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PTR Training -- Differences from 5.0 to 5.1 |
The information in this document applies to:
WordPerfect® 5.1 for DOS
Problem
Symptoms: When should you encourage users to convert their 5.0 .PRS files to 5.1? Solutions: between the ways the two programs handle printing that will be evident to users. Changes to PTR: (These changes may cause 5.0 documents to reformat.) Point Size / Leading 5.0 Auto line height=Font cell height + Leading 5.0 Auto Line Height was calculated using Font Cell Height plus Font Leading. Auto Line Height (ALH), with the same font, could vary from printer definition to printer definition for two reasons. First, Font Cell Height (FCH) was determined by the person writing the driver as they manually measured the actual height of the characters. Two people could measure the same character and come up with different measurements. Second, Leading was also determined by the person writing the driver. This number was set proportional to the font by what the person writing the driver thought looked good. Larger fonts had more leading than smaller fonts, but there was no standard for all drivers. If a person was just using one driver, these inconsistencies in ALH would not be readily apparent. However, as documents were transported from printer to printer, they would be able to see a slight difference in the way the document would print. With 5.1 drivers they wanted to overcome these inconsistencies, so the standard of Auto Line Height was changed. In 5.1 the ALH is now a total of Point size plus two points leading for Proportional spaced fonts, and monospaced fonts the ALH is the point size only. The point size is determined by the manufacturer of the font. The people involved in writing the driver now use the values given with the font and add two points of leading. Font Cell Height is no longer used. Fonts have some amount of leading built into them by the manufacturer. A Courier 10 point font will have shorter characters than a Helvetica 10 point font or Times Roman 10 point, even though the Courier characters are wider and appear larger. A Courier font has more white space built into it so it will look better when printed. 5.1 takes advantage of the design of the font and simply adds two points to the existing point size. Therefore, lines of a PS 12 point font will print 14 points apart. Two lines of PS 30 point font will print 32 points apart or an Auto line height of 32 points. This change will affect any documents created in 5.0 and printed in 5.1. People will be able to notice a difference. However, in the long run, this will make WordPerfect documents more portable, and as large companies set WP as a standard, they will be able to print their documents on different printers and get similar results. Font Cell Height and Point Size are not the same. Some users with 5.1 updates are going to want their documents print exactly the same as they did in 5.0. It is not as simple as just adjusting the leading. It is very complex. WPCorp strongly suggests they do not try to change all of the variables. If they insist on the 5.0 documents printing exactly as they did, they will need to go back to 5.0 and search for font changes and place fixed line height codes where they have made font changes. Then when they bring the documents into 5.1 the line heights will be fixed to what they were in 5.0. This will not work for Size attributes and Automatic font changes. These will have to be done manually. Word Spacing Another thing that will make 5.0 documents print differently when using 5.1 is Word Spacing. The lines will wrap in different places than they did in 5.0. In 5.0, Word Spacing was figured using an intricate scheme for figuring each space. A value of 32 was not sent for each character because they wanted to be consistent between justified and non-justified text. The value of a space width was an average of the width of the characters in the PS font. Then the number was multiplied by the optimal space width. The optimal space width is a value in PTR. The value for this was determined by the person who wrote the driver based on what they thought looked good. Most of the time the value was between 60-75%, but it was not consistent from driver to driver. A Times Roman font on an HP may have been set to 60% and the same size Times Roman on a Canon printer could have been set to 75%. In 5.1, the drivers have adopted the 3M method. The space is 1/3 the point size of the font. This is a typesetter's rule of thumb. If this looks too tight, we do have the option of taking the space width from the PS table and using that. On many Dot Matrix printers the value for a space is taken directly from the character table. The reason is that these fonts typically are a little wider. Typeface In PTR, information is stored about each Typeface. This information is accessed whenever WordPerfect needs to know how the font being accessed is shaped, serifs, and the proportion capital letters are to the base line, etc. Now, in 5.1, all these percentages in the Typeface information are not based on Font Cell Height, they are based on the Point Size. This will not be apparent to most users; they won't see any difference with the exception of two cases. First, 5.1 WP can graphically create any of the characters contained in the .DRS file. This file contains outlines for any of the characters found in the WordPerfect character sets. If a printer does not contain a .DRS character in the font, WordPerfect will graphically create the character. To do this, WordPerfect needs certain information about the typeface and proportions of the font being accessed. It gets this information from the Typeface info in the PTR program. So if someone converts their 5.0 printer driver to 5.1, this typeface information is not correct. They won't get characters the same size as the font. The character will print but it will probably be smaller. Another thing that will be affected are diacriticals placed on characters. Again, the converted .PRS file will not have the correct values to reference in placing accents etc. on composed characters. Font Libraries Font information can now be shared between drivers. This is transparent to users and is done with Font Libraries. For example, the HP LaserJet Series II uses the same fonts as the HP LaserJet 500+. When a 5.0 .ALL file is converted, a font Library is created; this does not happen with .PRS files. If a user needs to use their Bitstream fonts in 5.0, initially (until 5.1 compatible Bitstream becomes available) they will have to convert the .ALL files to 5.1. Bitstream 3.0 for 5.0 does not work with WP 5.1. If all they are ever going to use is the Bitstream fonts then that would be sufficient. If the user is going to use anything other than Bitstream fonts, it would be better for the user to create a font library of these Bitstream fonts and copy the library to the 5.1 .ALL file they will be using. In this case, at least their non-Bitstream fonts will all be using the 5.1 standards for spacing etc. This will be helpful for people in future if they were to ever update. CopyFont This utility is only 5.0 compatible. It does not work with 5.1. Copyfont is a utility that allows you to copy fonts from one printer file to another in 5.0. 5.1 has a new switch in PTR. PTR/Update In 5.1, if you add a font either with a third party utility or do it yourself, a bit in the .ALL file is flagged by each font added. When PTR is run with the /UPDATE switch, the new file is compared with the old .ALL file and all those fonts that have the flag are added to the new .ALL file. Consequently, users receiving updates to their .ALL files will easily be able to copy those fonts to the new printer file. The following steps take you through the update process: 1. Enter PTR and retrieve the desired .ALL file 2. Press Ctrl-F10 to enter the Font Libraries 3. Cursor to User Developed Font Groups and select option 5 4. If the letter above the cursor is S, the Group has the flag set--otherwise it has to be set 5. After all of the Groups have been marked, press Alt-F7 to quit and answer Yes to save the file, and Yes to exit the PTR program 6. Type "PTR /UPDATE oldfile.ALL newfile.ALL" at the DOS prompt This update process is done for the customer when they run Install for the new diskette. Install will check to see if the printer they select has already been selected. If it has been, then Install renames the old .ALL file with a .000 (or .001) and invokes PTR and does the update. There are two cases where this will fail and the customer will have to do it on their own. The first case is if there is not enough memory to invoke PTR. The second case is if PTR can't be found or was never installed. In the case 5.0 .ALL files, all fonts are flagged so if you convert your 5.0 .ALL file to 5.1 and then later get a version of 5.1 and try to update, it will bring over all the old information for all fonts. This defeats the whole purpose of the new 5.1 .ALL file Installing Printer Drivers The selection of printers initially in 5.1 is different than the process in 5.0. In 5.1 while running Install, it will ask what printer you are using. A macro is then invoked and the .ALL file you are using is then unsquished. If you need to use all the .ALL files on a disk, then you can use option 6 using the Install program and it will unsquish all of the files on the disk. The files are compressed to about 58% of the original. Therefore, when the files are uncompressed they take about twice the disk space. Install will allow you to only install 10 printers per installation. To install more, you will need to exit and reenter the Install program. |
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