Archive-name: fonts-faq/part1 Version: 2.0.3 Frequently Asked Questions About Fonts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The comp.fonts FAQ Version 2.0.3. January 24, 1994 Compiled by Norman Walsh Copyright (C) 1992, 93 by Norman Walsh . Portions of the OS/2 section are Copyright (C) 1993 by David J. Birnbaum. All rights reserved. Reproduced here by permission. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Subject: Table of Contents 1. General Information 1.1. Font Houses 1.2. What's the difference between all these font formats? 1.3. What about "Multiple Master" fonts? 1.4. Is there a methodology to describe and classify typefaces? 1.5. What is the "f" shaped "s" called? 1.6. What about "Colonial" Typefaces? 1.7. Where can I get ... fonts. 1.8. Where can I get fonts for non-Roman alphabets? 1.9. What about fonts with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) sy... 1.10. How can I convert my ... font to ... format? 1.11. Are fonts copyrightable? 1.12. Typeface Protection 1.13. File Formats 1.14. Ligatures 1.15. Built-in Fonts 1.16. Glossary 1.17. Bibliography 1.18. Font Encoding Standards 1.19. TrueType 1.20. Unicode Information 1.21. Can I Print Checks with the MICR Font? 1.22. Rules of Thumb 1.23. Acknowledgements 1.24. A Brief Introduction to Typography 1.25. Pronounciation of Font Names 1.26. What does `lorem ipsum dolor' mean? 2. Macintosh Information 2.1. Macintosh Font formats 2.2. Frequently Requested Mac Fonts 2.3. Commercial Font Sources 2.4. Mac Font Installation 2.5. Mac Font Utilities 2.6. Making Outline Fonts 2.7. Problems and Possible Solutions 2.8. Creating Mac screen fonts 3. MS-DOS Information 3.1. Frequently Requested MS-DOS fonts 3.2. MS-DOS Font Installation 3.3. What exactly are the encodings of the DOS code pages? 3.4. MS-DOS Font Utilities 3.5. Converting fonts under MS-DOS 3.5.1. Converting Mac Type 1 fonts to MS-DOS format 3.5.2. Converting PC Type 1 and TrueType fonts to Mac format 3.5.3. Converting PC Type 1 fonts into TeX PK bitmap fonts 3.5.4. Converting TeX PK bitmaps into HP LaserJet softfonts (and vice... 3.5.5. TrueType to HP LaserJet bitmap softfonts (HACK!) 3.6. MS-DOS Screen Fonts (EGA/VGA text-mode fonts) 4. OS/2 Information 4.1. Preliminaries 4.2. Fonts under DOS 4.3. Windows 4.4. Differences between Windows and OS/2 4.5. Installation under Windows and Win-OS/2 4.6. FontSpecific PostScript Encoding 4.7. AdobeStandardEncoding 4.8. AdobeStandardEncoding under Windows (and Win-OS/2) 4.9. AdobeStandardEncoding under OS/2 4.10. Consequences for OS/2 users 4.11. Advice to the user 4.12. OS/2 2.1 and beyond 5. Unix Information 6. Sun Information 6.1. Fonts Under Open Windows 6.1.1. Does OpenWindows support Type 1 PostScript fonts? 6.1.2. Improving font rendering time 6.1.3. Making bitmap fonts for faster startup 6.1.4. Converting between font formats (convertfont, etc.) 6.1.5. Xview/OLIT fonts at 100 dpi 6.2. Where can I order F3 fonts for NeWSprint and OpenWindows? 7. NeXT Information 7.1. Tell me about NeXTstep fonts 7.2. Tell me more about NeXTstep fonts 7.3. Porting fonts to the NeXT 7.4. Font availability 7.5. Why can I only install 256 fonts on my NeXT? 8. Amiga Information 9. X11 Information 9.1. Getting X11 9.2. Historical Notes about X11 9.3. X11 Font Formats 9.4. X11 Font Server Information 9.5. Fonts and utilities for X11 10. Utilities 10.1. PS2PK 10.2. TeX Utilities 10.3. MFPic 10.4. fig2MF 10.5. GNU Font Utilities 10.6. Font Editors 10.7. The T1 Utilities 10.8. Where to get bitmap versions of the fonts 10.9. Converting between font formats 10.10. Getting fonts by FTP and Mail 10.11. MetaFont to PostScript Conversion 10.12. How to use Metafont fonts with Troff 10.13. PKtoBDF / MFtoBDF 10.14. PKtoPS 10.15. PKtoSFP / SFPtoPK 10.16. PostScript to MetaFont 10.17. Mac Bitmaps to BDF Format 11. Vendor Information Subject: 1. General Information Many FAQs, including this one, are available by anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers. Each posted section of the FAQ is archived under the name that appears in the "Archive-name" header at the top of the article. This FAQ is a work in progress. If you have any suggestions, I would be delighted to hear them. This FAQ is maintained in TeXinfo format. A Perl script constructs the postable FAQ from the TeXinfo sources. TeX DVI, PostScript, and Info versions of this FAQ are available from ftp.shsu.edu in /tex-archive/help/comp-fonts-FAQ. A "Gopher" server is also maintained at shsu.edu which can provide interactive access to the FAQ. Finally, an online, hypertext version of the FAQ is maintained (experimentally) on jasper.ora.com where an HTTP server runs. For example, point XMosaic (or a similar WWW browser) to http://jasper.ora.com/. The posted version of the FAQ is organized in a quasi-digest format so that it is easy to find the questions you are interested in. All questions that appear in the table of contents can be found by searching for the word "Subject:" followed by the question number. The "TeXinfo" distribution from the Free Software Foundation contains a program called "Info" that can be used to read the Info version of the FAQ in a hypertext manner. The "TeXinfo" distribution can be obtained from prep.ai.mit.edu in the /pub/gnu directory. At the time of this writing, texinfo-2.16.tar.gz is the most recent version. Info files can also be read in hypertext form by GNU Emacs. Future versions of the FAQ will make more use of the hypertext capabilities provided by the Info format. At present, the FAQ is organized as a simple tree. A plain ASCII, postable version of the FAQ will always be maintained. All trademarks used in this document are the trademarks of their respective owners. Standard disclaimers apply. Subject: 1.1. Font Houses This section will be expanded on in the future. It contains notes about various commercial font houses. Compugraphic ============ See "Miles, Agfa Division" Miles, Agfa Division ==================== Compugraphic which was for a while the Compugraphic division of Agfa, is now calling itself "Miles, Agfa Division" (yes, the Miles drug company), since CG's off-shore parent Agfa has been absorbed by Miles. So typographically speaking, Compugraphic, CG, Agfa, A-G ag, and Miles all refer to the same company and font library. Their proprietary fonts are still CG Xyz, but the name is Miles Agfa. Subject: 1.2. What's the difference between all these font formats? This question is not trivial to answer. It's analogous to asking what the difference is between various graphics image file formats. The short, somewhat pragmatic answer, is simply that they are different ways of representing the same "information" and some of them will work with your software/printer and others won't. At one level, there are two major sorts of fonts: bitmapped and outline (scalable). Bitmapped fonts are falling out of fashion as various outline technologies grow in popularity and support. Bitmapped fonts represent each character as a rectangular grid of pixels. The bitmap for each character indicates precisely what pixels should be on and off. Printing a bitmapped character is simply a matter of blasting the right bits out to the printer. There are a number of disadvantages to this approach. The bitmap represents a particular instance of the character at a particular size and resolution. It is very difficult to change the size, shape, or resolution of a bitmapped character without significant loss of quality in the image. On the other hand, it's easy to do things like shading and filling with bitmapped characters. Outline fonts represent each character mathematically as a series of lines, curves, and 'hints'. When a character from an outline font is to be printed, it must be 'rasterized' into a bitmap "on the fly". PostScript printers, for example, do this in the print engine. If the "engine" in the output device cannot do the rasterizing, some front end has to do it first. Many of the disadvantages that are inherent in the bitmapped format are not present in outline fonts at all. Because an outline font is represented mathematically, it can be drawn at any reasonable size. At small sizes, the font renderer is guided by the 'hints' in the font; at very small sizes, particularly on low-resolution output devices such as screens, automatically scaled fonts become unreadable, and hand-tuned bitmaps are a better choice (if they are available). Additionally, because it is rasterized "on demand," the font can be adjusted for different resolutions and 'aspect ratios'. Werenfried Spit adds the following remark: Well designed fonts are not scalable. I.e. a well designed 5pt font is not simply its 10pt counterpart 50% scaled down. (One can verify this by blowing up some small print in a copier and compare it with large print; or see the example for computer modern in D.E. Knuth's TeXbook.) Although this fact has no direct implications for any of the two methods of font representation it has an indirect one: users and word processor designers tend to blow up their 10pt fonts to 20pt or scale them down to 5pt given this possibility. Subtle details, but well... LaserJet .SFP and .SFL files, TeX PK, PXL, and GF files, Macintosh Screen Fonts, and GEM .GFX files are all examples of bitmapped font formats. PostScript Type 1, Type 3, and Type 5 fonts, Nimbus Q fonts, TrueType fonts, Sun F3, MetaFont .mf files, and LaserJet .SFS files are all examples of outline font formats. Neither of these lists is even close to being exhaustive. To complicate the issue further, identical formats on different platforms are not necessarily the same. For example Type 1 fonts on the Macintosh are not directly usable under MS-DOS or Unix, and vice-versa. It has been pointed out that the following description shows signs of its age (for example, the eexec encryption has been thoroughly hacked). I don't dispute the observation and I encourage anyone with the knowledge and time to submit a more up to date description. It has further been suggested that this commentary is biased toward Kingsley/ATF. The omission of details about Bitstream (and possibly Bauer) may be considered serious since their software lies inside many 3rd-party PostScript interpreters. The moderators of this FAQ would gladly accept other descriptions/ explanations/viewpoints on the issues discussed in this (and every other) section. [Ed Note: Liam R. E. Quin supplied many changes to the following section in an attempt to bring it up to date. Hopefully it is a better reflection of the state of the world today (12/07/92) than it was in earlier FAQs] Henry Schneiker wrote the following description of the differences between several scalable font technologies: ((( semi-quote ))) There has been a lot of confusion about font technologies in recent times, especially when it comes to Type 1 versus Type 3 fonts, "hints," PostScript compatibility, encryption, character regularizing, kerning, and the like. * Encryption (eexec) All fonts produced with Adobe's font technology are protected through data encryption. The decryption is provided by the `eexec' (encrypted execute) PostScript operator and, until recently, was only present in Adobe's licensed PostScript. Adobe has published the details of the Type 1 font format in the `Black Book', Adobe Type 1 Font Format (version 1.1), Adobe Systems Inc., 1990. The encryption was mainly used because of font copyright problems; unencrypted fonts can also be used, but these tend to use an efficient binary encoding, also in documented the Type 1 book, and so are still not readable PostScript. * Type 1, Type 3, and Type 5 font formats There are generally three font formats used in Adobe PostScript printers: Type 1, Type 3, and Type 5. Type 1 fonts are Adobe's downloadable format. Type 3 fonts are third-party downloadable format. Type 5 fonts are the ROM-based fonts that are part of your printer. There is no functional difference between a Type 1, Type 3, or Type 5 font. A Type 3 font can do anything a Type 1 or Type 5 font can do. The only real difference between them is where the `BuildChar' routine comes from. For Type 1 and Type 5 fonts it's built into the printer. For Type 3 fonts it's built into the font. In other words, anything a Type 1 font can do a Type 3 font can also do. [Ed note: the reverse is not true. Type3 fonts can do things that Type1 fonts cannot. But they aren't hinted...] When PostScript is asked to generate a character, PostScript looks in the font's dictionary for FontType. If FontType is 1 or 5 PostScript executes an internal routine that knows how to interpret the font data stored in CharStrings. If FontType is 3 PostScript executes the routine BuildChar from the font's dictionary to interpret the font data (often stored in CharStrings). However, each BuildChar routine is written to read data formatted in a method convenient to the vendor. Adobe, Altsys, Bitstream, and Kingsley/ATF all format their font data differently and, hence, have different BuildChar routines. [Ed note: relative hard disk efficiency of Kingsley vs. Adobe fonts deleted on 12/07/92] Type 5 fonts are special in that they often include hand-tuned bitmaps for the commonly used sizes, such as 10- and 12-point. Other sizes are generated from the outlines in normal fashion. Don't confuse Type 1, Type 3, and Type 5 fonts with Bitstream's Type A, Type B, Type C, and Type F. They are not the same and serve only to confuse the issue. * Resolution `hints' When a character is described in outline format the outline has unlimited resolution. If you make it ten times as big, it is just as accurate as if it were ten times as small. However, to be of use, we must transfer the character outline to a sheet of paper through a device called a raster image processor (RIP). The RIP builds the image of the character out of lots of little squares called picture elements (pixels). The problem is, a pixel has physical size and can be printed only as either black or white. Look at a sheet of graph paper. Rows and columns of little squares (think: pixels). Draw a large `O' in the middle of the graph paper. Darken in all the squares touched by the O. Do the darkened squares form a letter that looks like the O you drew? This is the problem with low resolution (300 dpi). Which pixels do you turn on and which do you leave off to most accurately reproduce the character? All methods of hinting strive to fit (map) the outline of a character onto the pixel grid and produce the most pleasing/recognizable character no matter how coarse the grid is. [Ed note: deleted some paragraphs that are no longer true. Times change...] * Optical Scaling Optical Scaling modifies the relative shape of a character to compensate for the visual effects of changing a character's size. As a character gets smaller, the relative thickness of strokes, the size of serifs, the width of the character, the inter-character spacing, and inter-line spacing should increase. Conversely, as a character gets larger, the relative thickness, widths, and spacing should decrease. Contrast this with linear scaling, in which all parts of a character get larger or smaller at the same rate, making large characters look wide and heavy (strokes are too thick, serifs are too big) while small characters look thin and weak. * Kerning As applied to PostScript fonts, kerning refers to kern pairs. A kern pair specifies two characters (e.g., A and V) and the distance to move the second character relative to the first. The typical use of a kern pair is to remove excessive space between a pair of characters. However, it may also be used to add space. * PostScript clones There are currently several printer manufacturers on the market with PostScript clones. To be viable, a PostScript clone must comply with the `red book' (PS Language Reference Manual). In order to avoid paying royalties to Adobe, and because Adobe's Type 1 font format was originally proprietary, many PostScript interpreters use some other font format. Sun uses F3, and some other vendors use Bitstream's Speedo format, for example. The only real problem this causes is that the widths of characters (the `font metrics') may vary from Adobe's, so that programs that assume the Adobe character widths will produce poor quality output. Bitstream fonts used to be particularly bad in the early days, but they and most or all of the other vendors have solved those problems. * Apple TrueType [Ed note: formerly "Royal (`sfnt')"] format and System 7 Apple's new System 7.0 supports a new format of outline font that will allow high-quality characters of any size to be displayed on the screen. TrueType stores font outlines as B-spline curves along with programmed resolution hints. B-spline curves are faster to compute and easier to manipulate than the Bezier curves used in PostScript. Adobe is not going to support Apple's new format by converting the Adobe/Linotype library to B-spline format. There are two reasons for this: First, there is no support for font encryption (yes, the hooks are there, but nothing is implemented). Second, Adobe does not want to dilute PostScript and its font library. However, the Macintosh is too big a market to simply turn away from. Therefore, Adobe will provide its Font Manager to display its own fonts on the Mac screen. Apple ships Adobe's ATM for this purpose. ((( unquote ))) Subject: 1.3. What about "Multiple Master" fonts? Multiple Master Fonts are an extension to the Adobe font format. providing the ability to interpolate smoothly between several "design axes" from a single font. Design axes can include weight, size, and even some whacko notions like serif to sans serif. Adobes' first Multiple Master Font was Myriad - a two-axis font with WEIGHT (light to black) on one axis, and WIDTH (condensed to expanded) along the other axis. In the case of Myriad, there are four "polar" designs at the "corners" of the design space. The four designs are light condensed, black condensed, light expanded, and black expanded. Given polar designs, you can set up a "weight vector" which interpolates to any point within the design space to produce a unique font for a specific purpose. So you can get a "more or less condensed, somewhat black face". Multiple Master Fonts can be used on any PostScript printer. Multiple Master Fonts need a new PostScript operator known as makeblendedfont. The current crop of Multiple Master Fonts supply an emulation of this operator so the printer doesn't need this operator. A short tutorial on Multiple Master Fonts and makeblendedfont appears in PostScript by Example, by Henry McGilton and Mary Campione, published by Addison-Wesley. Danny Thomas contributes that there are a few PostScript interpreter (version)s which have bugs that appear with the emulation of the makeblendedfont operator used to support Multiple Master fonts. There weren't many exhibiting this problem, though it may have happened even with one Adobe interpreter. Subject: 1.4. Is there a methodology to describe and classify typefaces? There is a standard, Panose, but it is mostly ignored by typographers (not because it's bad, just because they don't need it). The Panose system is documented, among other places, in the Microsoft Windows 3.1 Programmer's Reference from Microsoft Press. The ISO also has a scheme, but it is not Panose. At least one book by a respected authority, Alexander Lawson, Printing Types: An Introduction, describes another, less rigorous system [ed: of his own], which is exposited in "An Introduction" and used without exposition in his later "Anatomy of a Typeface". There is another book, Rookledges International Typefinder, which has a very complete system that uses tell-tales of individual glyphs as well as overall style to index most known faces right in the book. J. Ben Leiberman has another book on type face description. Terry O'Donnell adds the following comments: The current ISO system was initiated (I believe) by Archie Provan of RIT--a successor to Mr. Lawson. Whereas in typographic practice or teaching--only a high level classification is necessary - times have changed and the current ISO system aims to accomplish something beyond the high level. A major goal is to aid software to help users make selections. For example, a naive user might ask for all fonts on a font server which have a Roman old style appearance. Another goal would be to help users with multi-lingual text: a user creating a document in English using e.g. Baskerville wants to know what Arabic or Japanese language font on his system/file server would harmonize well with the Baskerville. It is not all in place yet--but the more detailed ISO classes--and the current addition of non-latin typefaces--are an attempt to address this issue. A second goal is to help with the font substitution problem. Neither ISO or Panose address the metrics issues in font substitution--but both might aid software in picking the nearest style of available available fonts. Subject: 1.5. What is the "f" shaped "s" called? Both the "f" with half a crosbar (roman) and the integral sign (italic) are called long-S. Subject: 1.6. What about "Colonial" Typefaces? Why