[Groff] Type 1 fonts "dead but twitching"

[Larry Kollar]

Information I just read on a FrameMaker list....

> I just got back from the Helsinki ATypI conference, where Tom Phinney,
> Adobe's program manager for fonts and core technologies, basically  
> said
> that Type 1 fonts are dead (but may take a while to lie down and stop
> twitching). Adobe hasn't made any new Type 1 fonts for several years -
> everything is OpenType now.
>
> ...
>
> Adobe is scratching its head about offering some kind of upgrade for
> people who have Type 1 fonts but there are lots of problems: not least
> that most people don't keep their proofs of purchase (and, unsaid,  
> that
> many people steal fonts).

I've kicked around a few ideas about how future versions of groff  
handle fonts, primarily working with the operating system's native  
font handling & printing APIs. I've never said anything because I  
don't have the expertise to code up even a proof-of-concept, and IIRC  
Linux and other Unix-type OSes often leave font & printer handling to  
the application.

In any case, the current font handler should be at least a compile- 
time option, because I'm sure it's loads faster than any generalized  
OS-based handler & there's at least one person out there who depends  
on groff's raw formatting speed. Could this be kicked to the post- 
processor? That would be the best of both worlds; choose grops when  
you value speed over flexibility and gronative (groos? gross?) when  
it's the other way around.

--
Larry Kollar     k  o  l  l  a  r  @  a  l  l  t  e  l  .  n  e  t
Unix Text Processing: "UTP Revival"
http://home.alltel.net/kollar/utp/