nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (04/14/88)
Ok. Let's try to get back on track here. I want a way to use all those nifty `foreach x (Amiga Atari Macintosh PC X Suntools)` low-resolution bitmap fonts on my `foreach y ...` machine. I'm not looking for a universal standard, I'm just looking for an intermediate format that is semantically compatible with all of the above font formats. Since this discussion has been going on for a while without anyone saying that they have any large number of converters, why don't we just pick up on Adobe's Character Bitmap Distribution Format and write converters to/from it? -- -russ AT&T: (315)268-6591 BITNET: NELSON@CLUTX Internet: nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu GEnie: BH01 Compu$erve: 70441,205
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (04/14/88)
OK, let's talk BDF for a change. It's a pretty reasonable standard and has the advantage of being all text, no binary. As long as we are talking screen fonts, don't worry about bitmap vs outline. There is a vfont to bdf converter on the X11R2 tape and I also wrote one. I have: vfont -> bdf bdf -> vfont bdf -> gf mac -> bdf and I know of the existence of gf -> bdf. Actually I even have the code. I placed them on zap.mit.edu in ~ftp/pub/bdf-converters.tar a while back. I know, I know, you can't ftp, but I don't want to play postman either. If someone volunteers to be post office, I'll gladly send that person the lot. I also have the Hershey data, off Usenet and a collection of tools for that. So anybody want to start a font archive? Ken
bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (04/14/88)
From Ken Yap >There is a vfont to bdf converter on the X11R2 tape and I also wrote >one. I have: > > vfont -> bdf > bdf -> vfont > bdf -> gf > mac -> bdf > >and I know of the existence of gf -> bdf. Actually I even have the >code. GFTO should be in the X11R2 distribution (it was in mine.) GFTO was intended to be a generalized program to go from gf to other formats. It currently translates to BDF and "char dump" (asterisks for looking at the fonts on a dumb output device.) Adding new output formats isn't much more than adding a flag and a subroutine call and writing the subroutine loop to dump the gf file back out (GFTO reads in the gf file and presents it to you as an array, that ain't trivial!) For example, vfont output should probably be about an hour's work or less. Postscript is harder for various reasons, a weekend perhaps if you understand the issues. -Barry Shein, Boston University P.S. Yes, I am the author of GFTO.
nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (04/15/88)
In article <8633@sol.ARPA> ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) writes: >So anybody want to start a font archive? Yup. /pub/fonts on sun.soe.clarkson.edu [128.153.12.3]. If enough people bitch and moan at me, I'll install Brian Reid's archive-server so that they can get the files via mail. Right now, I only have the X bdf fonts. However, I'll gladly accept all contributions, whether mailed to me or ftp'ed into /submit. -- -russ AT&T: (315)268-6591 BITNET: NELSON@CLUTX Internet: nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu GEnie: BH01 Compu$erve: 70441,205
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (04/15/88)
In article <8633@sol.ARPA> I wrote: |I placed them on zap.mit.edu in ~ftp/pub/bdf-converters.tar a while |back. I know, I know, you can't ftp, but I don't want to play postman Sorry, the file is ~ftp/contrib/bdf-converters.tar on zap (18.72.0.126). Ken