Font wish list

A long time ago, Mac's and PC's were different companies, different
philosophies, different everything so each did it's own thing and the world just
had to cope. Nowadays most people (companies, artists, etc.) see the wisdom of
cross communication, via equipment or personal styles not being problematic.

I wish someone could develop fonts that work on "everything". Within
the program, outputing to Desktop printers, outputing to Printing companies and
Service Bureaus, ...everything. Type companies just sold new "styles"
and people interested in the new styles would purchase them and add them to
their collection of fonts. If there was some way these fonts, when used, could
become automatically embedded so there would be no need to send fonts as was
traditionally done. All changes would just come back to the designer for
modification (and extra income). I know OTF are a step, but I'm talking about a
giant leap into this realm.

But what about all the various RIP's and mechanics already in existence that
need specific font structures now??? Well, someone (like Adobe) can manufacture
a plug-in (for lack of a better word) or device of some kind that can
effectively allow current machinery to accept this concept. Or... just start
doing it and older equipment soon goes the way of most dinosaurs and the world
moves on.

OpenType does everything except the automatic embedding. With regards to that,
it has little to do with the fonts themselves, but rather is on the side of the
applications using them. (Though, depending on how it's supposed to work, it
might require that the fonts are set for "editable embedding," which
most type vendors other than Adobe avoid like the plague.)

The interesting extra wrinkle is that you want the application files to become
editable-only-by-the-original-creator. I think that concept offers a lot of
challenges to existing workflows, and it's not clear how they might be
addressed.

Regards,