does colonial printing have that "Colonial" feel? ===================================================== Colonial type was either very roughly treated by moist salt air on the crossing and in colonial port cities, or was copied locally by tacky techniques (such as driving used foundry type into soft lead to make very soft deformable matrices), and the paper was very rough, which abrades both the serifs and the hairlines. So except for the best work done with new, european types, the serifs were much smaller, even broken off, than the original founder/punchcutter intended. Thins could be abraded by rough paper to nothingness, esp after humid salt air had leached the hardener out of the alloy. What fonts are good for mock-colonial uses? =========================================== For example, what fonts have the following features: old-style figures (non-lining numbers), the long s character, slightly irregular shapes (a la type produced by colonial printers), and a decent complement of ligatures. And what about free or cheap faces like this? I don't know if any exist with all of 1-5. As I believe you get what you pay for, especially in fonts, I haven't looked at free and cheap-copy fonts. Microsoft's expansion set for their Win3.1 optional fonts has Garamond Expert & Expert Extensions, which has a good complement of ligatures and I think I remember it having the long ess too. I forget about OSFigs; it should tho'. Monotype's metal faces "16th Century Roman" and "Poliphilus" may be available in digital; if so, they imitate early presswork with early and are very close to what one wants. "A commercial supplier [not yet sampled] is Image Club Graphics in Calgary (1-800-661-9410). It is called Caslon Antique. It is supplied as both roman and italic, together, for $25. They advertise in MacWorld/MacUser/MacBlah. I am unable to tell from abcDEF123 if the numerals are old-style, but I think not. Ligatures? long-S? Not yet known. Guillemots, though, are there. ... Letraset, circa 1977, showing a Caslon Antique with modern numerals, no ligatures, and only UKPounds and German ss extensions." [Ike Stoddard] NB: Caslon Antique is not a Caslon per se: "The last Caslon to mention is that ubiquitous but unrelated Caslon Antique, which possesses no similarity whatsoever to the original. This old reprobate was introduced by Barnhart Brothers of Chicago under the name Fifteenth Century. Its negative reception lasted until about 1918, when, with a simple name change to Caslon Antique, it became the most commonly selected type for reproductions of colonial American printing. It is now seen in everything from liquor advertisments to furniture commercials" [Lawson, 1990,Anatomy] Miles Agfa (Compugraphic) has always had a Caslon Antique; I don't know if it is available for TrueType or Type 1, but Agfa has been doing TrueType bundles at reasonable prices. [wdr] What fonts could a colonial printer have had? ============================================= According to D.B.Updike in the classic reference "Printing Types: Their History, Forms & Use", he indicates that most colonial work was with types of the Caslon Old Style fonts and cheap copies of same in the 18th C. Before that, it would have been the older Dutch & English faces, almost always lagging English tastes. If you can find the Oxford Fell types, they are classic Dutch-as-used-by-englishmen. Anything with a Dutch moniker and the Oldstyle adjective is probably ok; Van Dijck if you find it, say (died 1673). Ben Franklin recommended Caslon faces. But these were not available in England before 1720, first full broadside in 1734. Lawson declares that the first printing of the Declaration of Independance was in Caslon. Wilson's Scotch Modern was the "modern" font that surfaced in quantity in america. If the Scotch Roman your vendor has is sort-of like-Bodoni but nicer than his Bodoni, that's it. It wasn't available until late 1700s, though. Subject: 1.7. Where can I get ... fonts. Before I go any farther, let me extol the virtues of the Archie servers. If you need to find something on the net, and you have any idea what it might be called, Archie is the place to go. In North America, telnet to "archie.rutgers.edu" and login as "archie". There are many other servers around the world, any Archie server can give you a list of other servers. There are better documents than this to describe Archie and you should be able to find them from the above starting point. If you have trouble, feel free to ask norm (via Email please, no need to clutter comp.fonts with a query about Archie ;-). In addition to the telnet option, several archie clients exist including a very nice X11 implementation (Xarchie) * Adobe Type 1 Fonts in MS-DOS/Unix Format: ftp.cica.indiana.edu:/pub/pc/win3/fonts ftp.cica.indiana.edu:/pub/pc/win3/fonts/atm archive.umich.edu:/msdos/mswindows/fonts * Adobe Type 1 Fonts in Mac Format: mac.archive.umich.edu:/mac/system.extensions/font/type1 sumex-aim.stanford.edu:/info-mac/font * Adobe Type 3 Fonts in Mac Format: mac.archive.umich.edu:/mac/system.extensions/font/type3 * TrueType fonts in MS-DOS Format: ftp.cica.indiana.edu:/pub/pc/win3/fonts/truetype * TrueType fonts in Mac Format: mac.archive.umich.edu:/mac/system.extensions/font/truetype * TeX PK/PXL/GF fonts: The TeX community has it's own support groups that can provide better answers to this question. The canonical list of MetaFont fonts is posted occasionally to comp.text.tex. The comp.text.tex newsgroup (or the Info-TeX mailing list, if you do not have access to news) are good places to start. Email norm if you need more specific information. * LaserJet bitmap fonts: wuarchive.wustl.edu:/mirrors/msdos/laser Also on other simtel20 mirrors... If you know of other archive sites (the above list is no where near complete) or other formats that are available on the net, please let us know. The sites above represent places where shareware and public domain fonts are available. Many, many typefaces are not available in shareware form. And many shareware faces are less than adequate for a variety of reasons, particularly at small sizes. It seems to be the consensus of the comp.fonts community that "you get what you pay for." If you need a professional quality font, you should probably buy it from a professional. A list of font vendors (annotated with information about non-Roman alphabets) was contributed by Masumi Abe. Masumi was Adobe's Manager of Typographic Marketing for Asia, he has since left Adobe. The list is quite long and it is posted separately. It can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from /pub/norm/comp.fonts on ibis.cs.umass.edu. Subject: 1.8. Where can I get fonts for non-Roman alphabets? As mentioned above, the list of font vendors is annotated with information about non-Roman alphabets. Commercially, Masumi suggests that Linguists' Software is the current [ed: as of 7/92] leading supplier of non-Roman fonts. Subject: 1.9. What about fonts with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols? I summarized Scott Brumage's recent post for the FAQ: Shareware or free (PostScript Type 1 and/or TrueType): ====================================================== * TechPhon Seems to lack some characters and has no zero-offset characters (for accents). * PalPhon A phonetic font which you can get by anonymous ftp from mac.archive.umich.edu. It is called PalPhon. There are actually two fonts: the basic PalPhon and one with additional accents and symbols called PalPi. The package includes some documents on using the fonts as well. * SIL-IPA SIL-IPA is a set of scalable IPA fonts containing the full International Phonetic Alphabet with 1990 Kiel revisions. Three typefaces are included: * SIL Doulos (similar to Times) * SIL Sophia (similar to Helvetica) * SIL Manuscript (monowidth) Each font contains all the standard IPA discrete characters and non-spacing diacritics as well as some suprasegmental and puncuation marks. Each font comes in both PostScript Type 1 and TrueType formats. The fonts are also available for Microsoft Windows. These fonts were designed by the Printing Arts Department of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas, Texas. Shareware or free (TeX): ======================== METAFONT sources of the phonetic symbols developed by Tokyo-Shoseki-Printing and Sanseido are available. The font contains all of IPA (Internatioanl Phonetic Alphabet) symbols. You can get phonetic symbols METAFONT (named TSIPA) from ftp.foretune.co.jp:/pub/tools/TeX/Fonts The IP address for ftp.foretune.co.jp is 133.123.1.2. Commercial: =========== Linguist's Software Adobe (ITC Stone Phonetic [#255], Times Phonetic [#278]) Subject: 1.10. How can I convert my ... font to ... format? Conversion from one bitmapped format to another is not generally too difficult. Conversion from one scalable format to another is very difficult. Several commercial software packages claim to perform these tasks, but none has been favorably reviewed by the comp.fonts community. ATech's AllType program, in particular, has had poor reviews [ed: as of 7/92]. In an effort to settle a long-running and oft-asked question, I'll be blunt: as of today [6/93], THERE ARE NO NON-COMMERCIAL PROGRAMS WHICH WILL CONVERT FROM ONE SCALABLE FORMAT TO ANOTHER. Not from TrueType to PostScript Type 1, Type 3, Type 5, or any other scalable PostScript format. Not from PostScript Type 1 to TrueType. Not to or from Intellifont. Not to or from Sun F3 format. There are some commercial programs: AllType, Metamorphosis, Font Monger, and even MoreFonts (to/from some proprietary format, I believe). And there are probably other commercial programs as well. However, as several people have noted, conversion from one scalable format to another is a bad idea. If the original font was well hinted, the converted font will not be. Of course, if the original was poorly hinted, maybe it won't matter much. For specific conversions, check the platform specific parts of the FAQ. Most of the conversions discussed require platform specific tools. Here is a summary of the conversions discussed (and the section in which they appear): Mac Type 1 PostScript To PC Type 1 PostScript (MS-DOS). To TrueType (commercial). PC Type 1 PostScript To Mac Type 1 PostScript (Mac, commercial). To TrueType (commercial). To TeX PK (MS-DOS). TrueType To Type 1 PostScript (Mac and MS-DOS, commercial). To HP LaserJet bitmaps (MS-DOS, hack!). TeX PK To HP LaserJet bitmap softfonts (MS-DOS). HP LaserJet bitmap softfonts To TeX PK (MS-DOS). In addition, Adobe ships a copy of Adobe Font Foundry with all of its fonts which can convert Type 1 fonts into HP LaserJet softfonts. Subject: 1.11. Are fonts copyrightable? This topic is hotly debated at regular intervals on comp.fonts. Terry Carroll. provides the following analysis of current [ed: as of 6/92] legislation and regulation regarding fonts and copyrights in the United States. Terry is "Editor in Chief" of Volume 10 of the Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal. Members of the comp.fonts community are encouraged to submit other materials that add clarity to the issue. It has been pointed out that this section deals primarily font copyright issues relevant to the United States and that this situation is not universal. For example, in many parts of Europe typeface designs are protectable. "First, the short answer in the USA: Typefaces are not copyrightable; bitmapped fonts are not copyrightable, but scalable fonts are copyrightable. Authorities for these conclusions follow. Before we get started, let's get some terminology down: A typeface is a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters, whose forms are related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a notational system and are intended to be embodied in articles whose intrinsic utilitarian function is for use in composing text or other cognizable combinations of characters. A font is the computer file or program that is used to represent or create the typeface. Now, on to the legal authorities: Volume 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations specifies this about the copyrightability of typefaces: "The following are examples of works not subject to copyright and applications for registration of such works cannot be entertained: . . . typeface as typeface" 37 CFR 202.1(e). The regulation is in accordance with the House of Representatives report that accompanied the new copyright law, when it was passed in 1976: "The Committee has considered, but chosen to defer, the possibility of protecting the design of typefaces. A 'typeface' can be defined as a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters, whose forms are related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a notational system and are intended to be embodied in articles whose intrinsic utilitarian function is for use in composing text or other cognizable combinations of characters. The Committee does not regard the design of typeface, as thus defined, to be a copyrightable 'pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work' within the meaning of this bill and the application of the dividing line in section 101." H. R. Rep. No. 94-1476, 94th Congress, 2d Session at 55 (1976), reprinted in 1978 U.S. Cong. and Admin. News 5659, 5668. It's also in accordance with the one court case I know of that has considered the matter: Eltra Corp. V. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294, 208 USPQ 1 (1978, C.A. 4, Va.). The U.S. Copyright Office holds that a bitmapped font is nothing more than a computerized representation of a typeface, and as such is not copyrightable: "The [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision [published at 53 FR 38110] based on the [October 10,] 1986 Notice of Inquiry [published at 51 FR 36410] reiterated a number of previous registration decisions made by the [Copyright] Office. First, under existing law, typeface as such is not registerable. The Policy Decision then went on to state the Office's position that 'data that merely represents an electronic depiction of a particular typeface or individual letterform' [that is, a bitmapped font] is also not registerable." 57 FR 6201. However, scalable fonts are, in the opinion of the Copyright Office, computer programs, and as such are copyrightable: "... the Copyright Office is persuaded that creating scalable typefonts using already-digitized typeface represents a significant change in the industry since our previous [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision. We are also persuaded that computer programs designed for generating typeface in conjunction with low resolution and other printing devices may involve original computer instructions entitled protection under the Copyright Act. For example, the creation of scalable font output programs to produce harmonious fonts consisting of hundreds of characters typically involves many decisions in drafting the instructions that drive the printer. The expression of these decisions is neither limited by the unprotectable shape of the letters nor functionally mandated. This expression, assuming it meets the usual standard of authorship, is thus registerable as a computer program." 57 FR 6202." This is Info file comp.fonts.faq.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the input file FAQ.texinfo. Subject: 1.12. Typeface Protection [This article first appeared in TUGboat 7:3 (October 1986), pp. 146-151. Reproduced with permission.] Preamble ======== The main question of typeface protection is: "Is there anything there worth protecting?" To that the answer must certainly be: "Yes." Typeface designs are a form of artistic and intellectual property." To understand this better, it is helpful to look at who designs type, and what the task requires. Who makes type designs? ----------------------- Like other artistic forms, type is created by skilled artisans. They may be called type designers, lettering artists, punch-cutters, calligraphers, or related terms, depending on the milieu in which the designer works and the technology used for making the designs or for producing the type. ("Type designer" and "lettering artist" are self-explanatory terms. "Punch-cutter" refers to the traditional craft of cutting the master image of a typographic letter at the actual size on a blank of steel that is then used to make the matrix from which metal type is cast. Punch-cutting is an obsolete though not quite extinct craft. Seeking a link to the tradition, modern makers of digital type sometimes use the anachronistic term "digital punch-cutter". "Calligrapher" means literally "one who makes beautiful marks". The particular marks are usually hand-written letters, though calligraphers may design type, and type designers may do calligraphy.) It usually takes about seven years of study and practice to become a competent type designer. This seems to be true whether one has a Ph.D. in computer science, a high-school diploma, or no academic degree. The skill is acquired through study of the visual forms and practice in making them. As with geometry, there is no royal road. The designing of a typeface can require several months to several years. A family of typefaces of four different styles, say roman, italic, bold roman, and bold italic, is a major investment of time and effort. Most type designers work as individuals. A few work in partnership (Times Roman(R), Helvetica(R), and Lucida(R) were all, in different ways, the result of design collaboration). In Japan, the large character sets required for a typeface containing Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana induce designers to work in teams of several people. Although comparisons with other media can only be approximate, a typeface family is an accomplishment on the order of a novel, a feature film screenplay, a computer language design and implementation, a major musical composition, a monumental sculpture, or other artistic or technical endeavors that consume a year or more of intensive creative effort. These other creative activities can be protected by copyright or other forms of intellectual property protection. It is reasonable to protect typefaces in the same way. The problem of plagiarism ------------------------- A lack of protection for typeface designs leads to plagiarism, piracy, and related deplorable activities. They are deplorable because they harm a broad range of people beyond the original designers of the type. First, most type plagiarisms are badly done. The plagiarists do not understand the nature of the designs they are imitating, are unwilling to spend the necessary time and effort to do good work, and consequently botch the job. They then try to fob off their junk on unsuspecting users (authors, editors, and readers). Without copyright, the original designer cannot require the reproducer of a type to do a good job of reproduction. Hence, type quality is degraded by unauthorized copying. Secondly, without protection, designs may be freely imitated; the plagiarist robs the original designer of financial compensation for the work. This discourages creative designers from entering and working in the field. As the needs of typography change (on-line documents and laser printing are examples of technical and conceptual changes) new kinds of typefaces are required. Creative design in response to such needs cannot flourish without some kind of encouragement for the creators. In a capitalist society, the common method is property rights and profit. In a socialist (or, in the past, royalist) society, the state itself might employ type artists. France, as a monarchy and as a republic, has had occasional state sponsorship of typeface design over the past 400 years. The Soviet Union has sponsored the design of new typefaces, not only in the Cyrillic alphabet, but also in the other exotic scripts used by various national groups in the Soviet Union. Those who would justify plagiarism often claim that the type artists do not usually receive a fair share of royalties anyway, since they have usually sold their designs to some large, exploitive corporation. It is true that type designers, like many artists, are often exploited by their "publishers", but plagiarism exacerbates the problem. Plagiarism deprives the designer of decent revenues because it diverts profits to those who merely copied the designs. Plagiarism gives the manufacturer yet another excuse to reduce the basic royalty or other fee paid for typeface designs; the theme song is that the market determines the value of the design and cheap rip-offs debase the value of a face. For those interested in the economic effects of piracy, it is clear that plagiarism of type designs ultimately hurts individual artists far more than it hurts impersonal corporations. Kinds of protection for type ---------------------------- There are five main forms of protection for typefaces: * Trademark * Copyright * Patent * Trade Secret * Ethics Trademark ......... A trademark protects the name of a typeface. In the U.S., most trademarks are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The