edwards@dogie.edu ( Mark Edwards) (01/29/89)
This whole thing started while I was investigating how to use TeX with an Apple Laserwriter. Using the TugBoat Journal (?) I found that Nelson Beebe had a driver for the Apple Laserwriter for VMS. I ftp'ed it and was quite happy to get "postscript" output from my dvi file. As far as I know this driver uses Computer Modern fonts only. I didn't particularily care for the output and it creates large files that contain fonts to download to the laserwriter. I asked comp.text for a driver that used postscript fonts and soon was ftping around the country for various drivers. The first one I found that seemed to be what I want was "psdvi" which I got from june.cs.washington.edu It included the postscript tfm fonts also. I converted the program to run under VMS and got some output. Looked great. But.... I then found out that it chokes on mathmetics. This just wouldn't do. A driver I found at uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (dvi2ps) seems to allow usage of both the postscript fonts and the cm fonts for math and seems to be the best candidate to convert to VMS. (It sure would solve many problems if I were just using a Unix machine. Oh well.) In the above process I picked up other information and decided to write it down before it got filed in some forgotten place. The following is a start of something that I think will be generally useful to many people. At the moment it is only sketchy at best and I am inviting comments, suggestions, addition, general format changes, flames, or anything at all to help improve the list. I can envision lots of directions this might go off in. And as of yet haven't ruled anything out. It also might include of lists programs that convert from one text processing program to another. For example troff to TeX or MS-Word to TeX. Maybe it could include the available programs to convert dvi files to the various printer types. For instance dvi2ps or dvi2cg (compugraphics). Please send all correspondence to me and I will post a new updated list every once in a while. (If enough interest develops I may even offer various formated versions.) Thank you mark edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu ==================== Cut Here ================================================ 0. Introduction These lists are basically about font conversions. Modern computer displays no longer use a single built in font. While it is true that many computer terminals still use fonts that are built into the terminal's ROMs, more and more terminals and displays give the user a choice between several fonts. In the past only typeseting devices, more recently laser printers and dot matrix printers had user selectable/downloadable fonts. Now the distinction between output devices and display devices is becoming less clear. For instance the Macintosh has several word processing packages that allow the display of different fonts. The modern workstations now have window based user interfaces. Unfortunately the font definitions for many of these products are not compatible. These lists are an attempt to bridge the compatibilities. This effort would be worthless if programs to convert fonts from one definition to another did not exist. However conversion programs do exist and these lists serve to enlighten potential users and assist the naive users. Please direct comments, suggestions, additions, and whatever else to me (Mark Edwards), at edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu. 1. List of formating and/or typesetting program Program Operating System(s) ------------------------------------------------------------ TeX Most operating systems troff (ditroff) Unix based Scribe Runoff VAX/VMS (??) WordPerfect 5.0 PC Macintosh VMS MS-Word 4.0 PC Macintosh 2. List of types of fonts Font Description ------------------------------------------------------------ bdf - binary distribution format (Adobe Systems only ??) gf - generic font (TeX) hershey - stroke (vector) fonts pk - packed pxl - pixel snf - server natural format (X-window) Postscript - Adobe Systems vfont - Versatec format (used by SunView and Berkeley (BSD 4.x)) HP LaserJet ?? MS-Windows ?? Macintosh ?? 3. List of types of Font Metrics Font Metric Description ------------------------------------------------------------- afm - Adobe Font Metric tfm - TeX Font Metric 4. List of programs to convert one type of font to another Program Description ---------------------------------------------------------------- bdf2gf bdf to gf bdf2vf bdf to vfont bdftosnf bdf to snf (X-window Utility) gftopk gf to pk gftopxl gf to pxl her2vfont hershey to vfont mac2bdf Macintosh font to bdf pktogf pk to gf pktopx pk to pxl pxtopk pxl to pk vf2bdf vfont to bdf 5. List of programs to generate Font Metric information Program Font Metric Description -------------------------------------------------------------- MetaFont tfm (TeX) (also generates gf font files) afmtopl pltotfm Note: ( From: "ken@cs.rochester.edu" "Ken Yap" 27-JAN-1989 18:56) Keep in mind that font metrics are not completely divorced from the font bitmaps or outlines. The metrics describe the ideal, scalable dimensions, while the bitmap files have the actual pixel widths. Metrics files are used to describe families of fonts such as TeX and PostScript fonts. Fonts for screens generally only have pixel widths. 6. Contributers Ken Yap ken@cs.rochester.edu -- edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706