Background
Apple intended to bring resolution-independent graphics, type, and printing to the desktop with QuickDraw GX. As a graphic designer turned product manager, I was excited by what QuickDraw GX offered. A large part of my job was to bring a real user’s perspective to product definition and development.
The job
QuickDraw GX was an extensive graphics developer API and offered little direct end-user benefits. GX did offer the first desktop printer interface for the Macintosh and I positioned GX as an enhanced output feature of the System 7.5 release. But my efforts were focused primarily on developer adoption and possible cross-platform licensing. The advanced type capabilities of GX made it ideal for markets that relied on double-byte fonts (e.g. Japan, China, and India). I worked as a dotted-line member of the Apple Pacific marketing team to develop GX-based DTP solutions for these markets. |
 |
 |
 |
Hoefler and Verdana GX fonts displayed additional characters and features (e.g. auto ligatures) when used in GX applications.
|
|
|
In many ways GX was a superior imaging model to Adobe PostScript. Many GX features have since found their way into QuickTime and other graphics subsystems of the current Mac OS.
|
