To understand why ATM is no longer supported, you need to understand the history of the product and its original purpose going back to 1989 and the
Font Wars between Adobe on one side, with its Type 1 font technology from PostScript, and a coalition of Apple and Microsoft on the other side with their TrueType font technology developed by Apple but liberally "borrowed" from Imagen, a laser printer company from the 1980s.
The first version of ATM for Macintosh was released in December 1989 strictly to allow host-based copies of Type 1 fonts to be rendered "on-the-fly" for the screen as opposed to the user having to install bitmap versions of such fonts tuned to a particular screen resolution and point size. The Windows version followed within a year or so. Effectively, ATM blunted an attempt by both Apple and Microsoft to put Adobe out of business by locking Type 1 fonts out of the desktop. ATM allowed use of fully-scalable Type 1 technology on both Macintosh and Windows before TrueType was actually available for either Macintosh or Windows. This unholy alliance of Apple and Microsoft also pushed a Microsoft-provided clone of PostScript, TrueImage, licensed from Cal Bauer (that's a separate story but needless to say, that CloneScript was really poor and failed very quickly; Apple came running back to Adobe for Adobe PostScript for their new LaserWriters without ever actually releasing a product based on Microsoft's TrueImage).
Subsequently, Adobe released its Multiple Master variant of Type 1 fonts that provided the facility to vary weights, widths, and other aspects of fonts, generating custom "instances" of fonts to better match the designer's needs. ATM was used to control the building and installation of Multiple Master instances.
Over the years, two additional functions were added to ATM. The more recent was support for OpenType CFF fonts (i.e., OpenType fonts with Type 1 outlines) and in the "Deluxe" version of ATM, a very rudimentary font manager.
Over the years, i.e. by the time Windows 2000 and MacOS X shipped, there original raison d'etre for ATM was gone given that beginning with these OS versions, Type 1 and OpenType CFF font support was now native within the operating system based on Apple and Microsoft individually integrating Adobe code into the operating system. The only purpose left for ATM under Windows 2000 and Windows XP was to support creation and installation of Multiple Master font instances. Given that Adobe stopped developing new Multiple Master fonts back in the late 1990s and shortly thereafter stopped licensing them, the need for Multiple Master support outside of Adobe's applications themselves (which still support existing Multiple Master instances, either those primary instances delivered with the fonts or user-created instances) diminished to next to nothing.
The only function left to ATM was that of
font management, historically the weakest aspect of ATM Deluxe.
Adobe then had to make a decision in terms of the future of ATM. The bottom line was that given the relatively weak font management capabilities of ATM Deluxe - it provided no auto-activation, was based on very ancient code that was incompatible with new OS versions, and was fairly incompatible with Adobe's new applications, Adobe had to measure the cost of developing, marketing, and supporting an advanced, new generation font management program competitive with other products already out in the marketplace performing similar functions. Simply stated, the decision made at the time was that (a) given the cost of developing, marketing, and supporting a new, industrial strength font manager, (b) given existing reasonable quality font managers available from third parties that seemed to meet the market's need, and (c) given what users were actually willing to pay for such software, it was not worth Adobe making the necessary investment to create a "next generation" ATM.
Could that decision be re-evaluated some day? Maybe although it is unlikely that such a re-evaluation will yield a different decision! But for the time being, Adobe Type Manager is a product that is no longer marketed or supported.
Can you coerce ATM Lite or ATM Deluxe to install on 32-bit Windows Vista? Probably. Will it run on Vista? Possibly although we have heard mixed reports and Adobe won't support you if you mess up your system trying to use it. 64-bit Windows (both XP and Vista) is a different story. The ATM installer is a 16-bit program that simply won't run on these 64-bit systems (same is true with the old
Adobe Universal PostScript Printer Driver Installer). Can the ATM code itself run - Andy Engelkemier claims it does, but don't count on it properly interfacing with Adobe Creative Suite applications properly or respecting the multiple user environment. Given that other fairly competent font manager software is readily available at reasonable cost, you should carefully evaluate the value of your time continuing to run an ancient, unsupported, low functionality font manager with no future versus migrating to products are still being developed and supported by their developers.
- Dov
- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)