mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. Callaghan) (04/04/91)
I NEED THIS INFO FAST, PLEASE! I have a graphics job to do in one day! The client is supplying me with a Type 1 font in IBM format. He needs me to set it on paper, then print it. Apparently, the person has NO computer experience at all. OK...I have an 040 NeXTCube and a 286 AT-Clone. The NeXT is attached to a NeXT printer, the 286 to an Okidata 9-pin (no help). Data transfer between the two machines will be via serial cable (no ethernet terminators!). The NeXT requires a simple ASCII file for the outline font, and a standard ASCII AFM file. My understanding is that I'll have to do some weird things to make this work. Question: Do I try to find an IBM that will save a plain PostScript file to disk, then upload it to the NeXT, or do I attempt to convert the font to the NeXT and do the work there? I have no experience with any PC graphics packages, and I have no access to Windows or WordPerfect. Please respond quickly, as this is due at the printer's by Friday morning. Aren't customers wonderful? ;-) Thanks! -- MikeC _________________________________________________________ Michael D. Callaghan, MDC Designs, University of Maryland mikec@wam.umd.edu
mathmyka@tpki.toppoint.de (Mathias Myka) (04/09/91)
mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. Callaghan) writes: >I NEED THIS INFO FAST, PLEASE! >OK...I have an 040 NeXTCube and a 286 AT-Clone. The NeXT is >attached to a NeXT printer, the 286 to an Okidata 9-pin (no help). >Data transfer between the two machines will be via serial cable >(no ethernet terminators!). >The NeXT requires a simple ASCII file for the outline font, and >a standard ASCII AFM file. My understanding is that I'll have to >do some weird things to make this work. You can, in fact, transfer PC Postscript fonts to the NeXT. I have tried it, it works, but I still have one annoying problem with it. The necessary steps seem to be (NeXT OS Version 2.0): 1) Create a postscript file containing the font definition. This can be done on the PC with Adobe's PCSEND utility. 2) The resulting file contains ASCII hexadecimal data in lines (records) of 128 characters. The NeXT doesn't seem to like these. So you need a short program to change the record length to 64. 4) Remove the "serverdict begin..." at the beginning of the font file. 5) Change the resulting text file to UNIX format by stripping all CR (ASCII 0DH) characters. Do the same with the AFM file. 6) Transfer the font and AFM files to the NeXT. (the easiest way to do this is via 3 1/2" disks). Login as root. 7) In "/LocalLibrary/Fonts", create a folder "<fontname>.font" for each font you want to install. The correct font name can be found in the font file - there is a line /fontname /<fontname> readonly def This step is definitely different if you still have a '030 cube and OS 1.0, because the directory structure was changed in 2.0. 8) Copy the font and AFM files to the newly created folder. Rename them to <fontname> and <fontname>.afm, respectively. 9) From the cshell, enter: buildafmdir /LocalLibrary/Fonts This command updates the font directory. The fonts can now be used and should appear in the font panel of your applications. But... there is a problem that I could not solve: if you select such a font for the first time after you started your system, then the preview will show Courier or Helvetica. Some applications, e.g. WriteNow, will even terminate/crash. If you find out how to solve this problem, please let me know (or, even better, give a report in comp.sys.next or comp.lang.postscript). ----------------+--------------------------------+--------------- Mathias Myka | I have to _pay_ for incoming | "It's never 8940 Memmingen | international mail. So, please | too late to F.R. of Germany | keep your answers short. | have a happy | Thank you ! | childhood." ---EMail: mathmyka@tpki.toppoint.de [...!unido!tpki!mathmyka]----