Adobe's Finally the Managing Type

ATM Deluxe 4.0 manages all your fonts -- even TrueType -- in versions for Windows 95, NT 4.0, and the Mac.

Russell Kay

What's in a name? Though always called Adobe Type Manager, ATM never did much managing; it merely installed and rasterized on-screen the Type 1 (T1) fonts originally designed for PostScript devices. When Windows 3.0 introduced TrueType (TT) to the mass market, Adobe responded with a new ATM. The world was stuck with two formats.

Adobe and Microsoft are now working together on a new font format, OpenType, that will combine TT and T1 in a character-rich superset. But that's for the future. Right now, we've got the new ATM Deluxe 4.0 , which handles both formats and introduces welcome new capabiliti es.

First, ATM knows about TT fonts. You install and activate them as if they were T1 fonts. Second, Adobe has finally put the manager into ATM. You define sets of fonts, using drag-and-drop editing, and activate only those sets or specific fonts you wish, thus considerably reducing the drain on system resources.

Other fonts are easily activated when you need them -- even automatically. ATM font sets (but not the fonts themselves) are exportable to other systems and platforms, which will greatly simplify font management and graphics standardization in many large organizations.

You can easily see what a font looks like on-screen, print sample pages and one-line listings, and create new instances of multiple-master type fonts. And ATM now enables antialiasing for better-looking letters (see the sidebar "You Old Smoothie, You").

Finally, you get a complete database of Adobe font metrics. When a document calls for a font you don't have, ATM creates a substitute font (appli cation permitting) and displays it in the exact letter widths, so line breaks won't change. The Windows NT version lacks this feature.

In BYTE's tests of the Windows 95 beta 8, ATM installed and ran easily, presenting no particular problems. It came up and loaded all the active fonts, incorporating them into a Starter set. When we had ATM search the system's hard drives, it quickly found all our additional fonts and added them to its master list. And it added new fonts considerably faster than ATM 3.0.2 could.

ATM Deluxe 4.0 debuts as a Win 95 CD, to be followed by a Mac/Power Mac version and, at year's end, the first-ever ATM for NT 4.0. NT users must now convert T1 fonts to TT for on-screen display.

ATM has really come into its own, and it's fast and friendly, to boot.

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Product Information

Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.0.................$99.95 

(Requirements: Windows 95 and Mac: 8 MB of RAM and 8 MB
 
of disk space; NT 4.0: 16 MB of RAM and 4 MB of disk space)
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Mountain View, CA
Phone:    (415) 961-4400
Fax:      (415) 961-3769
Internet: 
http://www.adobe.com

Circle 976 on Inquiry Card.

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Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.0

screen_link (47 Kbytes)

Multiple font types can coexist in a single font set, and you can activate them individually or as an entire set.

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Russell Kay is a BYTE technical editor. You can reach him at russellk@bix.com .