Dave Staehlin
                     Sysop, The SSE Surf Board
                        Huntington Beach, CA
                     Public Access (714)963-7864

I've recently been playing around with downloadable fonts for
the HP LaserJet and Microsoft's Windows.  Windows 2.0 supports
downloadable fonts for the LaserJet and allows the user to build
libraries of download font sets through a utility called
PCLPFM.EXE.  PCBPFM builds a font file that Windows reads at
initialization.  Windows than makes those fonts available to any
program that knows about system fonts.

This is all well and good but it seems that many fonts in the
public domain 'bomb'  when processed with the PCLPFM utility.  I
did a bit of digging anf discovered the reason:  PCLPFM looks to
the Typeface Byte in the download font file to determine if a
default typeface has been selected.  If so, it uses that.  The
conflict is that some of the PD download fonts use that byte for
some unknown reason.  If that byte is changed back to a known
value, PCLPFM can then properly convert the font.

Symptom:  You know you're in trouble when the PCLPFM utility
already "knows" what typeface and family your font belongs to.
Normally the program pauses and asks the user for that
information.  If it doesn't, you have a "bad" font.

Cure:  Go into the font file with some sort of binary editor -
I'll recommend Norton Utilities (Although there are some Public
Domain editors that can certainly do it as well).  Find the 32nd
byte in the file (normally listed as offset 31 from the front of
the file ( Byte 1 is offset 0, remember?) and change the value
to a space (hex value 20).  PCLPFM can then properly convert the
font for its use.

Happy printing..........