RE[~]: Utilities for FrameMaker ligatures

[Dov Isaacs]

I would strongly endorse Michael's observation vis-à-vis hacking
around with fonts and the side effects in the resultant PDF files
in terms of ability to readily search such files for text and/or
apply text touch-up.

Furthermore, you should be aware that many font licenses explicitly
prohibit such manipulations without permission of the font foundry
itself.

And of course any such font conversions from TrueType to Type 1, for
example, are LOSSY in terms of possible subtle changes in the glyph
outlines while converting from quadratic to Bezier curves and modifying
font metrics during the conversion.

If you are really that concerned about fine typography, you would
be better off considering InDesign at this time.

Finally, a technicality. TrueType fonts are every bit as much
"PostScript fonts" as are Type 1 fonts. All PostScript language level 3
and most PostScript language level 2 implementations NATIVELY support
TrueType fonts as Type 42 PostScript fonts. The term "PostScript font"
really has no real meaning anymore unless qualified as to which type
of font one is referring to.

	- Dov

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Müller-Hillebrand [mailto:mmh at cap-studio.de]
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 2:12 AM
> To: Dov Isaacs
> Subject: [Free Framers] Re: Utilities for FrameMaker ligatures
> 
> 
> Am 05.02.2009 um 04:17 schrieb Hedley Finger:
> 
> > A couple of people wrote to me directly asking where to get the two
> > utilities that  respectively
> >
> > (a) converts TrueType and OpenType fonts to PostScript font plus
> > accompanying expert fonts for old-style digits, small caps and
> > ligatures; and
> >
> > (b) in FrameMaker, converts lining numbers to old-style digits, and
> > applies true small caps, and substitutes ligature glyphs for certain
> > combinations of letters, e.g. ffl (characters) --> ffl (single glyph).
> 
> 
> Folks,
> 
> anyone thinking about using PostScript fonts for things other than
> simple ASCII/ANSI text should know, that PDFs created with those
> custom made fonts are not successfully searchable. The trick used is
> to put all special characters in character position usually occupied
> by other characters. Any full-text search will only see the character
> number behind the appearance and so will never find words with such
> special characters.
> 
> If you don't care about the above, you still might want to read, what
> Adobe had to say in 2005 about "Phasing out Type 1 fonts":
> 
> http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2005/10/phasing_out_typ.html
> 
> - Michael