[comp.text.tex] Metafonts Supports on IBMPC

teexdwu@ioe.lon.ac.uk (DOMINIK WUJASTYK) (11/06/90)

In article <21011@ttidca.TTI.COM> kingchu@ttidca.tti.com. (King-Hang Chu) writes:
>
>Are there any metafonts supports on the IBMPC???
>
>email address kingchu@ttidca.tti.com

Yes, there are five or six ports of Metafont to DOS, probably more.
o  PublicMF by Klaus Thull (reported on in TUGboat), 
o  the one included in DOSTeX by Gary Biehle, 
o  the one included in emTeX by Eberhard Mattes,
o  and sbMF, the one just released by Wayne Sullivan.  

The last two are the most up to date, as far as I know, i.e., MF
version 2.  Mattes's one comes with a useful control program called
mfjob which reads a simple script language in which you can specify
what fonts/sizes/magnifications/mode_defs/directories/PK conversions
you want.  Mfjob goes away and calls MF with all the right parameters.

In simplistic tests I did a few weeks ago, sbMF was three times faster
than the emTeX MF286, but there is a new, much faster MF with emTeX
now.  Still, if you wanted to do a big MF job, say to create *all* the
CM family at 1270dpi, and were prepared to write a huge batch file to
do it, to change all the GFs to PK, and to salt the PKs and TFMs away
in the right places, then you would probably save quite a lot of time
doing it with sbMF.

Then there are the commercial ports: there's one from PTI, pcMF,
and I expect there's one with TurboTeX from Kinch.  And probably others.

Please don't ask me where you get the above programs.  Read TUGboat,
TeXhax, UKTeX or the excellent "frequently asked questions" postings in
comp.text.tex.  

Bye \bye, 

Dominik