R in a circle (R) after a trademark or tradename indicates U.S. registration. The similarly placed TM indicates that a trademark is claimed, even if not yet officially registered. However, a trademark may be achieved through use and practice, even without registration. Owners of trademarks maintain ownership by use of the trademark and by litigation to prevent infringement or unauthorized use of the trademark by others. As a few examples of registered typeface trademarks, there are Times Roman (U.S. registration 417,439, October 30, 1945 to Eltra Corporation, now part of Allied); Helvetica (U.S. registration 825,989, March 21, 1967, also to Eltra-Allied), and Lucida (U.S. reg. 1,314,574 to Bigelow & Holmes). Most countries offer trademark registration and protection, and it is common for a typeface name to be registered in many countries. In some cases the registrant may be different than the originator. For example, The Times New Roman (Times Roman) was originally produced by the English Monotype Corporation. In England and Europe, most typographers consider the design to belong to Monotype, but the trademark was registered by Linotype (Eltra-Allied) in the U.S., as noted above. Trademark protection does not protect the design, only the name. Therefore, a plagiarism of a design is usually christened with a pseudonym which in some way resembles or suggests the original trademark, without actually infringing on it. Resemblance without infringement can be a fine distinction. Some pseudonyms for Times Roman are: "English Times", "London", Press Roman, "Tms Rmn". Some for Helvetica are "Helios", "Geneva", "Megaron", "Triumvirate". So far, there seem to be none for Lucida. There are generic typeface classifications used by typographers and type historians to discuss styles, trends, and categories of design. Occasionally these apparently innocuous classification systems are employed by plagiarists to devise generic pseudonyms, such as "Swiss 721" for Helvetica, and "Dutch 801" for Times Roman. It is not certain whether this usage of a generic classification is more for clarification or for obfuscation. In general, the proper tradename is a better indicator of identity, quality, and provenance in typefaces than a generic name. Some people believe that the same is true for other commodities such as wine, where taste is important. A trademark usually consists of both a proprietary and a generic part. For example, in the name "Lucida Bold Italic", "Lucida" is the proprietary trademark part and "Bold Italic" is the generic part. The generic word "type" is usually understood to be a part of the name, e.g. "Lucida Bold Italic type". Sometimes a firm will append its name or a trademarked abbreviation of it to the typeface name, to achieve a greater degree of proprietary content, e.g. "B&H Lucida Bold Italic". A related matter is the use of the name of a type's designer. A firm that ethically licenses a typeface will often cite the name of the designer-- e.g. Stanley Morison (with Victor Lardent) for Times Roman, Max Miedinger (with Edouard Hoffmann) for Helvetica, Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes for Lucida. Although a person's name is not usually a registered trademark, there are common law restrictions on its use. The marketing of plagiarized type designs generally omits the names of the designers. Although Trademark is an incomplete kind of protection, it is used effectively (within its limitations) to prevent the theft of type names. Certain traditional typeface names, usually the surnames of illustrious designers like Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, Bodoni, and others have become generic names in the public domain. Trademark protection of such names requires the addition of some proprietary word(s), as with these hypothetical creations, "Acme New Garamond", or "Typoluxe Meta-Baskerville". Copyright ......... Copyright of typefaces can be divided into two parts: copyright of the design itself; and copyright of the font in which the design is implemented. In the U.S., typeface designs are currently not covered by copyright. This is a result of reluctance by the copyright office to deal with a complex field; by lobbying against copyright by certain manufacturers whose profits were based on typeface plagiarism; by a reluctance of Congress to deal with the complex issues in the recent revision of the copyright law. The reluctance of Americans to press for typeface copyright may have been influenced by a feeling that typeface plagiarism was good for U.S. high-tech businesses who were inventing new technologies for printing, and plagiarizing types of foreign origin (Europe and England). If the situation becomes reversed, and foreign competition (from Japan, Taiwan, and Korea) threatens to overcome American technological superiority in the laser printer industry, then American firms may do an about-face and seek the protection of typeface copyright to help protect the domestic printer industry. Such a trend may already be seen in the licensing of typeface trademarks by Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Imagen, and Xerox in the U.S. laser printer industry. In Germany, where typeface design has always been a significant part of the cultural heritage, and where typefounding has remained an important business, there are more than one kind of copyright-like protections for typefaces. Certain long-standing industrial design protection laws have been used to protect typeface designs in litigation over royalties and plagiarisms. Further, there is a recent law, the so-called "Schriftzeichengesetz" enacted in 1981, that specifically protects typeface designs. New designs are registered, as is done with copyright in most countries. This law only protects new, original designs. It is available to non-German designers and firms. Therefore, some type firms and designers routinely copyright new designs in West Germany. This gives a degree of protection for products marketed in Germany. Since multinational corporations may find it cheaper to license a design for world-wide use rather than deal with a special case in one country, the German law does encourage licensing on a broader scale than would initially seem to be the case. France, like Germany, has ratified an international treaty for protection of typefaces. This 1973 Vienna treaty will become international law when four nations ratify it. So far, only France and West Germany have done so, and thus a design must be protected separately in each country. Even when the treaty becomes law, it will take effect only in those countries that have ratified it. The treaty was principally the work of the late Charles Peignot, a French typefounder, and John Dreyfus, an English typographer and typographic scholar. Presently, typefaces may be registered for protection in France under a 19th century industrial design protection law. In the U.S., there continues to be some movement for typeface design protection. A proposed bill that would protect the designs of useful articles, like type, has been in committee for a few years. It seems to be going nowhere. Digital (as opposed to analog) fonts may be protected by copyright of digital data and of computer programs. It has been established that computer software is copyrightable. Therefore, software that embodies a typeface, e.g. a digital font, is presumably also protected. There is some objection to this kind of copyright, on the grounds that the ultimate output of the program or the result of the data (i.e. a typeface design) is not copyrightable. However, the current belief expressed by the National Commission on New Technological Use of Copyrighted Works is that software is copyrightable even if its function is to produce ultimately a non-copyrightable work. Hence, typefaces produced by Metafont or PostScript(R), two computer languages which represent fonts as programs, are presumably copyrightable. Typefaces represented as bit-map data, run-length codes, spline outlines, and other digital data formats, may also be copyrightable. Some firms do copyright digital fonts as digital data. % The copyright office is currently reviewing %this practice to determine if it is acceptable. Note that the designs themselves are still not protected in the U.S. A plagiarist could print out large sized letters (say, one per page) on an Apple LaserWriter, using a copyrighted PostScript digital font, and then redigitize those letters by using a scanner or a font digitizing program and thus produce a new digital font without having copied the program or digital data, and thus without infringing the copyright on the font. The quality of the imitation font would usually be awful, but it wouldn't violate copyright. Of course, the plagiarist would usually need to rename the font to evade trademark infringement. [As I write these words, I have the guilty feeling that I have just provided a recipe for type rip-off, but others have obviously thought of just such a scheme--John Dvorak has even proposed something like it in one of his columns.] Design Patent ............. The designs of typefaces may be patented in the U.S. under existing design patent law. Many designs are patented, but type designers generally don't like the patent process because it is slow, expensive, and uncertain. Nevertheless, some types do get patented, and it is a form of potential protection. Note that this is Design Patent--the typeface doesn't have to be a gizmo that does something, it merely has to be unlike any previous typeface. The drawback here is that most attorneys and judges are not aware that there are more than two or three typefaces: say, handwriting, printing, and maybe blackletter. Therefore, litigating against infringement is an educational as well as a legal process. It is easy to see that typeface theft is more subtle than knocking over a liquor store; it may not be illegal and the returns may be greater. Protections like design patent are available in many other countries, but there is not an international standard (to my knowledge) so the situation must be examined on a country by country basis. Invention Patent ................ Methods of rendering typefaces can be patented as mechanical or electronic inventions. For example, the old hot-metal Linotype machinery was protected by various patents, as was the IBM Selectric typewriter and type ball. IBM neglected to trademark the typeface names like Courier and Prestige, so once the patents had lapsed, the names gradually fell into the public domain without IBM doing anything about it (at the time, and for a dozen years or so, IBM was distracted by a major U.S. anti-trust suit). Most students of the type protection field believe that those names are probably unprotectable by now, though IBM could still presumably make a try for it if sufficiently motivated. There is currently a noteworthy development regarding a patent for outline representation of digital type as arcs and vectors, with special hardware for decoding into rasters. This patent (U.S. 4,029,947, June 14, 1977; reissue 30,679, July 14, 1981) is usually called the Evans & Caswell patent, after its inventors. It was originally assigned to Rockwell, and in 1982, Rockwell sued Allied Linotype for infringement. Allied settled out of court, having paid an amount rumored to be in the millions. Rockwell sold the patent, along with other typographic technology, to Information International, Inc. (III), which then sued Compugraphic for infringement. According to the Seybold Report, a respected typographic industry journal, Compugraphic recently settled out of court for 5 million dollars. Although many experts believe the patent to be invalid because of several prior inventions similar in concept, it nevertheless seems to be a money-maker in corporate litigation. The Seybold Report has speculated on which firms III would litigate against next. Among the candidates suggested by the Seybolds was Apple for its LaserWriter, which uses outline fonts. Since the entire laser printer industry and the typesetting industry is moving toward outline font representation, Apple is certainly not alone. The Seybolds further speculate on whether the difference between character-by-character CRT typesetting and raster-scan laser typesetting and printing would be legally significant in such a case. Ultimately, some firm will hold out for a court judgement, and the matter will be decided. %Although the Evans & Caswell patent doesn't have much to do with %typeface copyright per se, it does make many font vendors nervous. Trade Secret ............ Given that typeface designs have relatively little copyright protection in the U.S., they are often handled as trade secrets. The secret must apply to the digital data or programs only, because the images themselves are ultimately revealed to the public as printed forms. It is much more difficult to reconstruct the formula of Coca-Cola from its taste than it is to reconstruct the design of Helvetica from its look on the page. The exact bitmap or spline outline of a digital font is usually not reconstructable from the printed image, although CRT screen fonts at usual resolutions (60-120 dots per inch) may be reconstructed by patient counting and mapping of bits off a screen display. Typeface licenses often contain stipulations that the digital data will be encrypted and confidential. Just as a firm will protect the secret of a soft drink recipe, so a type firm will protect the exact nature of its digital data. Ethics ...... Some typographers are motivated by higher principles than greed, profit, expediency, and personal interest. Idealists afflicted with concepts of ethical behavior and a vision of typography as a noble art may find it distasteful to use plagiarized types. Some graphic designers insist on using typefaces with bona-fide trademarks, both to ensure that the type will be of high quality, and to encourage creativity and ethics in the profession. A consequence of plagiarism that is sometimes overlooked is a general erosion of ethics in an industry. If it is okay to steal typeface designs, then it may be okay to purloin other kinds of data, to falsify one's resume, to misrepresent a product, and so forth. Most professional design organizations attempt to promote ethical standards of professional behavior, and personal standards may extend to avoidance of plagiarism. The Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) is an international organization of type designers, type manufacturers, and letterform educators. Its purpose is to promote ethical behavior in the industry, advancement of typographic education, communication among designers, and other lofty aims. Members of ATypI agree to abide by a moral code that restricts plagiarism and other forms of depraved behavior (pertaining to typography). These are noble goals, but some members (especially corporate members) of ATypI, confronted with the pressures and opportunities of commercial reality, nevertheless plagiarize typefaces of fellow members, the moral code notwithstanding. Since ATypI is a voluntary organization, there is very little that can be done about most such plagiarism. Some years back, a world-famous type designer resigned %the noted type designer Hermann Zapf from the ATypI Board of Directors in protest over the organization's flaccid attitude toward plagiarists among its ranks. He has since agreed to sit on the board again, but criticism of the organization's inability to prevent type rip-offs by its own members, not to mention by non-members, continues to be heard. Moderates in ATypI believe that a few morals are better than none. It is not clear whether their philosophical stance derives from Plato, Hobbes, or Rousseau. Given the general attitude of users toward copyrighted video and software, it is doubtful that ethical considerations will hinder most end-users' attitude to plagiarized type fonts. A desire to have the fashionable "label" or trademark may be a greater motivation toward the use of bona-fide fonts than an ethical consideration. Further reading --------------- "The State of the Art in Typeface Design Protection", Edward Gottschall, Visible Language, Vol. XIX, No. 1, 1985 (a special issue on "The Computer and the Hand in Type Design"--proceedings of a conference held at Stanford University in August, 1983). Der Schutz Typographischer Schriftzeichen, by Guenter Kelbel. Carl Heymans Verlag KG, Cologne, 1984. (A learned account, in juridical German prose, of the significance of the Vienna Treaty of 1973 and the West German Schriftzeichengesetz of 1981.) Disclaimer ---------- These notes were originally prepared at the request of Brian Reid, for informal distribution. They are based on the author's review of available literature on the subject of typeface protection, and on personal experience in registering types for trademark, copyright, and patent. However, they are %While they result from careful research, no claim is made for accuracy; not legal advice. If one is contemplating protecting or plagiarizing a typeface, and seeks legal opinion, it is advisable to consult an attorney. The term "plagiarize" (and words derived from it) is used here in its dictionary sense of "to take and use as one's own the ideas of another" and does not mean that the practice of typeface plagiarism is illegal, as that is determined by the laws of a particular country. The author is a professor of digital typography as well as a professional designer of original digital typefaces for electronic printers and computer workstations. He therefore has an obvious bias toward the inculcation of ethical standards and the legal protection of artistic property. Other commentators might have a different perspective. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part2 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 1.13. File Formats Many different kinds of files are available on the net. These files contain many different kinds of data for many different architectures. Frequently, the extension (trailing end) of a filename gives a good clue as to the format of its contents and the architecture that it was created on. In order to save space, most files on the net are compressed in one way or another. Many compression/decompression programs exist on multiple architectures. Multiple files and directories are often combined into a single `archive' file. Many archive formats perform compression automatically. File Format Extensions ====================== * .tar Unix `tape archive' format. Tar files can contain multiple files and directories. Unlike most archiving programs, tar files are held together in a wrapper but are not automatically compressed by tar. * .Z Unix `compress' format. Compression doesn't form a wrapper around multiple files, it simply compresses a single file. As a result, you will frequently see files with the extension .tar.Z. This implies that the files are compressed tar archives. * .z .gz GNU zip format. GNU zip doesn't form a wrapper around multiple files, it simply compresses a single file. As a result, you will frequently see files with the extension .tar.z or .tar.gz. This implies that the files are compressed tar archives. Do not confuse GNU Zip and PKZip or GNU Zip and Unix compress, those are three different programs! * .hqx Macintosh `BinHex' format. In order to reliably transfer Mac files from one architecture to another, they are BinHex encoded. This is actually an ascii file containing mostly hexadecimal digits. It is neither a compression program nor an archive wrapper. * .sit Macintosh `Stuffit' archive. * .cpt Macintosh `Compactor' archive. Like the .tar.Z format that is common among Unix archives, Macintosh archives frequently have the extensions .sit.hqx or .cpt.hqx indicating a BinHex'ed archive. * .arc PC `arc' archive. This is an older standard (in PC terms, at least) and has gone out of fashion. * .zip PC `zip' archive. This is the most common PC archive format today. * .arj PC `arj' archive. * .zoo PC `zoo' archive * .lzh PC `lha/lharc' archive. Font Formats ============ Just as the are many, many archive formats, there are many different font formats. The characteristics of some of these formats are discussed below. Once again, the file extension may help you to determine the font type. (On the Mac, the resource TYPE field is (probably) a better indicator). * PostScript Type 1 Fonts: Postscript Type 1 fonts (Also called ATM (Adobe Type Manager) fonts, Type 1, and outline fonts) contains information, in outline form, that allows a postscript printer, or ATM to generate fonts of any size. Most also contain hinting information which allows fonts to be rendered more readable at lower resolutions and small type sizes. * PostScript Type 3 Fonts: Postscript type 3 fonts are an old outline font format that is not compatible with ATM. Most developers have stopped using this format except in a few special cases, where special type 3 characteristics (pattern fills inside outlines, for example) have been used. * TrueType Fonts: Truetype fonts are a new font format developed by Microsoft with Apple. The rendering engine for this font is built into system 7 and an init, the Truetype init, is available for system 6 (freeware from Apple). It is also built into MS Windows v3.1. Like PostScript Type 1 and Type 3 fonts, it is also an outline font format that allows both the screen, and printers, to scale fonts to display them in any size. * Bitmap Fonts: Bitmap fonts contain bitmaps of fonts in them. This a picture of the font at a specific size that has been optimized to look good at that size. It cannot be scaled bigger without making it look horrendously ugly. On the Macintosh, bitmap fonts also contain the kerning information for a font and must be installed with both type 1 and type 3 fonts. Their presence also speeds the display of commonly used font sizes. Font Format Extensions ====================== * .afm Adobe Type 1 metric information in `ascii' format (human parsable) * .bco Bitstream compressed outline * .bdf Adobe's Bitmap Distribution Format. This format can be converted to the platform specific binary files required by the local X Windows server. This is a bitmap font format distributed in ASCII. * .bez Bezier outline information * .chr Borland stroked font file * .ff, .f3b, .fb Sun formats. More info when I know more... * .fot MS-Windows TrueType format fonts * .gf Generic font (the output of TeX's MetaFont program (possibly others?)) * .fli Font libraries produced by emTeX fontlib program. Used by emTeX drivers and newer versions of dvips. * .mf TeX MetaFont font file (text file of MetaFont commands) * .pfa Adobe Type 1 Postscript font in ASCII format (PC/Unix) I believe that this format is suitable for directly downloading to your PostScript printer (someone correct me if I'm wrong ;-) * .pfb Adobe Type 1 PostScript font in "binary`' format (PC/Unix) Note: this format is not suitable for downloading directly to your PostScript printer. There are utilities for conversion between PFB and PFA (see the utilities section of the FAQ). * .pfm Printer font metric information in Windows format * .pk TeX packed bitmap font file (also seen as .