My college buddy Jen turns 29 years old tomorrow. She’s also hugely pregnant. Which has nothing to do with anything, except that I really want to know when the due date is. I can’t find it on her journal, so maybe if I mention it in an annoying way here she’ll tell me. 
Anyway, happy birthday! Have I mentioned that I might be in the Tucson area in the near future?
Graphic designers, rejoice!
Among a slew of other features included in the May beta release of Avalon (the Longhorn graphics layer) is support for Adobe CFF. This extension to the OpenType font specification should provide system-wide support for advanced typography features such as ligatures, glyph substitution, multiple baselines, and contextual kerning in Avalon-based programs. You will, of course, have to have some CFF fonts on hand for all this magic to happen.
This is an area where Microsoft is playing catch-up to Apple, and it’s a badly-needed improvement for serious design work. Too bad we’ll have to wait until 2006 or later to get it.
Microsoft has launched a new section of its web site targeted specifically at professional and advanced amateur photographers, and has released a free download for Windows XP that adds RAW image thumnailing and viewing to the company’s flagship operating system. After years of playing second fiddle to Apple in the digital imaging arena, it looks like Redmond is gearing up to give Cupertino a run for its money in that market.
The pro photography home page is about what you’d expect. It contains several informative articles that will be especially useful for advanced photographers that are just making the move from film to digital, or for Macintosh- and Linux-using digital photographers that are trying to get their heads around how things work in Windows. There are several articles on color management, including monitor and scanner profiling and a color space tutorial. Other pieces cover shooting landscapes digitally, choosing the best hardware and software, rescuing photos from damaged memory cards, digital workflow, digital print permanence, and even Photoshop actions.
The RAW tool is an interesting exercise in both compromise and restraint for Microsoft. Here’s how they describe it in the white paper that’s offered alongside the download: (more…)
