[comp.fonts] Mac --> NeXT Font Solutions

mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. Callaghan) (01/21/91)

OK...Before I get too many more requests, here's how I made my Type 1 
PostScript Fonts from my Mac work on the NeXT: (well, most of them work)

========================================================================
DISCLAIMER: You are ultimately responsible for your own actions. I take
no responsibility for anyone who might decide to use these fonts on more
than one machine, in violation of Adobe's licensing agreement.
========================================================================

Before I get into the hows, let me tell you what you need.

	A page layout program or similar that can print PostScript
	to disk. I used PageMaker 4.0.

	A word processor that can save in TEXT-ONLY mode. I used MS Word 4.0.

	Some way of transferring the TEXT files from the Mac to the NeXT.
	I used Apple File Exchange, to convert the Mac TEXT files to an
	IBM format. Then I put the IBM disk in my AT, and ftp'ed to the
	Cube. That was the fast way to do it. Kermit or such should do the
	job just fine. 


OK...Now that you have all this, and think you can continue, read on...
I'm going to assume that you are using PageMaker 4.0 and Word 4.0. Sorry.

Open a New Document in PM. Select the TEXT tool. Type a word. I typed in
the name of the font I was going to use. Select the text you just typed,
and change the font with the font menu.

Continue to do so with each font you have, other than the ones that come
with the NeXT (Courier, Helvetica, Symbol, and Times families). Make sure 
that you get every version of the typeface available (AvantGarde-Demi, 
AvantGarde-BookOblique, AvangGarde-DemiOblique, AvantGarde-Book --- You
get the idea). The NeXT will automatically separate the type families from
the type weights, and organze them for you just like Adobe Type Reunion on
the Mac.

Now you should have a whole bunch of lines, each one in a different typeface.
Save the document (you never know!). Now Print from the File menu. In the
Print Dialog box, make sure you tell PM to print to a printer that you do
not have attached to your computer. That is, don't choose Laserwriter or
General. I told it a Linotronic. That brings up another point: You must
have Laserwriter chosen from the Chooser. Otherwise, Pagemaker, and I assume
most other programs, won't have the PostScript option available for printing.
Whether or not you really have a PS printer is academic at this point. You
won't be printing anything. 

OK...Now you have to tell the program to print the file to disk. IN PM, you
click on the PostScript button. Deselect EVERYTHING you see EXCEPT Print
PostScript to Disk and Download Postscript Fonts.

Give the 'Print to disk' file a name. Call it bunchafonts or something.

Go ahead and print. Your hard drive should whirr for a while, then stop.

Now exit this program and start your Word Processor. Open the file that
you just printed to disk. You will see a very, very, very long document
containing a mess of PostScript code. Here comes the fun part.

Somewhere in all that mess, are the lines 
	%%Begin Font
	and
	%%End Font

Guess what's in between those lines...That's right! Your font. The Begin
font comment should also contain the full name of the font, so you don't
really have to remember which order you printed them. Open a new window,
and copy all the lines between the Begin Font and End Font comments into
the new document. Save the new document, with the FULL NAME of the font.
This will save you grief later. If you're using Word 4.0, make sure you
use SAVE AS, and save as TEXT ONLY, not TEXT ONLY w/LINE BREAKS.

Once you've done this with all your fonts, you're ready to transfer the
files to the NeXT. Do this however you can.

Once the fonts are on the NeXT, you face the most fun problem of them all.
The end of line charater on the Mac is ASCII(13) (CR or ^M). On the NeXT,
it's ASCII(10) (LF or ^J). If you used filters when you transferred the
files, you may have been able to convert CRs to LFs. If you used an IBM
filter, as I did, it converted CRs to CR/LF combinations. 

Whatever happened, you now have to get rid of all CRs in the files, and 
replace them with LFs, assuming they're not already there. I have a program
a friend of mine wrote that will do this.

OK...You now have a whole bunch of text files. Now you have to get Adobe
to send you the corresponding AFMFiles. This is easy. Here's an example
for getting AvantGarde typefaces from Adobe.

mail ps-file-server@adobe.com
SUBJECT: send AFMFiles AvantGarde-Book
send AFMFiles AvantGarde-BookOblique
send AFMFiles AvantGarde-Demi
send AFMFiles AvantGarde-DemiOblique
^D
cc:

This will tell the adobe file server that you want the above AFM files. 
You have to do this for each typeface you want to use. I suggest doing 
the requests separately for each typeface, as the file the server sends
back will be pretty long if there are too many requests. 

The file the server mails back to you will be in the form of a shell 
archive. You just strip out the mail header, and issue a sh filename
command from a shell window on the NeXT. 

Copy the shell archive into your /LocalLibrary/Fonts/afm directory.
Copy the fonts you got from the Mac into the /LocalLibrary/Fonts/outline
directory. 
Unpack the shell archive using the /bin/sh 'filename' command.
You may have one more problem left. The afm files I got from Adobe
had the CRs in it. I had to run my little program on all the files
once again. 

Now, you should have two directories full of text files. The afm and
the outline directories. Now cd to the /LocalLibrary/Fonts directory,
and issue the following command:

buildafmdir .

This will tell the NeXT to make its own directory for the new fonts.

If you make it through all this without an error, most of your fonts
should work. I still have three that do not. 

If there are any specific questions, or you need the program, let me
know.


MikeC
 
PS: Anyone out there from Adobe know if Normal PS Bitmapped fonts will 
work as NeXT screen fonts? These outline fonts look pretty bad on the
NeXT monitor.



--
___________________________________________________
Michael D. Callaghan,MDC Designs, University of Merryland
mikec@wam.umd.edu

craigf@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (Craig Federighi) (01/31/91)

In his posting on this subject, Michael D. Callaghan proposed editing a
Postscript output file for a document containing usages of the desired
fonts in order to get at the outline information.

It turns out that there's a handy little program to directly translate
postscript fonts on the Mac to the NeXT that makes this much easier.

Here's a little explanation from its README file:
-----
	"Can I use Adobe postscript fonts I purchased for the
	Mac and port them over to the cube, and if so, how?

	The answer to this question is, in practice, no."
					-- NeXT Answers, Apr '90

But now you can, very easily with this program!

Entitled "mfrc", for Macintosh Font Resource Converter, it takes
Type 1 PostScript fonts and produces a version usable by the NeXT.
(The fonts must have the accompanying AFM [Adobe Font Metric] file
for it to be recognized by the cube.)

The font can be transferred from the Macintosh to the NeXT by
whatever means available; "mfrc" understands the MacBinary format.
The quickest way to install a font from the Mac is to transfer the
printer-downloadable version of the font (Macintosh file type
'LWFN') and the AFM file (type 'TEXT') in MacBinary format.  After
the transfer, running "mfrc" will convert the downloadable font to
a standard PostScript font format, and strip the MacBinary header
off the AFM file.

....
"mfrc" Information:
Program written by Mark Harris -- Documentation by Eddy J. Gurney
<mark@monitor.plymouth.mi.us>     <eddy@jafus.mi.org>
                                  Aim your flamethrowers this way,
                                  not at Mark! (I'm taking the heat)
-----
I've tried the program and it works great.  Just kermit or X-modem over
the MacBinary version of the fonts files, run mfrc on them, and you're done.
(You still need to get the .afm files)
You should be able to find this at one of the various anonymous ftp sites.

Hope this helps,

Craig Federighi
craigf@icsi.berkeley.edu