OpenType Glyphs

I recently attempted to use a letter variant of the Zapfino font. Could not access it in Photoshop but was able to do so in Text Edit and InDesign.

1. Adobe uses no system level services for Unicode imaging and ICC imaging either on the Apple platform or on the Microsoft platform.

2. Adobe has different implementations for Unicode imaging in different applications, thus Photoshop's implementation is different from InDesign's.

The difference between Apple models and Adobe models was summed up by a past Colour and Imaging Product Manager as a matter of whether one wants the smarts in the transform (the font and the profile, Apple's model and the ICC model), in the application (Adobe's and Microsoft's model), or in the system (Microsoft's model also cf Uniscribe).

Microsoft abandoned the International Colour Consortium over the locus of the transformation logic and has recently returned. In the original application-independent approach, specialised and easy to use applications would work with specialised and easy to use automatic graphic appearance adjustments.

In the static desktop world of the 1990s, the software suite won as application model, but the software suite as application model is now not the sole solution. Again, it's not that one application model is good and the other application model is bad - a difference is not a deficiency. That said, there is an issue of how transform models and technology markets play together.

/hh