Post Script 1 to OpenType Migration

While seemingly yesterday, Microsoft brought in Adobe to help co - develop a cross-platform type standard which would allow cross outline and encoding support resulting in the "OpenType" format. There were and still are problems with matching up the conventional names and supports of each standard.

Everything is pretty much format/support standard nowadays. You may have your work cut out for you however if you have been working in a purely adequate Mac based graphics environment, and the higher-ups from atop their mountain in P&A were sold at pricepoint on a PC based printer.

Everything is "Beans-n-Gravy" until you go to print if past formatting cannot be found or rendered correctly in the new output environment.

Adobe provided a good read for those faced with the undaunting task of "sinking" their (Postscript based) imput graphics capability with the .OT (Open Type) standards for output. A downloadable, Face to Face format transposition table here in the HOPEFULLY, helpfull following order (From Adobe Forums):
Type 1 PostScript FontName
Type 1 Mac Menu Name
Type 1 Win/PC Menu Name
Type 1 PC File Name
Prefix Type 1 Mac Outline File Name
Matching OpenType format font
Matching OpenType format
Mac Menu Name
Matching OpenType format Win/PC Menu Name


Then there is also the output solution like the HP Multiple Product Adobe PostScript Printer Driver which supports a quasi extensive list of HP products. This is mainly for those graphics departments which use higher quality, inhouse/end-process printers for proofing before,during and after flight.


A much simpler solution available from FontLab is called TransType.


This Universal font format converter for Mac and Windows. Versions SE 2.5.1 and Pro 3.0.2., allows you to convert practically any font into any other format on Mac and PC.What might the advantages of using TransType Pro be?

In my experience, any product that a manufacturer purports to be 'universal' is either too ambitious/too soon in supports, too proprietory or it quietly and efficiently delivers a suprisingly, useful result. The latter fits FontLab's TransType.

Universal is the prefacing key word for this fontlab product and it speaks to ease of use as well as support. For Mac: Mac OS 9.2 with CarbonLib 1.6+ or Mac OS X (10.3 or higher is recommended), Intel-based Mac OS X(* visit FontLab site for details)

For Windows: Microsoft Windows OS (95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP).

Perhaps most important are the encoding conversions which read and convert Unicode, ANSI, ASCII, among many others (international etc...16 for Microsoft,23 for Mac) It is a simple converter environment and interface which already the most standard features and preferences checked and yet is fully customizable!

FontLab has designed a solid, options and features-rich beast of a font conversion tool that is mainly for converting from the major pre-OpenType (TT,GX) to OpenType /PS standard.

The interface is well designed, a familiar layout of font manager and conversion tool which thankfully makes no grandios assumptions. A typical scenario (after lightning quick install) would be to open the program,choose a system font for conversion and then save it to the same or any other folder you create. FontLab TransType has batch and font family save features which once preferences are set, allow for codepage and script exactitude as well as maximized glyph/outline transference.