Apple II
Technical Notes
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                                                  Developer Technical Support


Apple IIGS
#67:    LaserWriter Font Mapping

Revised by:    Jim Luther                                       November 1989
Written by:    Suki Lee & Jim Luther                           September 1989

This Technical Note discusses the methods used by the Apple IIGS Print Manager 
to map IIGS fonts to the PostScript(R) fonts available with an Apple LaserWriter 
printer.
Changes since September 1989:  Moved the registered trademark symbols 
from Table 2 to the list of trademarks at the end of this Note to avoid 
confusion about font name spelling.
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Version 2.2 and earlier of the Apple IIGS LaserWriter driver depend solely 
upon font family numbers as unique font identifiers.  There is a table built 
into the driver which maps the known font family numbers to the built-in 
LaserWriter family fonts.  Any fonts which are not built-in are created in the 
printer from its bitmap font strike.  Under this implementation, all font 
family numbers not known at the time the driver was written print using bitmap 
fonts.  This driver knows nothing of any other fonts which may reside in the 
printer.

There have been many requests for the driver to take advantage of other 
available PostScript fonts to get high quality output from the LaserWriter.  
PostScript fonts from Adobe's font library, or from other PostScript font 
manufacturers, can be downloaded to the printer from a Macintosh and remain in 
the printer for use until power off.  Currently there is no means to download 
a PostScript font with an Apple IIGS.

The Apple IIGS LaserWriter driver version 3.0 makes use of most resident 
PostScript fonts in the LaserWriter when requested.  If the font is not 
available, then the bitmap font is used.  The driver queries the printer at 
the start of a job for the font directory listing.  The listing consists of 
names of all the fonts in the printer, built-in or downloaded.  This 
information is kept locally for look up using the name of the requested font.


Issues

All Apple IIGS fonts contain a family name and a family number.  The Apple 
IIGS currently identifies fonts using the family number; however, this 
identification method may change in the future, due to the complexity of 
tracking unique matches between font family names and font family numbers.

PostScript identifies its fonts by name (case sensitive) and knows nothing of 
any font family numbering system, Macintosh or Apple IIGS, which might be 
attached to a particular font.  Most PostScript font families include plain, 
bold, italic and bold italic fonts.  Some fonts families may also have serif 
and sans serif fonts or fonts of different weights (line thickness).  These 
fonts are generally named by adding a style suffix to the base family name.  
Unfortunately, there is no uniform method for naming fonts, since most fonts 
were named by their designers and many of the names have historical 
significance.

The three examples shown in Table 1 show three variations of the plain font, 
two variations of the bold style, three variations of the italic style, and 
three variations of the bold italic style.  There are others such as 
ZapfChancery-MediumItalic, Korinna-KursivRegular, and LetterGothic-Slanted 
which all denote the italic style of the respective font family.

Style         Font names
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plain         Helvetica              Times-Roman       AvantGarde-Book
bold          Helvetica-Bold         Times-Bold        AvantGarde-Demi
italic        Helvetica-Oblique      Times-Italic      AvantGarde-BookOblique
bold italic   Helvetica-BoldOblique  Times-BoldItalic  AvantGarde-DemiOblique
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                        Table 1-Example Font Names

The Macintosh LaserWriter driver uses a mapping scheme to compose a full 
PostScript font name.  It relies on the Font Family Definition Record 'FOND' 
resource to provide a style mapping table containing the appropriate suffixes.

Since there are no similar resource on the Apple IIGS, the Apple IIGS 
LaserWriter driver adopts the following approach.  The driver has full 
knowledge of all LaserWriter family built-in fonts (see Table 2 for a list of 
these built-in fonts) and uses the correct name for all style variations of 
the fonts.  For all other fonts, the driver uses a standard set of suffixes 
for the style modifications.  These suffixes are -Bold, -Italics, and -
BoldItalics.  The appropriate suffix is appended to the family name of the 
font, and this name is used to search the font directory table obtained from 
querying the printer.  If a match is found, the document is printed using the 
corresponding PostScript font.  If no match is found, then the driver tries to 
find the plain form of the font and creates the style modification in 
PostScript.  A bitmap of the font is downloaded to the printer if these two 
searches fail.

If you are shipping your application with the intention of taking advantage of 
PostScript fonts when printing to a LaserWriter, please be sure to provide an 
Apple IIGS font whose family name is identical to the PostScript font family 
name.

                    LaserWriter     LaserWriter Plus and 
                                    LaserWriter II
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                    Courier         AvantGarde
                    Helvetica       Bookman
                    Symbol          Courier
                    Times           Helvetica
                                    Helvetica-Narrow
                                    NewCenturySchlbk
                                    Palatino
                                    Symbol
                                    Times
                                    ZapfChancery
                                    ZapfDingbats
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                     Table 2-Built-in LaserWriter Fonts


Further Reference
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    o    Apple IIGS Toolbox Reference, Volumes 1 & 2
    o    Apple LaserWriter Reference

PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Helvetica(R), Palatino(R), and Times(R) are registered trademarks of 
Linotype Co.
ITC Avant Garde(R), ITC Bookman(R), ITC Zapf Chancery(R), and 
ITC Zapf Dingbats(R) are registered trademarks of 
International Typeface Corporation.
