13501DRJ@MSU.BITNET (12/22/90)
Can anyone tell me of a method of converting Macintosh Adobe Type 1 fonts to IBM PC type 1 fonts. Some of the Mac fonts have accompanying .AFM files, and some don't, although ATM 2.0 for Mac doesn't seem to care, whereas the IBM version of ATM requires both .PFB (the outlines) and .PFM (the metrics which I assume are like the .AFM Mac files, but in entirely different form). Is there any software out there able to do the conversion? The only thing I've tried so far is running the Mac fonts through Un-Adobe and converting them with Corel Draw 1.21b, but corel chokes with a message That the font cannot be converted correctly... Any help would be appreciated...
asmith@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Adam Smith) (12/23/90)
13501DRJ@MSU.BITNET writes: > Can anyone tell me of a method of converting Macintosh Adobe Type 1 fonts > to IBM PC type 1 fonts. Some of the Mac fonts have accompanying .AFM files, > and some don't, although ATM 2.0 for Mac doesn't seem to care, whereas > the IBM version of ATM requires both .PFB (the outlines) and .PFM (the metric > which I assume are like the .AFM Mac files, but in entirely different form). > Is there any software out there able to do the conversion? > > The only thing I've tried so far is running the Mac fonts through Un-Adobe > and converting them with Corel Draw 1.21b, but corel chokes with a message > That the font cannot be converted correctly... > AHA! A chance to show off how smart I am! I was wondering precisely the same thing recently. I have a large library of Mac Adobe fonts but had failed in previous attempts to convert them the same way you did. Here is the step you are missing... When you convert the fonts using UnAdobe, a bunch of CR/LFs are dropped into the file. Open it in MS Word on the Mac (couldn't achieve the same thing with Word for Windows) and get to the part after the first opening comments, etc. At a certain point the data will change from readable PostScript code into a LONG string of ASCII characters with no spaces anywhere. Select all of this data and do a search and destroy (replace) to replace the carriage returns (^p) with nothing. Save the file as text and port over to the IBM. WFNBOSS (and a number of other progs) seem to get hung up on all of those CR/LFs, take em out and it runs like a charm. Make sure you leave the opening part alone though. For a quick check on how it is supposed to look, have a poke at an IBM PostScript font--the long ASCII bit is in binary/machine code, but the first part will be readable. Muck around a bit and you are sure to get it right. I tried this with the new "BunndesPi One" font. It converted using WFNBOSS into a Corel font without incident (except for telling me that there was no kerning data, not too surprising from a symbol font like BunndesPi). It displayed and printed fine from CDraw. I then took the WFN file and converted that into a Type 1. It created a .PFB and .PFM file smoothly and ATM for Windows diplayed the font perfectly. I d/led the font to a QMS and printed a sample page. This is a HUGELY roundabout way of moving an ostensibly "device independent" format from platform to platform, but until Adobe (or someone else) comes up with a smoother methods, it does at least seem to work. I have only tried this once (last night) so I don't know if there will be problems when I try with other fonts. I intend to spend a good deal of thje XMas days finding out. But after months of trying various things, it sure looks promising. Two more points... I haven't yet tested the validity of the theory, but I assume that the PostScript font name imbedded in the font (the one that the printer uses to tell one font from another) ought to remain intact through this process. The practical upshot of this being that even if the fonts that are created using WFNBOSS are not terribly well hinted (if at all), pulling the "all fonts resident" trick ought to bring the real, original font into the page when it is sent to an imagesetter. The moral here, as it always is, is download your fonts ahead of time and know how to edit your win.ini file. Another thing. One test I haven't run is to try to substitute the font brought over from the mac for the WFNBBOSS created version. i.e. the WFNBOSS font is fourth generation (mac/unadobe/wfn/pfb)--so if you substitute the font originally brought over from the Mac before it was WFNed, the quality may be better. I'll have to see. This will also confirm whether or not the font name remains intact. So there you have it. If you have any questions or problems, I'd be hapopy to take a stab at answering them. If you have tried this method and have discovered something that I haven't come across, I'd be VERY interested in knowing about it. cheers adam ======================================================================== Adam Smith Genius - Graphic Artist - Bad Mood Guy The Chameleon Papers Vancouver, BC CANADA "I'd give my eyeteeth to have a Macintosh--unfortunately, due to Apple's pricing policies, that's not enough" ========================================================================