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Incubator Pro for Font Mangling



Author: Casey Meaden
Date: August, 1993
Keywords: software utility review ATM truetype type solutions fonts program
Text: Have you ever wished you could gain a little more control over your fonts? Buying new fonts can be an expensive propostition. Well, I've come across a program that can help. With Incubator Pro v2.01 from Type Solutions, Inc. You can take your present TrueType or PostScript fonts and give them new life. For instance, I had been look- ing for a new headline san serif typeface but was reluctant to shell out the cash. With Incubator Pro I tweaked my Adobe Vag Rounded Bold font into something different, (seen at the top of the page.) I gave it a slight backslant; increased the tracking, because I wanted to use it as large headline type; decreased the "color", which means how light or bold the type appears; decreased the x-height, which is the relationship of the lower case letters to the capital letters; increased the descenders, which is the distance the g hangs down in the example above; and decreased the width, which affects the width of each letter and the spaces between them. Emboldened, I went on to create a lighter version of the Adobe serif font Bodoni-Poster (seen at the bottom of the page.) Incubator Pro (IP) has some good hints in their manual for readabiltiy and usefulness of new fonts. You can get too extreme in manipulating a font, so that it is illegible if not downright ugly. IP has a standard and advanced mode. Advanced mode creates fonts that are pretty extreme in their characteristics; use with artistic caution! Luckily, there are ''revert'' buttons on each characteristic so you can get back where you started when you go too far! The standard mode limits the range of change for each characteristic to help us non-typographers remain tasteful and legible. When a font is first loaded for manipulating, IP translates the characteristics of a given Type 1 PostScript font and displays the font width and kerning information numerically in boxes to the right of each characteristic at the right of its slider bar. (These are the Adobe Font Information files or .afm.) IP can apply the metrics data contained in an .afm file to any TrueType font with its ExactMatch feature. By using ExactMatch, you can create your own metric width files for your TrueType or PostScript fonts. This is possibly the most commercially important aspect of the program. By entering the .ATM numbers of a True Type font you don't have in your system, you can trick another font into fitting exactly the same space in a layout without losing your word spaces, line breaks and special kerning. You can now view the layout in several different fonts with no change in the space occupied by the text. IP comes with a very good manual including a brief text tutorial. The user interface is transparently simple. I had some problems running this program. The program is very limited as to which fonts it will accept for manipulation and even if a font is listed in its pulldown menu things can get pretty hinky from there. I tried accessing one PostScript Type 1 shareware font that caused IP to promptly return a dialog box saying I needed more memory; IP next gave me a dialog box informing me it was going to quit. It did. I gave it 9 megs of RAM in its get info box, but that didn't take care of the problem. Occasionally I accessed the program's Help screen only to have the screen go blank and the computer freeze. Other times it would work fine. If this was an INIT conflict I couldn't resolve it. I should also warn potential fontographers to be prepared to take a coffee break during the time the program is actually creating the Outline and Bitmap Files. It took 11 minutes on a Mac IIci. Plan lunch around this program if you're running anything slower. All in all, if you don't want to do anything too radical in the way of changing a font, and you don't have your heart set on changing one particular typeface, you're going to have fun mangling fonts with Incubator Pro. On second thought, I think I'd better go back and decrease the slant on that font up there before it falls off the page. IP requires a MacPlus or later, 1500 Kbytes free memory, System 7.0 or 7.1, System 6.0.5 or later with Apple TrueType INIT. Available from Type Solutions, 91 Plaistow Road, P. O. Box 1227, Plaistow, New Hamshire 03865-1227 603-382-6400 List price $129.95

Copyright © august, 1993 by Casey Meaden


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