Re: ANSWERS & QUESTIONS Font mangling (FrameMaker -> PDF)

[Jay Smith <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Copied to all interested parties and groups.  Original question was
posted on both Framers groups and the Acrobat group.)

Arnis & Jason,

Thanks for the assist. The comments offered by the two of you got me
thinking about my original suspicion of many months ago, but which
feeling I stupidly ignored.

GUESS WHAT?!  Win95 Postscript Fonts & Acrobat (at least on my Win95b,
Acrobat Exchange 3.01, Distiller 3.01, Adobe Postscript driver 4.10)
does not completely or always support PS font FILE names longer than 8.3
characters.

If I had delved into Postscript font docs, I would have known this.  But
I didn't.

I am not referring to the FONT NAME, but to the font FILE NAME.  (In all
cases where I use *.pfb, the same applies to *.pfm, etc., etc.)

It turns out that if the same identical font FILE is called:

  palatino_jsa_reg_version_1.pfb

     Distiller/Acrobat thinks that it is a PS Type 3 (bitmap)
     font that looks really terrible on-screen in Acrobat.

However, if the same identical file is called:

  pljr1.pfb

     Distiller/Acrobat thinks that it is a PS Type 1 (vector?)
     font that looks pretty good on-screen in Acrobat. (I have
     to admit, however, that Palatino is not the best choice
     for on-screen viewing).

So that is solved.

A COUPLE REMAINING QUESTIONS:

1) What are the PS "rules" for

   a) File names:  Of the 8.3 characters "allowed", 
      the first five characters (of 8) are for ________?
         ?? Family?
      and the next three characters (of 8) are for _______?
         ?? Style?

2) I see that UNDERSCORES in the actual FONT NAME are converted 
   to periods (".") by the time a PDF file has been created.
   Does this mean that underscores are not allowed?  Should they
   be avoided in font names (font names, not file names)?

3) What recommendations to the experts offer to define font *FILE*
   names that do the following:

     a) clearly identify the family
     b) identify the style
     c) identify the purpose of this version of the font
          (i.e. special font for the Smith project)
     d) identify the version number of the font within that 
          "project"

 What I did that does not work (because it is not 8.3)

    pal_jsa_rates_1_b.pfb

 = Palatino + made by jsa + rates project + version 1 + bold

4) Does Distiller 3.02 fix this problem?

5) Can Distiller 3.02 be co-resident with Adobe Driver 4.10.0.162? 
(When I tried to install 4.20 a long time ago, nothing would work, thus
I had to drop back to 4.10 and it is doing the job for me for the
moment.)

Jay
    
-- 
Jay Smith

e-mail: Jay@JaySmith.com

Jay Smith & Associates
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