A recent piece on upgrades brought a slew of pro and con responses.
(#94 was too searing to publish in the Design Center and had to be moved over to
The User Group Network at http://www.user-groups.net/ugnetwork/60-second/
This month we revisit #88 with yet another hot potato

#95 If it ain't broke (revisited)

Isn't it great how each year we get all these new toys to play with??? Here comes the Windows 98 Beta, and one store reports selling 600 boxes in two hours. Hey...pretty fat. Reports abound of long waiting lines and shoppers buying several boxes just so they can resell them for a profit when the store runs out. Hmmmmm. Software commodities?
__ Then the news of the Adobe/Microsoft alliance to bring out the OpenType File (OTF) format... and haven't I said all along that those guys are in bed together?
__ Already the media's fonts soothsayers are beginning to have a heyday about the new strategy that Apple has announced in OS8.5. The change will be good for the software industry, the font industry, the book industry (...a new slew of OTF For Dummies books, right?), and the media as well. Gosh, in another six months we'll all be able to buy several new plug-ins to make our old fonts work correctly, a new font rasterizer from Adobe to force their fonts to work under the new architecture, and probably upgrades to all our favorite DTP and drawing programs to comply with the new Unicode standard. Oh yes, and a new ATM, a new SuitCase and who knows what else. See, it's already good for me. Now I have something new to complain about.
__ That won't hurt much, and we know you'll all enjoy replacing your rusty old Type 1 fonts with the newer and more snazzy OTF ones that Adobe is fixing up for you. It's wonderful. I'll be able to add yet another Avant Garde and Goudy to the four formats I've had over the years and STILL not get what Herb and Fred had in mind. But wait... there's more: not one new OTF format but TWO... count'em TWO! Yes, a new OTF for Type 1 and a new OTF for TrueType! So you'll be able to replace all your fonts with new ones.
__ Seriously, what'll you do when the new font format comes along? We've been asking designers how they feel about changes like this and would like to know where you stand on the concept of replacing standards: are you using ATM 4.0 yet? Are you postscript only? Got some TrueTypes in there somewhere?
__ One design firm recently lamented.... "We haven't upgraded to half the new releases yet just because we know it will bring our systems to their knees when we do." Another expresses concern: "Every time we update something that uses the ATM Font Database it screws something else up on the system. We were down for two days when we tried to upgrade Dimensions!" Another quotes the old adage: "... for now our system works and works well. Since it's not broken we're not going to fix it!" This one sort of wraps it up with: "I've got more important things to do than stuff the industry's pockets with our money. "
__ I realize that change is good, and that new stuff is always fun. But sometimes it's just not worth the cost. Let's see what happens next.

Fred

PS: Please write and let us know what you think about fixing things that aren't broken.

Fred Showker is director of The Design & Publishing Center on the web at http://www.graphic-design.com/, and is a co-founder of both The User Group Forum on America Online, and The User Group Network at http://www.user-groups.net/. He has been a user group activist and supporter since 1984.

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60-Second Windowô is a syndicated column by Fred Showker which appears in various monthly news services and many Macintosh User Group Newsletters around the world, and other computer, graphic arts related publications. 60-Second Window is copyright ©1986 - 1998, All Rights Reserved.

Fred Showker, nationally recognized designer author and speaker, is a 25-year veteran of the graphics industry, with his own firm Showker Graphic Arts & Design. Heís an associate editor for the Mug News Service (MNS) as well as Home & School Mac. You can see Fred in action at any of his Design & Graphics workshops around the country sponsored by Dynamic Graphics Educational Foundation, InHouse Graphics, PrintFest and others. You can chat with him directly on America OnLine, where he is ìAFA Shwkrî, a forum assistant in the User Group Forum (UGF), or in eWorld as co-host of the WORKING SOLO forum.
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