Ph¾drus

¥11 November 1991-original release

Ph¾drus is one of a series of complimentary ProtoTypeª from phi*JaMaCon associates. In creating commercial fonts, there are many prototypes made, some of which are useful in their own right. Each ProtoTypeª  release as of 21 April 1991 contains Type 1 hinted (usually) laser fonts along with the TrueTypeª equivalents.

To use any ProtoTypeª Type 1 font, copy the laser font to your System Folder, and install the screen fonts either in your System file with Font/DA Mover 3.8 or higher, or use MasterJugglerª or Suitcaseª to install them. To install any ProtoTypeª TrueTypeª font, copy the suitcase with extension (TT) to your system file with FONT/DA Mover 4.1 or above, or use Suitcaseª version 1.2.11 or above. If you like the font, please feel free to use and distribute them. You are not allowed to modify them in any way; for example, you are not allowed to use Metamorphosis or Font Monger to create editable files. Furthermore, phi*JaMaCon associates retains all current and future commercial rights and other rights for all distributed ProtoTypeª.


Ph¾drus is a text font, in somewhat of an old style. If you follow Adobe, you may have seen that in recent months, they have released a number of originals, all of which have old rendering, as in Utopia, Adobe Garamond, Minion and Caslon. Those old styles have a lot to study; this is phi*Jamacon's first attempt in the area. This font was originally name Ph¾dra, a name I pulled out of the air. Of course, in the dictionary, Ph¾dra was one of those Greek goddesses that fell in love with her stepson, and then killed herselfÉ not a good name. Ph¾drus, which is next in the dictionary, is a reputed fabulist of the 1st century. You know, fabulist, as in ®sop's fables. At any rate, both the Poscript and Truetype versions have 10, 11 and 12 point bitmaps, as these are the most useful sizes.

Ph¾drus was created in Fontstudio 2.0 from outlines first created in Fontographer 2.x and 3.x. At this point in time (11 Nov 91), Fontstudio feels to me to be a somewhat better overall program with outstanding documentation, but it is quite slow compared to Fontographer. And it has a tendency to crash at not very nice moments, which Fontographer never does. Most font makers will need both.

Some notes on TrueTypeª. Older Apple LaserWriters donÕt have enough memory to use the TrueType scaler. The Apple print driver will then create a Type1 unhinted Postscript font and download that to the printer. For some ProtoTypeª, nonhinting gives very uneven stems; in that case use the Postscript fonts along with the bitmaps with the (PS) designation. (Bummer, I have an old Laserwriter myself). If you try to use the Truetype suitcase and just drop the Postscript font in your system file, the Fontstudio created Truetype does NOT point to it at all, and so will not recognize it. In contrast, Fontographer created Truetype fonts, do in fact point to the postscript file, and so will recognize it by itself. It gets even more complicated, but that's another story.

Credits go to Altsys and Earl Allen for their outstanding support of Fontographer, Metamorphosis etc, to Letraset for Fontstudio 2.0, and of course to Connie, who puts up with all this nonsense.

Phil Noguchi
phi*JaMaCon associates
5110 Viking Road
Bethesda, MD  20814-5711