") or
use of the "do not use printer fonts" in conjunction with
any of the Base 35 PostScript fonts, results in the generation of
PostScript with unhinted outlines (or possibly bitmaps) in lieu of 
these Base 35 fonts.

(The Base 35 fonts include the Times, Helvetica, Helvetica Narrow,
Courier, New Century Schoolbook, Palatino, Bookman, Avant Garde,
Symbol, Zapf Chancery Medium Italic, and Zapf Dingbats typefaces.)

This is not normally a problem for direct, printed output. This
is a catastrophic problem if you are generating PDF files that use
any of these Base 35 fonts. The text in any of these Base 35 fonts
may not display with full quality. Furthermore, such text is NOT
at all searchable. If you check font usage for such documents, you 
will see such fonts listed as "MSTT******" fonts as opposed to the
real typeface names.

The problem is caused by the GDI.EXE module of Windows'9x attempting
to "intercept" all requests for the Base 35 fonts and replacing them
with TrueType equivalents. ATM, including the new version 4.1, 
cooperated with Windows'9x with regards to honoring GDI's request to
intercept use of these Base 35 fonts. Thus, to fix the problem, we
will need to update ATM for Windows'9x to ignore Windows' attempt
to service the Base 35 fonts with TrueType.

We have seen the symptoms occur with FrameMaker (all versions),
Lotus WordPro, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and most other "GDI"
applications. The symptoms occur sporadically with Microsoft
Office applications.

In the interim, Adobe has reposted the AdobePS 4.3.1 drivers for
Windows'95/98 on our Windows driver web page:

<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/pdrvwin.htm>

If you have not installed AdobePS 4.4 to date, we recommend that
you DON'T do so at this time. If you have installed AdobePS 4.4,
either from the web site or as part of a FrameMaker 6.0 installation
AND if you are creating PDF files that use any of the Base 35 fonts,
we recommend that you delete the AdobePS 4.4 printer instances
and reinstall the AdobePS 4.3.1 driver ASAP.

Within the next three to four weeks, Adobe will be updating ATM
to version 4.1.1 that will fix this problem. An updater for ATM
Deluxe 4.0 to ATM 4.1.1 will be made available as will a "free"
version of ATM Lite 4.1.1. We will also be updating this universal
Windows driver installer to version 1.0.1 that will include 
AdobePS 4.4.1 that has some additional fixes. We will alert these 
mailing lists and forums when these updates are available.

====================================================================

Adobe Systems apologizes for any and all inconveniences that you may
have experienced due to this problem.

	- Dov 


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