###pk where ### is a number) * .pl TeX `property list' file (a human readable version of .tfm) * .ps Frequently, any PostScript file. With respect to fonts, probably a Type3 font. This designation is much less `standard' than the others. Other non-standard extensions are .pso, .fon, and .psf (they are a mixture of type 1 and type 3 fonts). * .pxl TeX pixel bitmap font file (obsolete, replaced by .pk) * .sfl LaserJet bitmapped softfont, landscape orientation * .sfp LaserJet bitmapped softfont, portrait orientation * .sfs LaserJet scalable softfont * .tfm TeX font metric file * .vf TeX virtual font which allows building of composite fonts (a character can be composed of any sequence of movements, characters (possibly from multiple fonts) rules and TeX specials) * .vpl TeX `property list' (human readable) format of a .vf Subject: 1.14. Ligatures A ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. Generally, ligatures replace characters that occur next to each other when they share common components. Ligatures are a subset of a more general class of figures called "contextual forms." Contextual forms describe the case where the particular shape of a letter depends on its context (surrounding letters, whether or not it's at the end of a line, etc.). One of the most common ligatures is "fi". Since the dot above a lowercase 'I' interferes with the loop on the lowercase 'F', when 'f' and 'i' are printed next to each other, they are combined into a single figure with the dot absorbed into the 'f'. An example of a more general contextual form is the greek lowercase sigma. When typesetting greek, the selection of which 'sigma' to use is determined by whether or not the letter occurs at the end of the word (i.e., the final position in the word). * Amanda Walker provides the following discussion of ligatures: Ligatures were originally used by medieval scribes to conserve space and increase writing speed. A 14th century manuscript, for example, will include hundreds of ligatures (this is also where "accents" came from). Early typefaces used ligatures in order to emulate the appearance of hand-lettered manuscripts. As typesetting became more automated, most of these ligatures fell out of common use. It is only recently that computer based typesetting has encouraged people to start using them again (although 'fine art' printers have used them all along). Generally, ligatures work best in typefaces which are derived from calligraphic letterforms. Also useful are contextual forms, such as swash capitals, terminal characters, and so on. A good example of a computer typeface with a rich set of ligatures is Adobe Caslon (including Adobe Caslon Expert). It includes: Upper case, lower case, small caps, lining numerals, oldstyle numerals, vulgar fractions, superior and inferior numerals, swash italic caps, ornaments, long s, and the following ligatures: ff fi fl ffi ffl Rp ct st Sh Si Sl SS St (where S=long s) [Ed: Another common example is the Computer Modern Roman typeface that is provided with TeX. this family of fonts include the ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl ligatures which TeX automatically uses when it finds these letters juxtaposed in the text.] While there are a large number number of possible ligatures, generally only the most common ones are actually provided. In part, this is because the presence of too many alternate forms starts reducing legibility. A case in point is Luxeuil Miniscule, a highly-ligatured medieval document hand which is completely illegible to the untrained eye (and none too legible to the trained eye, either :)). * Don Hosek offers the following insight into ligatures: Ligatures were used in lead type, originally in imitation of calligraphic actions (particularly in Greek which retained an excessive number of ligatures in printed material as late as the 19th century), but as typefaces developed, ligatures were retained to improve the appearance of certain letter combinations. In some cases, it was used to allow certain letter combinations to be more closely spaced (e.g., "To" or "Vo") and were referred to as "logotypes". In other cases, the designs of two letters were merged to keep the overall spacing of words uniform. Ligatures are provided in most contemporary fonts for exactly this reason. * Liam Quin makes the following observations: The term ligature should only be used to describe joined letters in printing, not letters that overlap in manuscripts. Many (not all) accents came from the practice of using a tilde or other mark to represent an omitted letter, so that for example the Latin word `Dominus' would be written dns, with a tilde or bar over the n. This is an abbreviation, not a ligature. Most ligatures vanished during the 15th and 16th Centuries. It was simply too much work to use them, and it increased the price of book production too much. [Ed: there is no "complete" set of ligatures.] Subject: 1.15. Built-in Fonts * PostScript printers (and Adobe Type Manager) with 13 fonts have: ??? * Postscript printers with 17 fonts have: Courier, Courier-Bold, Courier-BoldOblique, Courier-Oblique, Helvetica, Helvetica-Bold, Helvetica-BoldOblique, Helvetica-Narrow, Helvetica-Narrow-Bold, Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique, Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique, Helvetica-Oblique, Symbol, Times-Bold, Times-BoldItalic, Times-Italic, Times-Roman * Postscript printers with 35 fonts have: All of the above, plus the following: ZapfChancery-MediumItalic, ZapfDingbats, AvantGarde-Book, AvantGarde-BookOblique, AvantGarde-Demi, AvantGarde-DemiOblique, Bookman-Demi, Bookman-DemiItalic, Bookman-Light, Bookman-LightItalic, NewCenturySchlbk-Bold, NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic, NewCenturySchlbk-Italic, NewCenturySchlbk-Roman, Palatino-Bold, Palatino-BoldItalic, Palatino-Italic, Palatino-Roman * HP LaserJet printers (II, IIP) Courier 10, Courier 12, LinePrinter 16.66, ... * HP LaserJet printers (III, IIIP) All of the above, plus the following: Scalable Times Roman and Scalable Univers using Compugraphic's Intellifont hinted font format. * SPARCPrinters The basic 35 fonts plus four scaled faces of each of Bembo, Gill Sans, Rockwell, Lucida, Lucida Bright, Sans and Typewriter, giving a total of 57 fonts, all in the F3 format. Subject: 1.16. Glossary [ I ripped this right out of the manual I wrote for Sfware. If you have comments, improvements, suggestions, please tell me... ] anti-aliasing [ed: this is an 'off-the-cuff' definition, feel free to clarify it for me ;-) ] On low-resolution bitmap devices (where ragged, ugly characters are the norm) which support more than two colors, it is possible to provide the appearance of higher resolution with anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing uses shaded pixels around the edges of the bitmap to give the appearance of partial-pixels which improves the apparent resolution. baseline The baseline is an imaginary line upon which each character rests. Characters that appear next to each other are (usually) lined up so that their baselines are on the same level. Some characters extend below the baseline ("g" and "j", for example) but most rest on it. bitmap A bitmap is an array of dots. If you imagine a sheet of graph paper with some squares colored in, a bitmap is a compact way of representing to the computer which squares are colored and which are not. In a bitmapped font, every character is represented as a pattern of dots in a bitmap. The dots are so small (300 or more dots-per-inch, usually) that they are indistinguishable on the printed page. character (1) The smallest component of written language that has semantic value. Character refers to the abstract idea, rather than a specific shape (see also glyph), though in code tables some form of visual representation is essential for the reader's understanding. (2) The basic unit of encoding for the Unicode character encoding, 16 bits of information. (3) Synonym for "code element". (4) The English name for the ideographic written elements of Chinese origin. download Downloading is the process of transferring information from one device to another. This transferral is called downloading when the transfer flows from a device of (relatively) more power to one of (relatively) less power. Sending new fonts to your printer so that it "learns" how to print characters in that font is called downloading. font A particular collection of characters of a typeface with unique parameters in the 'Variation vector', a particular instance of values for orientation, size, posture, weight, etc., values. The word font or fount is derived from the word foundry, where, originally, type was cast. It has come to mean the vehicle which holds the typeface character collection. A font can be metal, photographic film, or electronic media (cartridge, tape, disk). glyph (1) The actual shape (bit pattern, outline) of a character image. For example, an italic 'a' and a roman 'a' are two different glyphs representing the same underlying character. In this strict sense, any two images which differ in shape constitute different glyphs. In this usage, "glyph" is a synonym for "character image", or simply "image". (2) A kind of idealized surface form derived from some combination of underlying characters in some specific context, rather than an actual character image. In this broad usage, two images would constitute the same glyph whenever they have essentially the same topology (as in oblique 'a' and roman 'a'), but different glyphs when one is written with a hooked top and the other without (the way one prints an 'a' by hand). In this usage, "glyph" is a synonym for "glyph type," where glyph is defined as in sense 1. hints When a character is described in outline format the outline has unlimited resolution. If you make it ten times as big, it is just as accurate as if it were ten times as small. However, to be of use, we must transfer the character outline to a sheet of paper through a device called a raster image processor (RIP). The RIP builds the image of the character out of lots of little squares called picture elements (pixels). The problem is, a pixel has physical size and can be printed only as either black or white. Look at a sheet of graph paper. Rows and columns of little squares (think: pixels). Draw a large `O' in the middle of the graph paper. Darken in all the squares touched by the O. Do the darkened squares form a letter that looks like the O you drew? This is the problem with low resolution (300 dpi). Which pixels do you turn on and which do you leave off to most accurately reproduce the character? All methods of hinting strive to fit (map) the outline of a character onto the pixel grid and produce the most pleasing/recognizable character no matter how coarse the grid is. kerning (noun): That portion of a letter which extends beyond its width, that is, the letter shapes that overhang - the projection of a character beyond its sidebearings. (verb): To adjust the intercharacter spacing in character groups (words) to improve their appearance. Some letter combinations ("AV" and "To", for example) appear farther apart than others because of the shapes of the individual letters. Many sophisticated word processors move these letter combinations closer together automatically. outline font/format See 'scalable font' point The (more or less) original point system (Didot) did have exactly 72 points to the inch. The catch is that it was the French imperial inch, somewhat longer than the English inch, and it went away in the French revolution. What most people now think of as points were established by the United States Typefounders Association in 1886. This measure was a matter of convenience for the members of the Association, who didn't want to retool any more than they had to, so it had no relationship to the inch. By that date, people realized that the inch was an archaic measure anyway; the point was set to be 1/12 of a pica, and an 83-pica distance was made equal to 35 centimeters. (Talk about arbitrary!) Thus the measure of 72.27/in. is just an approximation. Of course, when PostScript was being written, it was necessary to fit into an inch-measured world. For the sake of simplicity PostScript defined a point as exactly 1/72". With the prevalance of DTP, the simplified point has replaced the older American point in many uses. Personally, I don't see that it matters one way or the other; all that counts is that there's a commonly-understood unit of measurement that allows you to get the size you think you want. That is, after all, the point ;) scalable font A scalable font, unlike a bitmapped font, is defined mathematically and can be rendered at any requested size (within reason). softfont A softfont is a bitmapped or scalable description of a typeface or font. They can be downloaded to your printer and used just like any other printer font. Unlike built-in and cartridge fonts, softfonts use memory inside your printer. Downloading a lot of softfonts may reduce the printers ability to construct complex pages. symbol set The symbol set of a font describes the relative positions of individual characters within the font. Since there can only be 256 characters in most fonts, and there are well over 256 different characters used in professional document preparation, there needs to be some way to map characters into positions within the font. The symbol set serves this purpose. It identifies the "map" used to position characters within the font. typeface The features by which a character's design is recognized, hence the word face. Within the Latin language group of graphic shapes are the following forms: Uncial, Blackletter, Serif, Sans Serif, Scripts, and Decorative. Each form characterizes one or more designs. Example: Serif form contains four designs called Old Style, Transitional, Modern, and Slab Serif designs. The typeface called Bodoni is a Modern design, while Times Roman is a Transitional design. This is Info file comp.fonts.faq.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the input file FAQ.texinfo. Subject: 1.17. Bibliography Editors note: the following books have been suggested by readers of comp.fonts. They are listed in no particular order. I have lost the citations for some of the submissions. If you wrote a review that appears below and you aren't credited, please let norm know. I have decided that this is the best section for pointers to other font resources (specs and other documents, for example). These appear after the traditional bibliographic entries. As usual I will happily accept entries for this section. As of 9/92, the only files listed are the TrueType font information files available from Microsoft Bill Ricker contributed the following general notes: The Watson-Guptill, Godine, and Dover publishers all have many typography titles. Godine and Dover tend to be excellent; W-G tends toward 'how-to' books which are good for basics and juried Annuals of job work. Hermann Zapf and his Design Philosophy, Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago, 1987. On Stone -- The Art and Use of Tyography on the Personal Computer, Sumner Stone, Bedford Arts, 1991. Of the Just Shaping of Letters, Albrecht Durer, isbn 0-486-21306-4. First published in 1525 as part of his theoretical treatise on applied geomentry, "The Art of Measurment". Champ Flevry, Geofroy Troy. First published in 1529 Troy attempts, in this book, to design an ideal Roman alphabet upon geometrical and aesthetic principles. The Alphabet & Elements of Lettering, Frederic W. Goudy, isbn 0-486-20792-7. Revised 1942 edition. This very intresting book looks at the history of letter shapes as well font design. The Mac is Not a Typewriter, Robin Williams, Peachpit Press. A good, clear explanation of what typography is, and how to get it from your computer. Mac-specific, but full of excellent general advice. I think there's also a PC version. Available at most computer bookstores Rhyme and Reason: A Typographic Novel, Erik Spiekermann, H. Berthold AG, ISBN 3-9800722-5-8. Printing Types (2 vols), Daniel Berkely Updike, Dover Press. Affordable edition of the most readable history of type, lots of illustrations. Notes: Both the Dover and Harvard U. P. editions where 2 volumes. The Dover editions were paperback and the Harvard hardback. It appears that the Dover edition is out of print. Collectible HUP editions are not cheap although later HUP editions may be had. Most libraries have later HUP and Dover editions. If someone knows of a source, please pass it along. The Art of Hand Lettering, Helm Wotzkow, Dover Press, reprint from 1952. Looking Good In Print, Roger C. Parker, Ventana Press, ISBN: 0-940087-32-4. Well, as a beginner's book, [it] isn't bad. I can't say that I agree with the author's tastes all the time, but he at least gives some good examples. Also there are some nice _Publish_-style makeovers. Don Hosek Book Design: A Practical Introduction, Douglas Martin, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York: 1989. 206pp. Along with Jan White's book (see below), this provides a fairly complete guide to book design. Martin's book is somewhat more conservative in outlook and also reflects his UK background. Don Hosek Digital Typography: An Introduction to Type and Composition for Computer System Design, Richard Rubinstein, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts: 1988. 340pp. An interesting, technological approach to typography which is worth reading although not necessarily always worth believing. A not insubstantial portion of the text is dedicated to representing type on a CRT display and Rubinstein devotes some time to expressing characteristics of typography numerically. Don Hosek Graphic Design for the Electronic Age, Jan V. White, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York: 1988. 212pp. A good handbook for document design. In a well-organized approach, White covers the principles for laying out most of the typographics features of a technical document. White is a bit overeager to embrace sans-serif types and in places his layout ideas seem a bit garish, but it's still a quite worthwhile book. Don Hosek Xerox Publishing Standards: A Manual of Style and Design, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York: 1988. 400pp. Overall, a disappointing book. It is divided into four sections of widely varying intent: "Publishing Process," "Document Organization," "Writing and Style" and "Visual Design." None of them is really adequate for the task and all are highly centered on the Xerox method for publishing. As a guide to Xerox' process, it succeeds, but as a manual for general use, it falls far short. In print. Don Hosek Methods of Book Design (3rd edition), Hugh Williamson, Yale University Press, New Haven: 1983. 