Re: Font Puzzle?

[Bill North <north@spso.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

In article <tonys-2809941715590001@dialup-22.mpx.com.au>
Tony Stevenson, tonys@jolt.mpx.com.au writes:
>I am trying to settle a debate between myself and an Apple II aficionado.
>My position is that the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 heralded a
>bold new wave of fonts and the ability to have typefaces that mimicked
>newspaper proportional fonts such as New York and Geneva. He disagrees and
>says that Apple IIs were able to do this before the Macintosh even
>existed.
[...]
>Don't get us wrong this is a friendly debate but it worries me that my
>recollection of the Macintosh and what preceded it could be faulty. I know
>that Print Shop offered large poster like fonts but was there a
>word-processor for the Apple II which offered Macintosh like fonts before
>the Macintosh even existed?

The answer depends on the definition of your question.
The mac was the first _integrated_ wysiwyg system widely
available. There were many partial "Apple2 beat mac" answers,
and maybe one definite that I can't confirm as I never used it.
For example, does "newspaper output" count if it was not wysiwyg
on the screen? There were many programs that let you put fancy
fonts either on screen or in print.

I won't dare attempt to put dates on these:

Timeout superfonts prints appleworks files with fancy fonts.

Beagle bros published an Imagewriter utility that let you
download new (and proportional) fonts to print with.

Publish It! was a wysiwyg page layout program.

The complete graphics system let you define fonts (?).

Beagle bros published an on-screen font editing/displaying
system, and sold extra font disks.

The Applesoft tool kit included an on-screen font editing/
displaying system (animatrix).

And the one definite (?):
Gutenburg (and Gutenburg Jr?) may have been a full wysiwyg word
processor before the mac existed. Anyone remember?

/*  Bill North -- north@spso.gsfc.nasa.gov  */