LINGUIST List 3.880

Tue 10 Nov 1992

Review: Adobe typemanager

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    Message 1: review

     Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 20:41 MET
    From: <KAHRELalf.let.uva.nl>
    Subject: review


    WordPerfect and phonetic characters.

    Since a few weeks, Adobe offers a font generator that is very interesting for linguists. It's called "Adobe Typemanager for WordPerfect" (ATM for WP). In America, ATM for WP is sold under the name PrimeType. Apart from the names, the programs are identical. With ATM for WP, you can print documents on virtually any printer (LaserJets and clones, DeskJets, matrix printers, PostScript). The program is comparable with familiar font generators like Facelift, Publishers's Powerpak, Lines Letters &c, Glyphix, etc. However, ATM for WP has a number of advantages over similar programs. I'll mention a few.

    Firstly, ATM for WP prints PostScript Type 1 fonts on virtually any printer. This is good news, since Adobe offer a number of phonetic fonts: IPA and Alternate, available in Times, Stone Serif and Stone Sans. IPA contains most of the characters and symbols defined in the IPA character set, while the Alternate character set contains a number of other phonetic characters. In all, most characters defined and described in Pullum and Ladusaw's "Phonetic Symbol Guide" and by Ladefoged (1990, "The revised International Phonetic Alphabet", Language 66, 3) are represented in Adobe's character sets. And if you miss characters, such as the barred b (a b with a slash through it), in many (if not most) cases you can make it using WP's overstrike function. And if you're really desperate you can use a font editor like Fontographer or Fontmonger to make your own characters. Apart from Adobe's phonetic fonts, other non-Latin Type 1 fonts are available, such as Cyrillic from Adobe, Monotype, and Cassidy & Green, and Japanese from Adobe. And there are numerous other Type 1 fonts available on Compuserve (see Mendelson's review in PC Magazine Vol. 11, no. 18, October 1992).

    Secondly, ATM for WP includes a DOS and a Windows version, unlike any other font generator. For example, Facelift is available in two non-compatible versions: one for WP for DOS, and one as a general Windows font generator. ATM is available for WP DOS and WP for Windows. Using WP's own printer drivers in Windows, this means that documents created in WP for DOS can be retrieved in WP for Windows without losing any formatting.

    Thirdly, since ATM for Windows uses Type 1 fonts to print to any printer, you can print preliminary versions of an article on your laser, inkjet, or matrixprinter at home. When you're ready to print the final version, you take it to a high resolution printer or any other PostScript device (Linotype, for example). Apart from print quality, the printed text will look the same: all formatting is preserved.

    And finally, and this appeals to me very much: the program is completely open. By this I mean that you can determine how fonts are installed, which is very pleasant. For example, you can determine yourself where characters are installed in the WP printer driver. I used this feature as follows. In the past, I have been using the eng character (in WP, character 211 in character set 1) and the underdot (character 0 in character set 2). I have always taken for granted that these characters, since they were not present in the fonts I had been using, were printed graphically by WP. This was far from perfect, but I could (and, like many others, had to) live with it. Now, Adobe put their phonetic characters in character set 12. Rather than modifying all my files to replace the codes for the eng and underdot to their Adobe codes, I just added a few lines to the installation file that ATM uses to install fonts. Specifically, I added a line that instructs ATM to install the eng in position 1,211, and a line to insert the underdot in position 2,0. The result is that both the underdot and the eng occur twice in the character maps in my printer driver: in their "Adobe" position, so to speak, and in their standard WP position. For good measure I also remapped the barred h and barred d to their WordPerfect positions in character set 1. I think Adobe could have taken the trouble to remap the relevant characters to the WP positions. But the point I want to make here is that ATM allows you to influence the installation process to a very large extent. This is a feature not offered by any other font generator. (Well, this is not entirely true: you can also remap characters using the Type Director program. But remapping in Type Director is not documented, and Type Director does not know Type 1, so it won't give you phonetics.)

    In conclusion, I think that ATM for WP DOS is an extremely useful program.

    Peter Kahrel University of Amsterdam kahrelalf.let.uva.nl