408pp. It is a bit out-of-date as regards technology, but on issues relating purely to design it is comprehensive and definitive. Well, I suppose it could be argued that printing technology influences design - e.g. some types look fine in metal but lousy in digital imagesetting - and therefore a book that is out-of-date in technology can't really be "definitive" in matters of design either. In any event, _Methods_ is more than adequate for a beginner's needs. My paper-bound copy (ISBN 0-300-03035-5) was \$13.95; cheap at twice the price! Cameron Smith The Thames & Hudson Manual of typography, Rauri McLean, Thames & Hudson An excellent book if you start getting more interested in type. Look for Rauri McLean's other books after this one... Liam R.E. Quin Typography and Why it matters, Fernand Baudin. There is no better introduction than [it]. It's not a primer on subjects such as "what does Avant Garde look like," or "This is a good font for books." It is a good primer on the things you need to know before the rest should be considered. He's a lovely writer, to boot. [My copy is at work, so I may have munged the title-look up Baudin in "Books in Print" and improvise :-)] Ari Davidow Better Type, Betty Binns It's definitely not a lightweight beginner's introduction, but I've found [it] to be indispensable. It's a large-format hardcover, but you can find it remaindered for cheap if you look around. The book goes into great detail about how factors like line spacing, line length, point size, and design of typeface (evenness of stroke weight, x-height, etc.) affect readability. When you've gotten the basics out of the way and want to learn more about the fine nuances of type color, this book is an absolute must. David Mandl Printing Types: An Introduction..., S. Lawson, (revised) 1990 I'd also recommend Alexander S. Lawson's books especially /Printing Types: An Intro.../ (revised), 1990, which includes electronic types now. Bill Ricker Twentieth Century Type Designers, Sebastian Carter, 1987. Discusses adaptaters of old faces to machine caster and film/laser, as well as new works. Bill Ricker Tally of Types, Stanley Morrison, Cambridge University Press. A keepsake for CUP on the Monotype fonts he'd acquired for them when he was Type Advisor to both Brit.Monotype & CUP (Cambridge University Press, Cambs.UK), which discusses his hindsight on some of the great revival fonts and some of the better new fonts. Bill Ricker Chicago Manual of Style, University of Chicago Press, 1982; ISBN 0-226-10390-0. The chapter on Design and Typography is most directly relevant, but there are a lot of hints scattered all through the Chicago Manual on making your words more readable and your pages more attractive. Stan Brown X Window System Administrator's Guide (O'Reilly X Window System Guides, volume 8), O'Reilly It gives advice about setting up fonts, etc. Liam Quin How Bodoni intended his types to look Bodoni, Giambattista. Fregi e Majuscole Incise e Fuse de ... Bodoni, Harvard University Library (repr). Inexpensive collectible, reproduced as a keepsake by the Houghton Library at Harvard. [wdr] The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst, Hartley & Marks 0-88179-033-8 pbk \$15, Z246.B74 1992 0-88179-110-5 cloth, \$25. A typography for desktop publishers who want to absorb some style. Informed by the historical european tradition and the desktop advertising, tempered by oriental yin-yang and examples. A page-turner with repeat-read depth. The only book I've seen that discusses page proportions that admits there are more than three ways that describes how to find one that feels good for your page. [wdr] Hermann Zapf on the cover-blurb: "All desktop typographers should study this book. ... I wish to see this book become the Typographers' Bible." Printing It, Clifford Burke, Ballantine, 0-345-02694-2. Manual for the hobby letterpress printer. [wdr] Twentieth Century Type Designers, Sebastian Carter, Taplinger, 1987. Discusses the talented adaptators of old faces to machine caster and film/laser, as well as the designers of new works. Indexed? [wdr] Design with Type, Carl Dair, University of Toronto Press, 0-8020-1426-7. In print again (or still?); the ISBN above may be stale. A great introduction to the issues of practicality and taste that confront the users of type. A prized possession. I only regret that the book does not include among the excerpts from his Westvaco pamphlets the Seven Don'ts of Typography. [wdr] Typography 6: The Annual of the Type Directors Club, Susan Davis, ed., Watson-Guptill, 0-8230-5540-x. Specimens of Type Faces in the U.S. G.P.O., John J. Deviny, director., US G.P.O. Practice of Typography: Plain Printing Types, Theodore Low De Vinne, Century Co./DeVinne Press. One of the earlier critical studies, in four volumes of which this is my personal favorite, and still a classic reference. If one wants to understand 18th and 19th century typography in context, this writer lived the transition from eclectic to standard sizes, and comments with taste. [wdr] An Essay on Typography, Eric Gill, Godine, 0-87923-762-7. The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering, Frederic W. Goudy, Dorset Press (Marboro Books), 0-88029-330-6 Lovely. A wonderful way to learn Goudy's taste. Stanley Morison Displayed, Herbert Jones, Frederick Muller Ltd / W, 0-584-10352-2. Lovely. A wonderful way to learn Morrison's taste. Printing Types: An Introduction..., Alexander S. Lawson et. al., Beacon 1971,?Godine? 1990; (2nd Ed includes electronic types now) "Good introduction to comparisons of typefaces, with a detailed history and a key family or face of each general category. Denounces rigid indexes of type faces." [wdr] Anatomy of a Typeface, Alexander Lawson, Godine, 0-87923-333-8, Z250.L34 1990 Deep description of the authors' favorite exemplar and its influences and relatives in each type category. It follows, without explicating, the category system developed in the prior book. [wdr] Types of Typefacs and how to recognize them, J. Ben Lieberman, Sterling, 1968 "This isn't very good really, but it does give lots of examples of the main categories." [Liam] [Old bibliographies praised this one, but I haven't seen it so I can't comment.- wdr] Tally of Types (& other titles), Stanley Morrison, Cambridge U. Press. A keepsake for CUP on the Monotype fonts he'd acquired for them when he was Type Advisor to both Brit. Monotype & CUP (Cambridge University Press, Cambs.UK), which discusses his hindsight on some of the great revival fonts and some of the better new fonts. [wdr] Rookledge's International Type Finder 2nd, Perfect, Christopher and Gordon Rookledge, Ed Moyer Bell Ltd / Rizzoli, 1-55921-052-4, Z250.P42 [1st Ed was NY: Beil 1983] "Lg. trade pb. Indexed by stylistic & characteristic features. Shows A-Z, a-z, 0-9 in primary figures, whether lining or ranging. Particularly distinctive sorts are marked for ease of comparison. Separate tables collect the distinctive characters for assistance in identifying a sample." [wdr] English Printers' Ornaments, Henry R. Plomer, Burt Franklin Paragraphs on Printing, Bruce Rogers, [Rudge] Dover, 0-486-23817-2 Digital Typography: An Introduction to Type and Composition for Computer System Design, Richard Rubinstein, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts: 1988. 340pp. For people who are disappointed with how the type looks on the laser, this book explains the subleties of that medium and of the screen that others miss. This is a study of the Human Factors of computer typographic systems. [wdr] The Case for Legibility, John Ryder, The Bodley Head, 0-370-30158-7, Z250.A4 The Solotype Catalog of 4,147 Display typefaces, Dan X. Solo, Dover, 0-486-27169-2, Z250.5.D57S654 19 "Working catalog of a specialty Graphics Arts shop. They use proprietary optical special effects techniques to get Desktop Publishing effects, and more, without the laser-printer grain. Great listing of 19th Century Decorated Types - probably the largest collection in the world. Prices to order headlines from them are NOT cheap however. Their services are for professional or serious hobby use only. Solo's previous Dover books show some number of complete alphabets of a general peculiar style; this one shows small fragments of his entire usable collection, important as an index. (According to private correspondence, they have more faces that have not yet been restored to usable condition.) Not well indexed, but indexed." [wdr] Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works, Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger., Adobe Press, 1993 Introductory, motivational. If you wonder why there are so many type faces in the world, this is the book for you! [Liam] [The title refers to the old joke: "A man who would letterspace lowercase would also steal sheep." [wdr]] The Art & Craft of Handmade Paper, Vance Studley, Dover, 0-486-26421-1, TS1109.S83 1990 Letters of Credit, Walter Tracey, Godine Press "I can't recommend this too highly. It's not as introductory as the Sheep Book, but conveys a feeling of love and respect for the letter forms, and covers a lot of ground very, very well." [Liam] Printing Types: Their History, Forms & Use, Daniel Berkely Updike, Harvard University Press, reprint by Dover. The standard reference. Tour-de-force history of type and type-styles. A trifle conservative in its biases, but typography is conservative for good reason: readibility. Check the addenda for his final words on newer faces. [wdr] 1. I believe the Dover edition to be 3 vols Pbk; both the collectable and later Harvard U.P. editions were two vols hbk. 2. I am informed by my bookseller & Books In Print that the Dover edition is out of print. *sigh* If a source be known, let me know. Collectible HUP eds are not cheap, although later HUP eds may be had. Most libararies have later HUP or Dover eds. [wdr] Modern Encyclopedia of Typefaces, 1960-90, Lawrence W. Wallis, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 0-442-30809-4, Z250.W238 1990 "Gives examples of most typefaces, almost all digital, designed & distributed in the last 30 years. Cross indexed by foundry and designer, and sources and looks-likes. Some historical bits. Shows full a-z,A-Z,0-9, a few points (punctuation); and 0-9 again if both lining and oldstyle supplied. Only complaint is that it omits small caps even from what few fonts have 'em and the accented characters, of which most have some but too few. List \$25." [wdr] About Alphabets: Some Marginal Notes on Type Design, Hermann Zapf, MIT Press, 0-262-74003-6 Hermann Zapf & His Design Philosophy, Hermann Zapf, Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago "Anything about, by, or vaguely connected with Hermann Zapf is probably worth reading several times :-)" [Liam] Manuale Typographicum, Hermann Zapf, MIT Press, 0-262-74004-4 There are two books of this title (portrait and landscape); this is the only mass-market edition of either. Both are Zapf's selections of interesting typographical quotations in his inimitable display typography. [wdr] Microsoft Windows 3.1 Programmer's Reference, Microsoft Press. Documents the Panose system of typeface classification. Probably contains a general discussion of TrueType under MS Windows 3.1. Introduction to Typography, 3rd ed, Faber, London, 1962. A very good introduction for any beginner. Also discusses things like illustrations and cover design, although not in great detail. Simon was a purist, as the editor of the 3rd edition remarks. He did not mention phototypesetting in his original edition, but some observations on its uses and abuses have since been added. Anders Thulin [ed: additional bibliographic information appears in the file "Additional-bibliography" on jasper.ora.com:/comp.fonts. I have not yet had time to integrate this bibliographic information into the FAQ] Subject: 1.18. Font Encoding Standards Unicode Consortium; The Unicode Standard, volumes 1 and 2, Worldwide Character Encoding, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Unicode consortium e-mail address is: To obtain more information on Unicode or to order their printed material and/or diskettes contact: Steven A. Greenfield Unicode Office Manager 1965 Charleston Road Mountain View, CA 94043 Tel. 415-966-4189 Fax. 415-966-1637 Xerox Character Code Standard, Xerox Corp., Xerox Systems Institute, 475 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Subject: 1.19. TrueType George Moore announces the following information regarding TrueType fonts: "I am pleased to announce that there is now one central location for all official Microsoft TrueType information available on the Internet. The 9 files listed below are available for anonymous ftp access on ftp.uu.net (137.39.1.9) in the /vendor/microsoft/TrueType-Info directory. The most important of those files is the TrueType Font Files Specifications, a 400 page book which describes in excruciating detail how to build a TrueType font. Other information is also available in the same directory and other files will be added from time to time. For those people who do not have ftp access to the Internet can find the same information available for downloading on Compuserve in the Microsoft developer relations forum (GO MSDR) in the TrueType library. Please be aware that the TrueType specifications is a copyrighted work of Microsoft and Apple and can not be resold for profit. TrueType developer information files on ftp.uu.net: 1. ttspec1.zip, ttspec2.zip, and ttspec3.zip The TrueType Specification: These three compressed files contain the "TrueType Font Files Specifications", a 400 page book complete with illustrations which details how to construct a TrueType font from scratch (or build a tool to do so), the TrueType programming language, and the complete format of each sub-table contained in the .TTF file. These documents are stored in Word for Windows 2.0 format and require Windows 3.1 for printing. See the "readme.doc" (in ttspec1.zip) for printing instructions. Requires 2.5MB of disk space after uncompression. This manual is a superset of the similar specifications from Apple and has added information specific to Windows that is not present in the Apple version. 2. ttfdump.zip An MS-DOS executable which will dump the contents of a TrueType font out in a human-readable fashion. It allows you to dump the entire font, or just specific sub-tables. This tool, combined with the specifications above, allows very effective debugging or exploration of any TrueType font. For example, to dump the contents of the 'cmap' (character code to glyph index mapping) table, enter: ttfdump fontname.ttf -tcmap -nx Entering "ttfdump" with no options will give you a help message. 3. ttfname.zip Example C source code on how to parse the contents of a TrueType font. Although this particular example will open up the file and locate the font name contained within the 'name' table, it could be readily adapted to parse any other structure in the file. This compressed zip file also contains many useful include files which have pre-defined structures set up for the internal tables of a TrueType font file. This code may be useful for developers who wish to parse the TrueType data stream returned by the GetFontData() API in Windows 3.1. 4. tt-win.zip A 31 page Word for Windows 2.0 document which is targeted for the Windows developer who is interested in learning about some of the capabilities TrueType adds to Windows 3.1. Contains many illustrations. 5. embeddin.zip A text file which describes all of the information necessary for a Windows developer to add TrueType font embedding capabilities to their application. Font embedding allows the application to bundle the TrueType fonts that were used in that document and transport it to another platform where the document can be viewed or printed correctly. 6. tt-talk.zip The TrueType Technical Talks 1 and 2. These text files describe some of the things that are happening with TrueType behind the scenes in Windows 3.1. The first document walks the reader through all of the steps that occur from when the user first presses the key on the keyboard until that character appears on the screen (scaling, hinting, drop out control, caching and blitting). The second talk describes one of the unique features of TrueType called non-linear scaling which allows the font vendor to overcome some of the physical limitations of low resolution output devices. 7. lucida.zip This text file contains useful typographic information on the 22 Lucida fonts which are contained in the Microsoft TrueType Font Pack for Windows. It gives pointers on line-layout, mixing and matching fonts in the family and a little history on each typeface. This information was written by the font's designers, Chuck Bigelow & Kris Holmes." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part3 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 1.20. Unicode Information [ed: This is a summary of the Unicode info I've gleaned from the net recently, the whole Unicode issue needs to be addressed better by the FAQ...someday... someday...I'll get to reorganize the whole thing] Unicode Editing =============== James Matthew Farrow contributes: I use `sam' for all by text editing. It is X editor based on an editor for the blit called jim. Papers describing sam as well as a distribution of sam itself are available for ftp from research.att.com. The sam there is a Unix port of the Plan 9 version. Plan 9 is a full unicode operating system, even around before NT! The libraries sam is built upon therefore support 16 bit wide characters. The graphics library, supplied with it at present does not. However they may be planning to distribute a new version which does soon. The library just plugs in replacing the library that comes with sam. No modification is necessary. Character are stored using the utf-2 encoding. All of the files I had before I started working with sam were 7 bit ascii so no conversion was needed. Now I have ditched xterm in favour of 9term: a terminal emulator in the style of 81/2 (the Plan 9 interface). This lets me type Unicode characters on the command line, as part of filenames, in mail, wherever and most Unix utilities cope without modification. This is about to be released. I'm looking for beta testers. ;-) Is a special keyboard required? ------------------------------- No. ASCII Characters are typed as normal. Common characters above 0x7f are typed using two letter abbreviations. The table is similar to the troff special character codes, e.g, Alt-12 gives you a 1/2, Alt-'e gives you e acute, Alt-bu a bullet and so on. This table is hardwired into the library at present but is trivial to change. Other codes are accessed by typing their hex value, for instance the smiley is Alt-X263a (0x263a being a smiley character in the Unicode character set). Is roman-to-Unicode conversion available? ----------------------------------------- All normal 7 bit ascii characters are encoded as themselves so no translation is needed. There are conversion routines in the library (runetochar and chartorune) which will do the conversion and it should be pretty simple to convert files already in another format. You would have to write something to do the transliteration yourself. A small patch to the system would let you enter different language `modes' for text entry. Are there PostScript or TrueType fonts available? ================================================= Apparently there is a version of the Lucida fonts by Bigelow and Holmes which support Unicode. This is the information I have on them. [ed: quoting another source] [Windows NT] will ship with a Unicode TrueType font containing approximately 1,500 characters. The font is called "Lucida Sans Unicode" and was specifically designed by Bigelow and Holmes for Microsoft to contain the following Unicode sets: ASCII Latin 1 European Latin Extended Latin Standard Phonetic Modifier Letters Generic Diacritical Greek Cyrillic Extended Cyrillic Hebrew Currency Symbols Letterlike Symbols Arrows Mathematical Operators Super & Subscript Form & Chart Components Blocks Geometric Shapes Miscellaneous Technical Miscellaneous Dingbats The bitmap fonts which comes with the utf version of the libXg graphics library (the library upon which sam is built) support a sparse subset of the full character set. That is, only a few of them have glyphs at present. A font editor such as xfedor would let you add more. The list of those currently available is pretty much as the above list. I use 9term and sam as a matter of course now and have for several months. I enjoy the convenience of putting special characters and accented characters in my mail as well as being able to do some phonetic work all in the one terminal/editor suite. Subject: 1.21. Can I Print Checks with the MICR Font? This comes up all the time: standard ordinary laser toner is magnetic and will be read by the banks. The gotcha is that standard laser toner rubs off in the *very* high-speed sorting equipment that are used, and this makes read rates drop low and the banks will hate you. I researched check printers for a customer, and was surprised to find this. The Troy(tm) printers he bought are basically stock Ricoh engines that have slightly tighter paper handling (for registration), plus they add