PostScript Support for APL under Windows

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 128

There has been a lot of interest of late expressed in Vector on the subject of APL fonts and how to mix APL characters with other type faces in a word processing environment. These have ranged from Adrian Smith’s elegant PostScript solution, to Rex Swain’s technique for using the STSC APL*PLUS PC font in Microsoft Word 5. This latter is totally effective and very professionally documented.

We use Word for Windows for Impetus documentation as this gives much of the benefit of a Desk Top Publishing package with a lot less hassle, and is in any case, better suited to large documents. Word for Windows is substantially different to Word 5 in many ways including the fact that it lets Windows look after fonts and printers. This meant that Rex Swain’s code did not help us.

Microsoft pointed us at a company called Fontware Ltd who are experts in these matters and who built an APL font some years ago for one of their customers. This font was built according to the customers specification and is mostly not very good. We were only interested in a subset of 12 APL characters, 10 of these were OK, and we had the other two modified. Fontware then mapped these on to key tops of our choosing.

The characters look very good when printed on a Laserjet. The screen font has, I think, been produced by some automatic process from the printer font, and is horrible. As the screen font is only for our internal usage, its quality is not a problem.

In summary, if anybody needs an APL font in a Windows environment, then Fontware have the rudiments of what is necessary and the knowledge to build something much better. I think all they need is a decent specification and a paying customer.

George MacLeod,
Impetus Ltd

Ed: See Vector 7.1, July 1990, pp 96-107 for Adrian Smith’s PostScript solution, and APL Quote Quad Vol 20, No. 3, March 1990, for Rex Swain’s Microsoft Word 5 solution.