sears@sun.UUCP (Daniel Sears) (06/20/87)
Hi,
Does anyone on this list know where to get a PostScript version
of Knuth's Computer Modern fonts?
Daniel Sears Sun Microsystems, Inc.
(415) 691-7435 2550 Garcia Avenue
sears@sun.com Mountain View, CA 94043Southall.pa@XEROX.COM (06/30/87)
Hello! There is, in principle at least, a way of making your own PostScript versions of Computer Modern fonts. If you set tracingchoices:=1 in the driver program when you run Metafont on the CM font files, the log file will show the character path specifications in terms of the knots and control points of a set of Bezier splines. (Actually it shows the specifications twice, once 'before choices' and once 'after choices'.) Editing by hand (as I did) or with a clever editor script (for cleverer people) can then turn the log file into PostScript code, which you can then use as a user-defined font (section 5.7 of the PostScript reference manual). Caveats: 1) I haven't actually done this with Computer Modern as such, but only with one or two characters from my own design, which uses a different set of macros from Computer Modern. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work with CM, though. 2) What you *don't* get with this approach is Adobe's proprietary 'font magic', which looks after the preservation of character features when their own character shape descriptions are digitized at low and medium resolutions. So with marking-engine resolutions of less than 1000/inch or so, the results of the Metafont- to-PostScript conversion will be less satisfactory in text sizes (12 pt nominal size or smaller, say) than pixel files produced with Metafont's own digitizing algorithm. Good luck! Richard Southall