forrest@eemips.tamu.edu (Bob Forrest) (08/01/90)
A friend forwarded the message below from Don Hosek to me.
I thought some of you might be interested in another pbm tool to
add to your collection. I'm sure the software could have been
implemented better and much easier -- but, it works...
I have implemented the TeX PK font generation from pbmplus pbm files.
(The basic routines take a bitmap in the computer's memory, and
produce a TeX PK font character out of it).
Also, I have routines to take a TeX PK font file and generate pbm files.
Unfortunately, the routines are not entirely portable. The basic portions
are written in fortran 77 (originally written to be a
device driver for the fortran PGPLOT graphics subroutine library
of Dr. T.J. Pearson of the California Institute of Technology's Astronomy
department). We have versions which work on a Vax running VMS, a
MIPS RC3240 running System V UNIX with BSD extensions, a SUN SPARCSTATION 1
running BSD UNIX, and an HP9000 running System V UNIX. The nonportable
problems come from the use in fortran of BYTE variables, and the
%VAL() function to pass the value of a variable to a
subroutine ( the value is the address of some dynamically
allocated memory). Also, the routines are a mixture of C and
Fortran so you need to have a mixed language programming
environment. If you are interested, you can ftp these from
128.194.3.2 with the account anonymous and the password guest
(this is a Vax 11/785 running VMS 5.2 and MultiNet v2.1 TCPIP ).
The tar files are named pbmplus.tar and are located in the
subdirectory corresponding to one of the 4 computers listed above.
For the vms version, you can ftp a backup saveset instead if you wish
-- you can use the reblock.exe program to reblock the saveset
after ftp-ing it (if you have MultiNet TCPIP, then just set
'struct vms' and you do not need to reblock it). Please only
ftp during 18:00-08:00 College Station, Texas time --
our machine gets heavily loaded during the daytime.
(Our pbmplus distribution came from a recent posting of the VMS
and Unix version posted to read-news vmsnet.sources.d by Terry Poot
of McCall Pattern Company). I will post the TeX PK font
stuff to vmsnet.sources.d later today as VMS_SHARE files.
bob forrest
forrest@ee.tamu.edu
forrest@eemips.tamu.edu
forrest@tamvxee -- bitnet
% Electrical Engineering department
409-845-7441
Zachry Engineering Center
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas 77843
P.S. This version has a couple of bug-fixes to the version
listed below that ACS currently has running
(finding the number of repeated solid rows
that extend across the entire minimal bounding box of the
graphics character for the TeX PK font generation [ an assignment
from a byte variable was not converted properly for those systems
which store bytes as -128 to 127]), and a logic check for characters
that have less than 8 dots horizontally and/or vertically. This version
now does all calculations using standard fortran 77 and then stores
the results into the nonstandard byte variable (earlier versions
of this software did calculations with nonstandard byte variables).
----
==================================================================
>>From helios!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!sif.claremont.edu Thu Jul 26 14:11:39 CDT 1990
>Status: R
>
>Article 2307 of comp.text.tex:
>Path: helios!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!sif.claremont.edu
>>From: dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.)
>Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
>Subject: Re: bitmap to font
>Keywords: bitmap font conversion
>Message-ID: <7929@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
>Date: 25 Jul 90 20:44:05 GMT
>Sender: news@jarthur.Claremont.EDU
>Reply-To: dhosek@sif.claremont.edu
>Organization: Harvey Mudd College
>Lines: 30
>
>In article <34476@ut-emx.UUCP>, allred@ut-emx.UUCP (Kevin L. Allred) writes...
>>Does anyone have tools to convert an arbitarty bitmap into a 1
>>character font file (.pxl or .pk) with an associated .tfm file? This
>>would seem like an easy way for people without a postscript printer to
>>print out graphics.
>
>John McClain at Texas A&M has a set of tools for this sort of
>thing for the graphics packages used by the ACS there; his e-mail
>address is ophelp@tamvenus.bitnet.
>
>There is also a program called CAPTURE which takes HPGL files and
>converts those directly into PK files; this is a commercial
>package and is sold by Micro Programs Inc. (251 Jackson Ave/
>Syosset, NY 11791--cost: $137)
>
>Pat Wilcox has written a package METAPLOT which takes arbitrary
>pen-plotter files and converts them into MF files which can then
>generate whatever resolution PKs are needed. Her e-mail address
>is wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu
>
>Perhaps, someone should suggest to the pbm people that they
>implement code for converting to/from PK/TFM pairs?
>
>-dh
>
>---
>Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont Consulting and
>dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu production work. Free Estimates.
>dhosek@ymir.bitnet
>uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147
>