a proprietary Teflon-type power coating on the output path to coat the checks. I saw some examples of checks printed with and without this special coating after running through something like 40 passes through check processing equipment, and the one without the coating was a mess. These require special handling that the banks do *not* like. Apparently, they go after companies that issue these kinds of checks with special processing fees. Subject: 1.22. Rules of Thumb It is difficult to set out guidelines for font usage, because almost any rule can be brilliantly broken under the right circumstances. * General guidelines: * Never lose track of the kind of work you're doing. An effect that would ruin a newsletter might be just the thing for a record cover. Know when you can safely sacrifice legibility for artistic effect. * Keep in mind the final reproduction process you'll be using. Some effects (like reversed type, white on black) can be hard to read off an ordinary 300-dpi laser, but will work if finals are done on a high-resolution printer, such as a Linotronic. Will the pages be photocopied? Offset? Onto rough paper, shiny paper? All these factors can and should influence your choice of fonts and how you use them. * Running some comparative tests is a good idea. Better to blow off a few sheets of laser paper now than to see a problem after thousands of copies are made. * No one can teach you font aesthetics; it must be learned by example. Look at beautiful magazines, posters, books with wide eyes, so that you can see how it's done. Examine ugly printed matter critically and consider why it's hard to read. * Good rules of thumb: * If you need a condensed font, find one that was designed that way, rather than scaling an existing font down to a percentage. Any scaling distorts a font's design; excessive scaling interferes with legibility - this goes for widening as well as narrowing. Extended faces do exist, although they aren't as common as condensed ones. * Many people feel that bold or italic type, or type in ALL CAPS, is more legible: "This is the most important part of the newsletter, let's put it in bold." In fact, legibility studies show that such type is actually harder to read in bulk. Keep the text in a normal style and weight, and find another way to emphasize it - box it, illustrate it, run it in color, position it focally. * Too much reverse type - white on black - is hard on the eyes. It can be a nice effect if used sparingly. Don't reverse a serif font, though - its details will tend to fill in. Stick to reversing bold sans-serifs, and remember to space them out a bit more than usual. * It is always safest to use a plain serif font for large amounts of text. Because Times is widely used, it doesn't mean it should be avoided. Fonts like Palatino, Times, Century Old Style are deservedly popular because people can read a lot of text set in such faces without strain. Don't expect anyone to read extensive text set in a condensed font. * As point size gets bigger, track tighter, and (if the software allows) reduce the spacebands as well. A spaceband in a headline size (anything over 14 point) should be about as wide as a letter "i". * If you only have a few large headlines, hand-kerning the type, pair by pair, can make the end result much more pleasing. Besides, working with fonts this closely makes them familiar. * Column width and justification are major elements in design. The narrower the column, the smaller the type can be; wide rows of small type are very hard to read. Often it's a better idea to set narrow columns flush left rather than justified, otherwise large gaps can fall where hyphenation isn't possible. * Use curly quotes. * Don't put two spaces at the end of a line (. ) instead of (. ) when using a proportionally spaced font. Subject: 1.23. Acknowledgements The moderators would like to express their gratitude to the whole community for providing insightful answers to innumerable questions. In particular, the following people (listed alphabetically) have contributed directly to this FAQ (apologies, in advance if anyone has been forgotten): Masumi Abe Glenn Adams Borris Balzer Charles A. Bigelow David J. Birnbaum Tim Bradshaw Arlen Britton Stan Brown Scott Brumage Lee Cambell Terry Carroll Ari Davidow Pat Farrell James Matthew Farrow Stephen Friedl Peter J. Gentry Yossi Gil Timothy Golobic Kesh Govinder Rick Heli Jeremy Henderson Henry ??? Gary Berthold K.P. Horn Don Hosek Bharathi Jagadeesh Chang Jin-woong Darrell Leland David Lemon Jon ??? ??? David Mandl Kate McDonnell George Moore Robert Morris Stephen Moye Terry O'Donnell Stephen Peters Bill Phillips Jim Reese Bill Ricker Liam Quin Henry Schneiker Bill Shirley Cameron Smith Werenfried Spit Anthony Starks Ike Stoddard Danny Thomas Anders Thulin Erik-Jan Vens Amanda Walker Subject: 1.24. A Brief Introduction to Typography Space, time, and bandwidth are too limiting to provide a complete introduction to typography in this space. I'd be very willing to make one available for anonymous ftp, if you want to write one, but I'm not going to write it-I have neither the time nor the expertise. However, the following description of Times, Helvetica, and Courier will suffice for a start. For more information, several books on typography are listed in the bibliography. Comments by Laurence Penney: ============================ Laurence Penney offers the following description of Times, Helvetica, and Courier: Times is a typeface designed in the 1930s for the Times newspaper in London and is now used widely in books, magazines and DTP. Its design is based on the typographical principles evolved since Roman times (upper case) and the 16th century (lower case). It is called a TRANSITIONAL typeface, after the typefaces of the 17th century which it resembles. Like all typefaces designed for typesetting large quantities of text, it is proportionally spaced: the i takes about a third the width of an M. Personally I don't like Times too much and prefer the more elegant Garamond and Baskerville, but these will probably cost you money... Note: The Transitionals came after the Old Styles (like Garamond) and before the Moderns (like Bodoni). Helvetica is an example of a SANS-SERIF typeface. These first appeared in the late 19th century in Germany and flourished in the 1920s and 30s, when they were regarded as the future of typography. It's more a geometric design than the humanist design of Gill Sans, but less geometric than Avant Garde and Futura. To my mind it lacks elegance, and Adrian Frutiger's Univers shows how this kind of typeface should be done. (Just compare the B, R, Q, a, g of Univers and Helvetica to see what I mean - and don't you just love Univers's superbly interpreted ampersand ?!) Helvetica is one of the few fonts that is improved by its BOLD version. Another interesting approach to sans-serif is Optima, by Hermann Zapf, which keeps the stroke-weight variations which sans-serifs usually reject. Use sans-serif fonts for the same applications as Times, above, but where you're less concerned with elegance, and more with a functional appearance - they're generally reckoned to be slightly less legible than good serifed fonts. They're also very suitable for display work. Courier is a typeface derived from typewriter styles. It should ONLY be used when you want to simulate this effect (e.g. when writing letters Courier usually appears "friendlier" than Times). Like all typewriter fonts, it is MONOSPACED (characters all have the same width) and is thus suitable for typesetting computer programs. However there are nicer looking monospace fonts than Courier (which has oversize serifs), that still remain distinct from the text fonts like Times and Helvetica. A good one is OCR-B, designed by Frutiger. Note that monospaced fonts are less economical on space than proportional fonts. [ed: Following the original posting of this message, Laurence Penny and Jason Kim discussed the issue privately. The following summary of their discussion may serve to clarify some of the more subtle points. My thanks to Laurence and Jason for allowing me to include this in the FAQ.] ----------------------------- LP-1> The Transitionals came after the Old Styles (like Garamond) and before the Moderns (like Bodoni). JK> Not necessarily true! Ideologically, yes, but not chronologically. I believe, for example, that Bodoni predates New Century Schoolbook or some such typeface. LP-2> What I meant by "X came after Y" was "the first examples of X appeared after the first examples of Y" - it's called precis. Some people still make steam trains, but you can still say "Steam engines came before diesels." This is chronological, not ideological in my book. ----------------------------- LP-1> Another interesting approach to sans-serif is Optima, by Hermann Zapf, which keeps the stroke-weight variations which sans-serifs usually reject. Use sans-serif fonts for the same applications as Times, above, but where you're less concerned with elegance, and more with a functional appearance - they're generally reckoned to be slightly less legible than good seriffed fonts. They're also very suitable for display work. JK> Slightly? I have several textbooks typeset by utter fools and they are a pain in the ass (and eyes) to read! Please don't encourage anyone to use Optima (or any sans serif fonts for that matter) "for the same applications as Times," which, need I remind you, was designed for *newspaper* work!! LP-2> OK, maybe I was a little over-generous to Univers, Helvetica, etc., but I think variation is extremely important in typography. Have you ever read the British magazine "CAR" ? That uses Helvetica light (I think) in a very legible and attractive way, IMO. I agree, though, Optima is crappy for text, but it's a very valuable experiment and looks beautiful when printed in high quality for titling, etc. And yes, *books* in Helvetica are generally awful. ----------------------------- JK> Serifs have been scientifically shown to be a *lot* easier on the reader, as they guide the eyes along the lines. LP-2> In all tests I've seen the serifs have always won the day, but only with certain seriffed fonts, and fonts like Univers aren't far behind. The "tracking" advantage for serif fonts is reduced when you're talking about narrow newspaper/magazine columns. ----------------------------- JK> You wrote a pretty short and partial history of type. Why ignore the roots of type (blackletter) as well as the climax (moderns-give an explanation) and subsequent 'post-modern' revivals? LP-2> I was just talking about the place the 3 most common DTP types hold in the history of typography, and a few associated pitfalls. It wasn't meant as a "history of typography" at all. Please feel free to provide such a history yourself. JK> I think any short list of specific faces is incomplete without mention of Palatino, the most popular Old Style revival in existence. LP-2> Do you? To my mind Palatino is grossly over used. You must agree it looks bad for dense text. It isn't a proper "oldstyle revival" at all, more of a "calligraphic interpretation" of it. Zapf designed it as a display face, and wasn't too concerned about lining up the serifs (check out the "t"). And it just *has* to be printed on 1200dpi devices (at least) to look good in small sizes. OK then, maybe a short list is incomplete without a caution NOT to use Palatino... JK> Also, if this is meant to be a "quick history/user guide for those fairly new to using fonts on desktop publishing systems," then I would recommend more directions about the proper uses of certain faces (e.g., Goudy for shaped text, Peignot for display *only*) and styles (e.g., italics for editorial comments, all-caps for basically nothing). LP-2> Okay, okay. I was only sharing a few ideas, not trying to write a book. Surely you agree that the 3 typefaces I chose are by far the most commonly used and abused these days? I don't think a discussion of Goudy or Peignot fits in very well here, unless we're hoping to make a very wide-ranging FAQL. Regarding styles: first, italics are used principally for *emphasis* (rather than bold in running text); second, all good books have a few small caps here and there, don't they? - all mine do... JK> Sorry if I come across as critical. I think the idea of making a FAQL is a good one, as is your effort. We just have to make sure it doesn't give any newbies the wrong impressions and further perpetuate the typographical morass we're facing today. LP-2> Sorry if I come across as defensive, but I stand by what I said and object to the suggestion that I am "perpetuating the typographical morass". (I don't know if you really intended this - apologies if you didn't.) Comments by Don Hosek: ====================== Don Hosek offers the following additional notes: The "Times" in most printers is actually a newer version of the font than Monotype's "Times New Roman" which it is originally based on. Walter Tracy's _Letters of Credit_ gives an excellent history of the face which was based on Plantin and in the original cutting has metrics matching the original face almost exactly. Another interesting note about the face is that it is almost a completely different design in the bold: this is due to the fact that old-styles are difficult to design as a bold. Incidentally, the classification of Times as a transitional is not firm. It likely is placed there by some type taxonomists (most notably Alexander Lawson) because of the bold and a few minor features. Others, myself included, think of it as a old style. The typeface listed in the Adobe catalog as Times Europa was a new face commissioned in 1974 to replace the old Times (whose 50th birthday was this past October 3rd). Hermann Zapf is not particularly pleased with any of the phototypesetting versions of Optima. As a lead face, Optima is very beautiful. His typeface "World", used in the World Book Encyclopedia is one recutting for photocomp which improves the font somewhat. He is on record as saying that if he had been asked, he would have designed a new font for the technology. Subject: 1.25. Pronounciation of Font Names Below each of the following font names, a suggested English pronounciation is given. This information was collected from a (relatively) long discussion on comp.fonts. If you disagree, or have other suggestions, please let me know. Arnold Boecklin =============== "Ar" as in car, "nold" as in "old" with an "n" on the front. "Boeck" is tricker. The "oe" is actually an umlaut "o" in German, and the closest sound to most English speakers is an "er". So try "Berklin" if you want to come close to the original. Otherwise, just say "Boklin", with a long o, like in "boat". Benguiat ======== Ben-Gat. This according to an ITC brochure. Courier ======= I would pronounce Courier not like Jim Courier, but the French way: Ku-rie, where "Ku" is pronounced like "coo", only short, and "rie" is pronounced "ree-eh". Didot ===== Stressed at the last syllable. "Dee-DOOH" (not nasal). Fette Fraktur ============= "Fet" as in "get" with a "te" that rhymes with "way". "Frak" rhymes with "mock", and "tur" with "tour". Fenice ====== Feh-nee'-chey Garamond ======== "Gara-": Use a french "r" instead of an english one. Both "a"s are pronounced like the "u" in the word "up". "-mond": the last syllable is stressed, and you don't pronounce the "n" and "d", but the whole "ond" is a nasal "o". Hold your nose closed and say "Ooh", then you get the right sound. The "ant" in "Avant-Garde" is very similar to this sound, it is a nasal situated between "a" and "o". Helvetica ========= Hell-veh'-ti-ka Koch Roman ========== Pronounced like scottish `Loch', but with K instead of L. LaTeX ===== Lamport lists lah'-tech, lah-tech', lay'-tech and lay'-tecks as valid on p.4. Last I talked to him he'd settled into lay'-tech which has always been my pronunciation as well. Somewhere, I heard that LL does explicitly rule out L.A.-tech, but he's from northern California which explains a lot. Mos Eisley ========== moss eyes-lee Novarese ======== No-vahr-ay'-zay Palatino ======== pa-la-TEEN-oh Peignot ======= There's some contention here, suggested pronouncations: pay-nyoh' "P" like "P" in `Post", "ei" like "a" in "fan", "gn" like "n" in "noon" plus "y" in "yes", "ot" - long, closed "o" (I don't know English examples), stressed. "P" like "P" in `Post", "ei" like "a" in "many", "gn" like "n" in "noon" plus "y" in "yes", "ot" - long, closed "o" (I don't know English examples), stressed. Sabon ===== Sah-bon' TeX === Rhymes with Blech, (as in "Blech, that tasted awfull!") Veljovic ======== Vel'-yo-vitch Zapf ==== Like "tsapf". The "a" is pronounced like a short version of the well known tongue-depresser vowel "aaahhh". Perhaps a better English analogy would be the "o" in "hop" or "hops". This is Info file comp.fonts.faq.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the input file FAQ.texinfo. Subject: 1.26. What does `lorem ipsum dolor' mean? `Lorem ipsum dolor' is the first part of a nonsense paragraph sometimes used to demonstrate a font. It has been well established that if you write anything as a sample, people will spend more time reading the copy than looking at the font. The "gibberish" below is sufficiently like ordinary text to demonstrate a font but doesn't distract the reader. Hopefully. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetaur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum Et harumd und lookum like Greek to me, dereud facilis est er expedit distinct. Nam liber te conscient to factor tum poen legum odioque civiuda. Et tam neque pecun modut est neque nonor et imper ned libidig met, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed ut labore et dolore magna aliquam makes one wonder who would ever read this stuff? Bis nostrud exercitation ullam mmodo consequet. Duis aute in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. At vver eos et accusam dignissum qui blandit est praesent luptatum delenit aigue excepteur sint occae. Et harumd dereud facilis est er expedit distinct. Nam libe soluta nobis eligent optio est congue nihil impedit doming id Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, set eiusmod tempor incidunt et labore et dolore magna aliquam. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerc. Irure dolor in reprehend incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse molestaie cillum. Tia non ob ea soluad incommod quae egen ium improb fugiend. Officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum Et harumd dereud facilis est er expedit distinct. Nam liber te conscient to factor tum poen legum odioque civiuda et tam. Neque pecun modut est neque nonor et imper ned libidig met, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed ut labore et dolore magna aliquam is nostrud exercitation ullam mmodo consequet. Duis aute in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. At vver eos et accusam dignissum qui blandit est praesent. Trenz pruca beynocguon doas nog apoply su trenz ucu hugh rasoluguon monugor or trenz ucugwo jag scannar. Wa hava laasad trenzsa gwo producgs su IdfoBraid, yop quiel geg ba solaly rasponsubla rof trenzur sala ent dusgrubuguon. Offoctivo immoriatoly, hawrgasi pwicos asi sirucor.Thas sirutciun applios tyu thuso itoms ghuso pwicos gosi sirucor in mixent gosi sirucor ic mixent ples cak ontisi sowios uf Zerm hawr rwivos. Unte af phen neige pheings atoot Prexs eis phat eit sakem eit vory gast te Plok peish ba useing phen roxas. Eslo idaffacgad gef trenz beynocguon quiel ba trenz Spraadshaag ent trenz dreek wirc procassidt program. Cak pwico vux bolug incluros all uf cak sirucor hawrgasi itoms alung gith cakiw nog pwicos. Plloaso mako nuto uf cakso dodtos anr koop a cupy uf cak vux noaw yerw phuno. Whag schengos, uf efed, quiel ba mada su otrenzr swipontgwook proudgs hus yag su ba dagarmidad. Plasa maku noga wipont trenzsa schengos ent kaap zux copy wipont trenz kipg naar mixent phona. Cak pwico siructiun ruos nust apoply tyu cak UCU sisulutiun munityuw uw cak UCU-TGU jot scannow. Trens roxas eis ti Plokeing quert loppe eis yop prexs. Piy opher hawers, eit yaggles orn ti sumbloat alohe plok. Su havo loasor cakso tgu pwuructs tyu InfuBwain, ghu gill nug bo suloly sispunsiblo fuw cakiw salo anr ristwibutiun. Hei muk neme eis loppe. Treas em wankeing ont sime ploked peish rof phen sumbloat syug si phat phey gavet peish ta paat ein pheeir sumbloats. Aslu unaffoctor gef cak siructiun gill bo cak spiarshoot anet cak GurGanglo gur pwucossing pwutwam. Ghat dodtos, ig pany, gill bo maro tyu ucakw suftgasi pwuructs hod yot tyubo rotowminor. Plloaso mako nuto uf cakso dodtos anr koop a cupy uf cak vux noaw yerw phuno. Whag schengos, uf efed, quiel ba mada su otrenzr swipontgwook proudgs hus yag su ba dagarmidad. Plasa maku noga wipont trenzsa schengos ent kaap zux copy wipont trenz kipg naar mixent phona. Cak pwico siructiun ruos nust apoply tyu cak UCU sisulutiun munityuw uw cak UCU-TGU jot scannow. Trens roxas eis ti Plokeing quert loppe eis yop prexs. Piy opher hawers, eit yaggles orn ti sumbloat alohe plok. Su havo loasor cakso tgu pwuructs tyu. [This version was found on CompuServe. It differs from other versions I have seen in print, increasingly so as you go along. It almost looks computer-generated, doesn't it?] