I've been going in circles, trying to view and access the
alternate,
or old style set of numerals (they call them figures) in a typeface
that I recently designed, "New Lincoln Gothic". Bitstream published
in the Open Type mode.
FHMX just won't let you in, but I discovered quite by accident that
one can both view and keyboard the alternate numbers in PhotoShop.
(CS2). When working in the text mode a little square tool box opens
up with two tabs across the top: "Character" and "Paragraph". To the
right of these is a microscopic little triangle in a circle; it's all of 1/32"
in size and totally unidentified. But, it opens up a menu which
includes the words Open Type. Clicking on this, in turn, opens up
some options such as ligatures, small caps and oldstyle figures.
That's the semi good news. The rub is that the type displays
somewhat rasterized in PhotoShop and is really clumsy to deal
with. I completed a typographic layout 11"x17", and saved it as a
PFD file. Then discovered that I could not import it into FHMX (no
surprise) but also could not use it as an attachment in my email program. (IMACX).
When added as an attachment all the characters simply disappear.
And, to make things worse, the file is 64 Megs. The only thing I seemed
to be able to do with it was to print it out on my desktop printer. The
results were far inferior to printing text documents out of FHMX.
Incidentally, I read that a beta version of PhotoShop (PS3) has
some of the qualities of Freehand, but, typically, had trouble
downloading it. More trouble and frustration than it's worth.
I propose a massive "Fix Freehand and re-release" letter writing
campaign to Mr. Bruce Chizen, CEO, and Mr. Shantanu Naryen,
President and Chief Operating Officer, of Adobe.
Their address is:
Adobe Systems, Inc.
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704.
-Thomas
or old style set of numerals (they call them figures) in a typeface
that I recently designed, "New Lincoln Gothic". Bitstream published
in the Open Type mode.
FHMX just won't let you in, but I discovered quite by accident that
one can both view and keyboard the alternate numbers in PhotoShop.
(CS2). When working in the text mode a little square tool box opens
up with two tabs across the top: "Character" and "Paragraph". To the
right of these is a microscopic little triangle in a circle; it's all of 1/32"
in size and totally unidentified. But, it opens up a menu which
includes the words Open Type. Clicking on this, in turn, opens up
some options such as ligatures, small caps and oldstyle figures.
That's the semi good news. The rub is that the type displays
somewhat rasterized in PhotoShop and is really clumsy to deal
with. I completed a typographic layout 11"x17", and saved it as a
PFD file. Then discovered that I could not import it into FHMX (no
surprise) but also could not use it as an attachment in my email program. (IMACX).
When added as an attachment all the characters simply disappear.
And, to make things worse, the file is 64 Megs. The only thing I seemed
to be able to do with it was to print it out on my desktop printer. The
results were far inferior to printing text documents out of FHMX.
Incidentally, I read that a beta version of PhotoShop (PS3) has
some of the qualities of Freehand, but, typically, had trouble
downloading it. More trouble and frustration than it's worth.
I propose a massive "Fix Freehand and re-release" letter writing
campaign to Mr. Bruce Chizen, CEO, and Mr. Shantanu Naryen,
President and Chief Operating Officer, of Adobe.
Their address is:
Adobe Systems, Inc.
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704.
-Thomas