As many web surfers know, each version of Netscape's browser adds new features. With version 4 of Netscape Communicator (available for download from www.netscape.com), the company has added a support for an interesting font embedding technology called TrueDoc. With TrueDoc, you can embed font data in your web pages so that people visiting your web site will see the typefaces exactly as you intend. As this article went to press, TrueDoc functionality was only available in the Windows version of Netscape Communicator but, ironically, the first tool for creating web pages with embedded TrueDoc fonts was for the Mac! Fortunately, the situation has evened out and tools are now available for both Mac and Windows 95/NT machines.
On its web site, Netscape has several demos that show how Bitstream's TrueDoc technology lets users view specific fonts and font effects on the Internet or an intranet. Other pages at Netscape's web site show off several other intriguing Communicator features, including examples of Dynamic HTML, drag-and-drop web page objects, Cascading Style Sheets and more....
http://home.netscape.com/flash1/comprod/products/communicator/index.html
According to information on Netscape's demo pages, designers can include font files with HTML documents or messages so that the page appears exactly as the designer intended. On our Windows test system, screen fonts were all antialiased and took only seconds to display. (And you don't need a separate viewer plugin, as you currently do for Acrobat files.) And of course, font files can be restricted for use on a particular site.
The current Netscape Communicator 4.01 includes viewing support under Windows 95 and NT, Solaris, and IRIX for dynamic fonts (Netscape says Macintosh, Windows 3.1, and additional Unix support will follow in a future release). The company says future releases will also include a Composer plug-in for packaging fonts.
Bitstream sent some interesting info on the subject. According to spokesperson Stefan Wennik, "the list of who is currently working with TrueDoc is loooooong. The list of products that are actually available is short.
Germany's HexMac, Wennik says, is the only company that is currently shipping an HTML-based product for recording TrueDoc fonts into documents. Its product, called Typograph, is available as a plug-in for BBEdit, from Bare Bones Software Inc. (www.barebones.com) or as a stand-alone application for Macintosh or Windows 95/NT. All versions work with any HTML file and sell for US$149. (The free downloadable version at www.hexmac.com is time-limited).
TrueDoc, says Wennik, is also currently built into some other Internet and non-internet products such as Macromedia Shockwave for Freehand 7, most all of Corel's currently shipping or about-to-ship products. It is also being used by FutureTense for their Texture product and SoftPress for Uniquorn. These are all shipping now.
Here is a quick list of who else has the code and is implementing it into their products:
Also, Bitstream just did a deal with Intervista, which will reportedly will be building it into its VRML browser and tools so that Virtual Reality projects created with their tools will be able to have access to high-quality scalable fonts.
TrueDoc is also being built directly into a lot of hardware as the native font scaling engine. For example, it is the font engine for Oracle's NC. Bitstream says it expects a lot more of these to become available in the near future. "This is really important for web content creators because in the near future, people will be using this kind of hardware for viewing web content," Wennik maintains. "With TrueDoc built in, the fonts will image perfectly even on low-resolution screens (like TV screens, etc.)" Visit Bitstream Inc. at www.bitstream.com for more info.
Dec. 8, 1997: HexMac has released its Cascading Style Sheets Editor, HexWeb CSS Edit.
The new title features:
HexWeb CSS Edit is now available for an introductory price of $99! (US). A demo version of HexWeb CSS Edit is available at: http://www.hexmac.com
While were were looking for more readily available solutions, we stumbled across an interesting item on Adobe's PDF fonts. The Fonts on the Internet page (www.letterror.com/LTR_BmapLong.html) notes, "Adobe's PDF files can contain the complete font in PostScript form when the author wants it. The Type1 data can be located quite easily and extracted from the file. On some platforms it is not even necessary to open an application." Apparently, PDF is an unintentional acronym for public domain fonts....
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