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part4 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 2. Macintosh Information Subject: 2.1. Macintosh Font formats Postscript Type 1 fonts can be installed on the Macintosh only by using accompanying bitmapped fonts. Postscript Type 3 fonts are installed on the Macintosh in the same way that Type 1 fonts are. Truetype fonts: no bitmapped font is necessary with this type, though commonly used sizes are often supplied. Bitmap fonts: on the Macintosh, bitmap fonts also contain the kerning information for a font and must be installed with both type 1 and type 3 fonts. Their presence also speeds the display of commonly used font sizes. Subject: 2.2. Frequently Requested Mac Fonts Many fonts are available at various archives. The king of Macintosh font archives is mac.archive.umich.edu. On mac.archive.umich.edu, the fonts are located in the following folders: /mac/system.extensions/font/type1 /mac/system.extensions/font/type3 /mac/system.extensions/font/truetype The following fonts are in Type 1 format for the Macintosh. Some are also available in TrueType format. * Tamil Paladam, T. Govindram * Hebrew ShalomScript, ShalomOldStyle, ShalomStick, Jonathan Brecher * Japanese Shorai (Hirigana, with application) * Star Trek StarTrekClassic, Star TrekClassicMovies, StarTrekTNGCrille, StarTrekTNG Titles, TNG monitors, StarFleet, Klinzai (Klingon font) * Command-key symbol Chicago (TrueType or bitmap, key: Ctrl-Q), Chicago Symbols (Type3, key: 1), EncycloFont (Type3, key: d) * Astrologic/Astronomic symbols Hermetica (Type1), InternationalSymbols (Type 3, Mars and Venus only), MortBats (Type3), Zodiac (bitmap) * IBM OEM Line Drawing Characters Try Adobe PrestigeElite or Adobe LetterGothic. They have all the characters you want, but the `line draw' characters are unencoded -- you will need tools to reencode the outline font itself and make a new PFM metric files. Or try IBMExtended from Impramatur Systems in Cambridge, Mass. It already is encoded using IBM OEM encoding (some DOS code page). The IBM version of Courier distributed freely under the X11 Consortium also contains the appropriate characters. It is distributed in PC format, however. Again, the font will have to be reencoded for Windows. Appropriate AFM files for this font can be obtained from: ibis.cs.umass.edu:/pub/norm/comp.fonts. The file is called IBM-Courier-PC8-SymbolSet-AFMs.zip. Many of these mac fonts are available in files that are either entitled xxxx.sit or xxxx.cpt. xxxx.sit files are Stuffit archives. xxxx.cpt files are Compact Pro archives. StuffitLite (shareware $25) and Compact Pro (shareware $25) are available at the standard ftp sites. Uncompressors for these programs (free) are also available at the archive sites. Check the utilities/compression utilities folders. Subject: 2.3. Commercial Font Sources Commercial fonts can be obtained from a number of different companies, including the large font houses: Adobe, Font Haus, Font Company, Bitstream, and Monotype. At these companies, fonts cost about $40 for a single face, and must be purchased in packages. Adobe, Bitstream, and Monotype also sell pre-designated type collections for slightly lower prices. Image Club sells a wide selection of fonts for about $50 for a 4 font family. Other, cheaper companies sell fonts of lesser quality, including KeyFonts, which sells a set of 100 fonts for $50 and Casady & Green's Fluent Laser Fonts, a set of 79 fonts for $99. Casady & Greene also sells Cyrillic language fonts in Times, Bodoni, and Helvetica sell for about $40 for each 4 font family. Foreign language fonts, ranging from Egyptian hieroglyphics to Cyrillic can be obtained from Ecological Linguistics. Please consult the vendor list for a more complete list of vendors. Subject: 2.4. Mac Font Installation * System 7 Install the fonts by opening the suitcase containing the bitmap file and dropping the fonts into your system suitcase, located inside your system folder. You will need to quit all other applications before doing this. For a TrueType font, the icon for the font will have several letters in it, instead of just one. Dropping it into your system suitcase will make all sizes of the font available. For Postscript type 1 fonts, you also need to place the printer font in the extensions folder in your system folder. If you are using ATM you need to place these fonts in the root level of your system folder (not inside another folder). Using Suitcase, a font management utility, you can avoid cluttering your system folder with printer fonts. You can make new suitcases of fonts (generally not needed, but used by those who use Suitcase) by using Font DA mover. It operates the same as in system 6, except that the most recent version must be used. * System 6 Bitmap fonts can be installed using Font DA mover to move the fonts, located inside suitcases, into your system. You will need to restart your computer to make these fonts available. Printer fonts must be placed in the system folder, not inside any other folder. Truetype fonts can be used with system 6 if you get the Truetype init. Then the fonts can be installed in your system with Font DA mover. Suitcase can also be used under system 6. Subject: 2.5. Mac Font Utilities * SUITCASE Suitcase is a nifty little system extension that lets you avoid having to install fonts into your system. In system 6, it means that you can avoid restarting your system every time you want to install a new font. In system 7, Suitcase lets you avoid quitting all applications before making fonts available. Some programs, like Quark Xpress will automatically update their font list when you open a new suitcase, allowing much more flexibility in opening and closing font suitcases and making different sets of fonts available. Suitcase appears in your Apple menu in both system 7 and 6 and allows you to open suitcases, as though they were files, thus making the fonts contained in them accessible to programs. In addition, when suitcase is installed, printer fonts can be stored with the bitmap suitcases they correspond to, instead of having to drop them into your system folder. The most recent version of Suitcase is compatible with TrueType. Suitcase is about $54 from the mail order places. * Carpetbag A shareware program with functionality equivalent to Suitcase. * MASTER JUGGLER Claims to do similar things * ATM Adobe Type Manager is an Init and Control panel allows accurate screen display, at any size of PostScript type 1 fonts. It's function is replicated with Truetype (but for different outline font format). With it installed, you can print fonts of any size to non-PostScript printers. When using ATM, printer fonts must either be stored with the bitmap files opened with suitcase (when using Suitcase), or they must be stored in the root level of the system folder (with System 7.0, printer fonts must be stored in the Extension folder if you are not using Suitcase). ATM is now available, with the System 7.0 upgrade, as well as directly from adobe with 4 Garamond fonts. ATM is not built into System 7.1 as previously expected. With System 7.1, printer fonts must be stored in the Fonts folder if you are not using Suitcase. If you are using version 7.x prior to 7.1, the following hack allows you to have a Font folder (if you don't use Suitcase): Open the second 'DCOD' resource from the ATM 68020/030 file. Do an ASCII search for the string "extn" and change it to "font" (it's case sensitive). Save, close, and Reboot. This process should work for 68000 machines using the proper ATM file instead. * Super ATM This is a utility that will create fonts, on the fly, that match the metrics of any Adobe-brand fonts you don't have. It does a remarkably good job of mimicry because it uses two "generic" Multiple Master typefaces, serif and sans serif to simulate the appearance of the missing typefaces. (There is a 1.4 megabyte database file that allows Super ATM to simulate the fonts that aren't there.) You also get Type On Call (a CD-ROM), which has locked outline fonts, and unlocked screen font for all but the most recent faces in the Adobe Type library. * TTconverter A shareware accessory available at the usual archives will convert Truetype fonts for the IBM into Macintosh format. * Microsoft Font Pack If you work with a mixture of Macs and PCs running Windows 3.1, this is a good deal; 100 TrueType fonts compromising the Windows 3.1 standard set and the two Font Packs for Windows. This includes various display fonts, the Windows Wingdings font, and the Lucida family. A variety of programs, for example, Font Harmony, etc. will allow you to change the names and ID numbers of your fonts. Fontmonger and Metamorphosis will let you convert fonts among several formats (type 1 and 3 and Truetype for the Mac and PC), as well as letting you extract the font outlines from the printer fonts. Subject: 2.6. Making Outline Fonts This is very, very difficult. Many people imagine that there are programs that will simply convert pictures into fonts for them. This is not the case; most fonts are painstakingly created by drawing curves that closely approximate the letterforms. In addition, special rules (which improve hinting, etc.) mandate that these curves be drawn in specific ways. Even designing, or merely digitizing, a simple font can take hundreds of hours. Given that, there are two major programs used for font design on the Macintosh, Fontographer ($280) and FontStudio ($400). These programs will allow you to import scanned images, and then trace them with drawing tools. The programs will then generate type 1, 3, TrueType and Bitmap fonts for either the Macintosh or the IBM PC. They will also generate automatic hinting. They also open previously constructed outline fonts, allowing them to be modified, or converted into another format. As far as I know, there are no shareware programs that allow you to generate outline fonts. Subject: 2.7. Problems and Possible Solutions 1. Another font mysteriously appears when you select a certain font for display. This is often the result of a font id conflict. All fonts on the Macintosh are assigned a font id, an integer value. When two fonts have the same id, some programs can become confused about the appropriate font to use. Microsoft word 4.0 used font id's to assign fonts, not their names. Since id's can be different on different computers, a word document's font could change when it was moved from one computer to another. Other signs of font id problems are inappropriate kerning or leading (the space between lines of text). Some font ID problems can be resolved by using Suitcase, which will reassign font ID's for you, as well as saving a font ID file that can be moved from computer to computer to keep the id's consistent. Font ID problems can also be solved with several type utilities, which will allow you to reassign font id's. Most newer programs refer to fonts correctly by name instead of id number, which should reduce the frequency of this problem. 2. When using a document written in MSWord 5.0, the font mysteriously changes when you switch from your computer at home to work, or vice versa. This is the result of a bug in MSWord 5.0. The MSWord 5.0 updater, which can be found at the info-mac archives at sumex (in the demo folder), will fix this bug. Subject: 2.8. Creating Mac screen fonts Creating Mac screen fonts from Type 1 outlines ============================================== Peter DiCamillo contributes the following public domain solution: BitFont is a program which will create a bitmapped font from any font which can be drawn on your Macintosh. In addition to standard bitmapped fonts, it works with Adobe outline fonts when the Adobe Type Manager is installed, and works with TrueType? fonts. BitFont will also tell you how QuickDraw will draw a given font (bitmapped, ATM, or TrueType) and can create a text file describing a font and all its characters. BitFont was written using MPW C version 3.2. It is in the public domain and may be freely distributed. The distribution files include the source code for BitFont. Berthold K.P. Horn contributes the following solution. This is a commercial solution. A font manipulation package from Y&Y includes: AFMtoPFM, PFMtoAFM, AFMtoTFM, TFMtoAFM, AFMtoSCR, SCRtoAFM, TFMtoMET, PFBtoPFA, PFAtoPFB, MACtoPFA, PFBtoMAC, REENCODE, MODEX, DOWNLOAD, SERIAL, and some other stuff I forget. To convert PC Type 1 fonts to Macintosh use PFBtoMAC on the outline font itself; then use AFMtoSCR to make the Mac `screen font' (repository of metric info). You may need to use PFMtoAFM to first make AFM file. To convert Macintosh font to PC Type 1, use MACtoPFA, followed by PFAtoPFB. Then run SCRtoAFM on screen font to make AFM file. Finally, run AFMtoPFM to make Windows font metric file. Y&Y are the `TeX without BitMaps' people (see ad in TUGboat): Y&Y makes DVPSONE, DVIWindo, and fonts, for use with TeX mostly, in fully hinted Adobe Type 1 format. Y&Y, 106 Indian Hill, Carlisle MA 01741 USA (800) 742-4059 (508) 371-3286 (voice) (508) 371-2004 (fax) Mac Screen fonts can be constructed from outline fonts using Fontographer, as well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part5 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 3. MS-DOS Information The easiest way to get outline fonts under MS-DOS is with Microsoft Windows 3.x or OS/2 2.x. Microsoft Windows 3.0 with Adobe Type Manager (ATM) and OS/2 2.0 support PostScript Type1 fonts. Microsoft Windows 3.1 supports TrueType fonts natively. Bitmap fonts are available in a variety of formats: most formats are designed with the printer in mind and not the display since (prior to graphical environments like Windows, GEM, and OS/2) the majority of work under MS-DOS was done with a character-based interface. Subject: 3.1. Frequently Requested MS-DOS fonts Many fonts are available at various archives. The biggest font archive for MS-DOS format fonts is ftp.cica.indiana.edu. Note: you can use any Mac format Type1 font on your PC by converting it to PC format with the free/shareware as described below. The following fonts are in Type 1 format for MS-DOS. Some are also available in TrueType format. * Hebrew ShalomScript, ShalomOldStyle, ShalomStick * Japanese Shorai * Star Trek Crillee, TNG monitors * IBM OEM Line Drawing Characters Try Adobe PrestigeElite or Adobe LetterGothic. They have all the characters you want, but the `line draw' characters are unencoded -- you will need tools to reencode the outline font itself and make a new PFM metric files. Or try IBMExtended from Impramatur Systems in Cambridge, Mass. It already is encoded using IBM OEM encoding (some DOS code page). The IBM version of Courier distributed freely under the X11 Consortium also contains the appropriate characters. Again, the font will have to be reencoded for Windows. Appropriate AFM files for this font can be obtained from: ibis.cs.umass.edu:/pub/norm/comp.fonts. The file is called IBM-Courier-PC8-SymbolSet-AFMs.zip. Lee Cambell suggests the following alternative: Line Drawing characters are also available on ftp sites as gc0651.exe which is a self-expanding archive. It is on cica (and mirrors thereof). From the text file that comes with it, it looked like it was distributed by Microsoft. I printed some text in the normal A-z range and it looked identical to the truetype Courier font distributed with Windows. Perhaps it is an upgrade to that font. I didn't try the linedraw glyphs, so I can't say how they look. Subject: 3.2. MS-DOS Font Installation If you have any information that you feel belongs in this section, it would be greatly appreciated. * Windows * Pat Farrell contributes the following description of font installation under Windows. Installing Fonts into Windows: This only covers Windows 3.1 with ATM. Font is a four-letter word in Windows versions prior to 3.1 due to the distinctions between screen fonts and printer fonts. The upgrade price of Windows 3.1 is justified by the integration of TrueType into the package and the inclusion of useful fonts for all printers. Commercial fonts usually have installation instructions with their manuals. The approach may differ from the method used for PD and shareware fonts. To install PD and shareware fonts in Windows 3.1: 1. Copy the fonts onto a suitable scratch area (i.e. a floppy, or any temporary area of your hard disk. 2. Execute "Control Panel" by double-clicking on the icon in the Windows Program Manager's "main" group. 3. Double-click on the Fonts icon. 4. Double-click on the "Add" button. 5. Select the scratch directory holding the new fonts. 6. A list of the fonts will be displayed. You can manually select the fonts you like, or you can use the "Select All" button. 7. Make sure the "Copy Fonts to Windows Directory" check-box is checked. This will copy the fonts from the scratch area to your Windows directory. 8. Click on the "Ok" button. * Special notes for Windows applications: Word for Windows (W4W) stores font/printer information in its own initialization files. After you add new fonts, you have to tell W4W that the printer can use the new fonts. Do this by selecting "Printer Setup" from the W4W main "File" menu item, click on the "Setup" button, and then click on two "Ok" buttons to back out of the setup mode. * Note concerning Windows 3.1 upgrade: There are two upgrade packages available from Microsoft for Win3.1. There is the standard version which contains TrueType support, and about six font families (Times New Roman, Arial, Courier, Symbols, Wingdings, etc.). It costs something like $50 (US). The second version contains a number of TrueType fonts that includes equivalents for the 35 standard Postscript fonts. This adds an additional $50, which is a pretty good value. However, if you plan on buying Microsoft's PowerPoint, it includes the same additional fonts/typefaces. So you can save money by not buying the fonts twice. * More about Windows * [Q:] Why are don't the TrueType fonts that come with Microsoft products (Word-for-Windows, PowerPoint, Windows 3.1 TrueType Font Pack, etc.) display and print properly on my system? * [A:] The font matching algorithm in Win3.1 is fairly simplistic. If you install lots of TrueType fonts, the algorithm can get confused. In this case, "lots" is more than 50 or so. * According to Luann Vodder who supports Microsoft Word on CompuServ: "There is a procedure which Windows must go through when an application requests a font. Each font contains a list of attributes such as Family, FaceName, Height, Width, Orientation, Weight, Pitch, etc. When an application requests a font, it fills out a logical font for Windows containing the necessary attributes, then starts going through a font mapping algorithm to determine which of the installed fonts most closely matches the requested (logical) font. Penalties are applied against fonts whose attributes do not match the logical font, until the fonts with the fewest penalties are determined. If there is a "tie", Windows may need to rely on the order of the fonts in the WIN.INI file to determine the "winner". If the fonts you want are in your WIN.INI file, and show up in Windows' Control Panel, then try moving them higher in your WIN.INI file with a file edittor such as SYSEDIT." * Kesh Govinder suggested the following warning: CAUTION: While many Windows 3.1 users would like to have many TrueType fonts at their disposal (and they are many available in the PD) a word of caution. A large number (>50) TT fonts will slow down your windows startup time. This occurs as every installed font is listed in the win.ini file, and Windows has to go through the entire file before starting up. While this may not affect most users, it will especially affect users of CorelDraw!, so be warned. * Other Programs It is an unfortunate fact that almost all MS-DOS programs do things differently. Your best bet is to read the manual that comes with the program you want to use. Subject: 3.3. What exactly are the encodings of the DOS code pages? DOS uses `code pages' for `IBM OEM' encoding of fonts. There are six code pages supplied with DOS 5.0: 437 (English) 850 (Multilingual - Latin I) 852 (Slavic - Latin II) 860 (Portugal) 863 (Canadian French) 865 (Nordic) (The character code range 0 - 127 is the same in all code pages). The problem is that MS idea of how to define what a code page is, is to show a low resolution print out of the glyphs! Which is fine for the letters of the alphabet, numerals and the obvious punctuation marks, but worthless for accents (is it `cedilla' or `ogonek'? is it `caron' or `breve'?) and many other characters. For example, 249 is a small dot, while 250 is a slightly larger dot. Is one of these supposed to be `bullet' (which already occurs at 7)? Or is one of them maybe supposed to be `middot' or `dotcentered'? Is 228 supposed to be `Sigma' or `summation'. Is 225 supposed to be `beta' or `germandbls'? Etc etc And what is the character that looks like `Pt' in code position 158? Anyway, surely there is a table somewhere that defines precisely what these encodings are supposed to be. That is, a table that gives for each code number the name and/or a description of the character. Subject: 3.4. MS-DOS Font Utilities * PS2PK PS2PK allows you to convert PostScript Type1 fonts into bitmap fonts. The bitmap files produced are in TeX PK format. * PKtoSFP PKtoSFP allows you to convert TeX PK fonts into HP LaserJet softfonts. * PFBDir/PFBInfo PFBDir and PFBInfo format and display the "headers" in a binary Type1 font. Subject: 3.5. Converting fonts under MS-DOS Subject: 3.5.1. Converting Mac Type 1 fonts to MS-DOS format Converting Macintosh Type1 fonts into PC Type1 fonts can be done using purely free/shareware tools. I've outlined the procedure below. Make sure you read the "readme" files that accompany many fonts. Some font authors specifically deny permission to do cross-platform conversions. The tools you need ================== XBIN xbin23.zip in /pub/msdos/mac on oak.oakland.edu (or other mirrors) UNSIT unsit30.zip in /pub/msdos/mac on oak.oakland.edu UNSITI unsiti.exe in /pub/onset/util on ftp.std.com Peter Gentry indicates that this program can extract SIT archives that use the newer compression techniques that unsit doesn't recognize. UNCPT ext-pc.zip in /pub/pc/win3/util on ftp.cica.indiana.edu REFONT refont14.zip in /pub/norm/mac-font-tools on ibis.cs.umass.edu BMAP2AFM bm2af02.zip in /pub/norm/mac-font-tools on ibis.cs.umass.edu XBIN converts Mac "BinHex"ed files back into binary format. BinHex is the Mac equivalent of UUencoding, it translates files into ascii characters so that mailers can send them around without difficulty. It also aids in cross platform copying too, I'm sure. BinHexed files generally have filenames of the form "xxx.yyy.HQX". UNSIT explodes "Stuffit" archives. Stuffit archives generally have filenames of the form "xxx.SIT". UNSIT will ask if you want to seperate resource and data forks. Yes, you do. There has been some confusion about whether or not you want headers. I'm inclined to conclude that it can be made to work either way. Personally, I say no. UNCPT explodes "Compactor" archives. The ext-pc implementation is called "extract" and does not require windows (even thought it's in the windows section on cica). Compactor archives generally have filenames of the form "xxx.CPT". REFONT converts Mac type1 fonts into PC type1 fonts. It also converts Mac TrueType fonts to PC TrueType format. And vice-versa. BMAP2AFM constructs AFM files from the metric information contained in Mac screen fonts (.bmap files). The screen font files do not have any standard name (although they frequently have the extension .bmap). The screen fonts have file type "FFIL" which, in combination with some common sense, is usually sufficient to identify them. I've listed the tools that I've used and the sites that are reasonable for me to retrieve them from. It's probably a good idea to check with archie for closer sites if you're not in North America. These tools run under MS-DOS. XBIN and UNSIT can also be run under Unix. How to do it? ============= Collect the Mac fonts from the archive or BBS of your choice. Most of these files will be in BinHexed format. As a running example, I'm going to use the imaginary font "Plugh.cpt.hqx". When I download this font to my PC, I would use the name "PLUGH.CPX". The actual name you use is immaterial. Run XBIN on PLUGH.CPX. This will produce PLUGH.DAT, PLUGH.INF, and PLUGH.RSR. The data fork of the Mac file (the .DAT file) is the only one of interest to us, you can delete the others. If the original file had been "Plugh.sit.hqx", we would be using the UNSIT program. Since I chose a .cpt file for this example, I'm going to run UNCPT. Run UNCPT on PLUGH.DAT. You want to extract the AFM file (if present), the documentation or readme file (if present), and the Type1 outline file. The AFM and README files will be in the data fork of the archive file. The Type1 outline will be in the resource fork. The AFM and README files have Mac "TEXT" type. The Type1 outline file has "LWFN" type. I'm not trying to describe this part in a step-by-step fashion. Use the docs for UNCPT and UNSIT as a guide. If you got this far you probably won't have much difficulty. If you do, drop me a line and I'll try to help. If the font does not contain an AFM file, extract the screen font. Screen fonts frequently have the extension .bmap and are "FFIL" type files. Use Bmap2AFM to construct an AFM from the screen font. If the archive _does_ contain an AFM file, it's safe to bet that the author's AFM will be better than the one created by Bmap2AFM. Finally, run REFONT on the Type1 outline that you extracted above. The result should be an appropriate PC type1 outline. REFONT will create a PFM file for you from the AFM file, if you desire. Remember to register your shareware... Other comments ============== vkautto@snakemail.hut.FI makes the following observations: * UNCPT is easier to use than UNSIT * UNCPT has to be run twice. I usually do it like this extract *.cpt -f extract *.cpt -f -r * When using "unsit30" you probably want the outline file with the MacHeader and the others without it. I think that REFONT requires it but I am not sure. * REFONT works usually ok. You want a PFA (ASCII) file which is directly usable on NeXT (you may need to convert carriage-returns to newlines but I am not sure if it is necessary). The biggest problem is with the .afm files that are completely missing or generated by the tools that don't do their job properly. * BMAP2AFM requires some extra files (ie. other than bmap2afm.exe) to work properly. Subject: 3.5.2. Converting PC Type 1 and TrueType fonts to Mac format Refont (version 1.4) can convert (in both directions) between PC and Mac formats of Type1 and TrueType fonts. Note: it _cannot_ convert _between_ formats, only architectures. The procedure described above outlines how to convert a Mac archive into PC format so that you can get at the data. Presumably, the process can be reversed so that you can get at the data on the Mac side as well. Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac so I can't describe the process in detail. Subject: 3.5.3. Converting PC Type 1 fonts into TeX PK bitmap fonts The release of PS2PK by Piet Tutelaers is a godsend to those of us without PostScript printers. PS2PK converts PC/Unix format Type 1 fonts into TeX PK files. Used in conjunction with the AFM2TFM utility for creating TeX metric files, this allows almost anyone to use Type 1 PostScript fonts. PS2PK is distributed under the GNU License and has been made to run under MS-DOS with DJGPP's free GNU C compiler. The PC version requires a 386 or more powerful processor. Check with Archie for a source near you. Note: if TeX PK files are not directly usable for you, there seems to be a fair possibility that LaserJet softfonts would be useful. If so, check below for instructions on converting TeX PK files to LaserJet softfonts. Subject: 3.5.4. Converting TeX PK bitmaps into HP LaserJet softfonts (and vice-versa) There is some possibility that someone will yell 'conflict of interest' here, but I don't think so. I wrote the following utilities: PKtoSFP: convert TeX PK files to LaserJet (bitmapped) softfonts SFPtoPK: convert LaserJet (bitmapped) softfonts to TeX PK files But they are completely free, so I don't gain anything by "advertising" them here. These are MS-DOS platform solutions only. If you know of other solutions, I would be happy to list them. Subject: 3.5.5. TrueType to HP LaserJet bitmap softfonts (HACK!) If you have the tools, the following suggestion does work, but it isn't easy and it hasn't been automated. To be honest, I haven't really tested it. If you are using Windows 3.1, get a LaserJet printer driver (you don't need the printer, just the driver). Using the LaserJet driver, direct output to a file and print a simple file containing all the letters you want in the softfont in the font that you are converting. When the print job has completed, the output file will contain, among other things, a LaserJet softfont of the TrueType font you selected. If you know the LaserJet format, you can grab it out of there. I didn't say it was easy ;-) This method will not work with ATM [ed: as of 7/92] because ATM does not construct a softfont; it downloads the whole page as graphics. Here is an overview of the LaserJet bitmap softfont format. It should help you get started. If you have any questions, ask norm. If anyone wants to write better instructions... ;-) Many details are omitted from this description. They are thoroughly discussed in the HP Technical Reference for each model of laser printer. I recommend purchasing the Tech Ref. If you have additional questions and do not plan to purchase the Tech Ref (or do not wish to wait for its arrival), you can ask norm. An HP LaserJet softfont can occur almost anywhere in the output stream destined for the printer. In particular, it does _not_ have to be wholly contiguous within the output file. In fact, fonts can be "intermixed" at will. The following "pieces" make up a font: A begin font descriptor command (followed by the descriptor) and a series of begin character descriptor commands (followed by their associated data). When a new character descriptor is encountered, it is added to the current font (which may change between descriptors). In the discussion that follows, the following notational conventions are followed: Key elements are surrounded by quotation marks. The quotation marks are not part of the element. Spaces within the element are for clarity only, they are not part of the element. All characters (except ESC and #, described below, are literal and must be entered in the precise case shown). ESC means the escape character, ASCII character number 27 decimal. # means any decimal number. The meaning of the number is described in the commentary for that element. * What is a font descriptor? A font descriptor begins with a font descriptor command and is followed immediately by the data for the descriptor. Font descriptors define data global to the font. In general, more recent printers are less strict about these parameters than older printers. * What is the font descriptor command? "ESC ) s # W" In this command, # is the number of bytes in the descriptor. The first element of the descriptor indicates how many of these bytes should be interpreted as the font descriptor (the remaining bytes are commentary only-to the printer, at least). This area is frequently used for copyright information, for example, although some systems insert kerning data into this area. * What is the font descriptor data? The data is: UI Font descriptor size UB Descriptor format UB Font type UI Reserved (should be 0) UI Baseline distance UI Cell width UI Cell height UB Orientation B Spacing UI Symbol set UI Pitch UI Height UI xHeight SB Width Type UB Style SB Stroke Weight UB Typeface LSB UB Typeface MSB UB Serif Style SB Underline distance UB Underline height UI Text Height UI Text Width UB Pitch Extended UB Height Extended UI Cap Height UI Reserved (0) UI Reserved (0) A16 Font name ?? Copyright, or any other information UI = unsigned integer, SI = signed integer, UB = unsigned byte, SB = signed byte, B = boolean, and A16 =sixteen bytes of ASCII. After the font name, ?? bytes of extra data may be inserted. These bytes pad the descriptor out to the length specified in the begin font descriptor command. Note: integers are always in big-endian order (MSB first). * What is a character descriptor? A character descriptor describes the character specific info and the layout of the bitmap. Newer printers can accept compressed character bitmaps. * What is a character descriptor command? "ESC * c # E" The # is the length of the descriptor, in bytes. * What is the character descriptor data? UB Format B Continuation UB Descriptor size UB Class UB Orientation SI Left offset SI Top offset UI Character width UI Character height SI Delta X ?? Character (bitmap) data. Although older printers cannot accept characters that include continuations, newer printers can. If the "continuation" field is 1, the character bitmap data begins immediately after that byte and the remaining fields _are not_ present. * Ok, now I understand the data, what do I look for in the output stream? ESC * c # D defines the font number (remember the number). ESC ) s # W defines the font descriptor (as described above). ESC * c # E specifies the character code (the #, in this case). The next character descriptor maps to this position in the font. Characters do not have to appear in any particular order. ESC ( s # W defines the character descriptor (as described above). Remember, these can occur in any order. Experimentation with the particular driver you are using may help you restrict the number of different cases that you have to be prepared for. Please report your experiences using this method to norm (both to satisfy his own curiosity and to help improve the FAQ). Subject: 3.6. MS-DOS Screen Fonts (EGA/VGA text-mode fonts) Editors note: the following description was mercilessly stolen from comp.archives on 02SEP92. It was originally Yossi Gil's posting. FNTCOL14.ZIP contains more than 200 text mode fonts for EGA/VGA displays. It includes fonts in different sizes for Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, math symbols and various type styles including smallcaps and script. It is available at borg.poly.edu:/pub/reader/dos/fntcol14.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part6 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 4. OS/2 Information [ed: Except as otherwise noted, the entire OS/2 section of the comp.fonts FAQ List is derived from the "Draft OS/2 Font FAQ" posted by David J. Birnbaum.] This section if the FAQ is Copyright (C) 1993 by David J. Birnbaum. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced here by permission. [ed: Since this section of the FAQ is wholly derived from David's document, some sections contain information repeated elsewhere in the comp.fonts FAQ.] David Birnbaum's Introduction ============================= 4 June 1993 A couple of weeks ago I posted an inquiry to comp.fonts, comp.os.os2.misc, and the OS2-L ListServ concerning some apparent peculiarities in the way OS/2 handles font files. These "peculiarities" actually reflect regular, systematic differences in OS/2, Windows, and DOS font handling, which are not conveniently described in end-user documentation. This posting is intended to spare others some of the confusion I encountered as a result of this paradigm shift. This is the first (draft) distribution of this document and corrections and suggestions are welcome. I am grateful to Henry Churchyard, Marc L. Cohen, Bur Davis and Kamal Mansour for helpful discussions; they are not, of course, responsible for any misinterpretation I may have inflicted on their comments. Subject: 4.1. Preliminaries Character: an informational unit consisting of a value (usually a byte) and roughly corresponding to what we think of as letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. Glyph: a presentational unit corresponding roughly to what we think of as letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. Character vs glyph: Glyph and character are not necessarily the same; the character may be mapped to a Times Roman Lower Case glyph in one font and to a Helvetica Lower Case glyph in another font. Change of glyphs normally means a change in style of presentation, while change in characters normally means a change in information. There are gray areas and the definitions provided above are general, approximate, and imprecise. Character set: an inventory of characters with certain assigned values. ASCII is a 7-bit character set that specifies which "character cell" (byte value) corresponds to which informational unit. Code Page: essentially synonymous with character set. Font: A collection of glyphs. A specific font may be isomorphic with a specific character set, containing only glyphs corresponding to characters in that set, with these glyphs mapped to the same byte values as the characters they are intended to represent. PostScript fonts often contain additional (unmapped) characters. Most importantly, PostScript fonts may sometimes be remapped by an operating environment, which is what leads to the disorienting cross-environment mismatch that spurred my original posting. Fonts may be bitmapped or outline in format; a bitmapped format corresponds to a particular size and weight for a particular device or device resolution, while a single outline font is used to generate multiple sizes as needed. Within an outline font system, different weights (bold, semibold, italic, etc.) may be encoded as separate font resources (separate outline files used to generate the glyphs) or may all be generated from a single outline (slanting characters to make "italics," fattening them for "bold," etc.). Subject: 4.2. Fonts under DOS I used a large assortment of fonts under DOS for intricate multilingual work. My setup at that time consisted of a library of bitmapped fonts that could be sent to my HP LaserJet II printer, as well as a set of fixed-size, fixed-width screen fonts that were supported by my Hercules Graphics Card Plus (not the same as Hercules Graphics; the "Plus" included an ability to store 3072 screen glyphs and display any of these together, while standard character-mode displays were normally limited to 256 or 512 such entities). Using XyWrite as a word processor, I would enter a "Mode" command to change fonts and character sets simultaneously; this would make different sets of screen glyphs available at the keyboard and would insert a font-change command for my printer into the text stream. The "Mode" and font-change commands were not displayed on the screen. The result was not WYSIWYG, since I was limited to fixed-width screen display and since I had far more printer glyphs available than the 3072 limit imposed by my video card; I used a brightness attribute to indicate bold, I used the same screen font for different sizes of printer fonts, etc. This worked and worked well, in that I could see (for example) Russian, Greek, English, Polish, and other characters simultaneously on the screen and I could print documents combining them. Architecturally, what was going on was that the character sets (code pages) and fonts were entirely isomorphic and were hard- coded. If I put a particular Russian letter into cell 246 of my screen and printer fonts, that character was always there, and any strategy that would let me access this cell (remapped keyboards, numeric keypad) was guaranteed always to find the same character. Subject: 4.3. Windows I recently began using PostScript fonts in Windows with AmiPro as my word processor. These fonts came with printed cards indicating the glyph mappings; I could look at the card and it would tell me that a specific character lived in cell 246, and if I entered Alt-0246 at the numeric keypad that glyph would appear on the screen. If I loaded the font into Fontographer for Windows, these glyphs would be arrayed in cells according to the map provided by Adobe with the fonts. Fontographer also revealed that these fonts had other, "unmapped" glyphs assigned to cells above 255. Given what appeared to be a hard correspondence among what I saw in Fontographer, what was printed in Adobe's maps, and what was displayed when I entered something at the keyboard, I naively assumed that PostScript fonts were operating much like my bitmapped fonts under DOS. There were some obvious differences, the primary one being that glyphs of different sizes were all drawn from the same font resource files under PostScript, but it appeared as if a glyph lived in a certain cell. Subject: 4.4. Differences between Windows and OS/2 This assumption was incorrect; PostScript fonts can be subdivided into two types, one of which observes hard and invariant encodings similar to those that apply to my bitmapped fonts, while the other represents a completely different font mapping strategy. This difference became apparent only when I attempted to share PostScript fonts between Windows and OS/2 and got some unexpected results. A PostScript font under Windows involves two files, a PFB (PostScript Font Binary) file, which contains the PostScript instructions needed to draw each glyph and some mapping information, and a PFM (Printer Font Metrics) file, which encodes width and kerning information. A PostScript font under OS/2 also uses the same PFB file, but instead of the PFM file it uses an AFM (Adobe Font Metrics) file. The AFM and PFM files contain much of the same basic information (although the AFM file is somewhat more complete); the most important differences are in format (AFM is plain text, PFM is binary) and use (OS/2 uses AFM, Windows uses PFM). Subject: 4.5. Installation under Windows and Win-OS/2 The OS/2 2.0 Font Palette tool (see below for changes to be introduced with 2.1) by default installs fonts (both PFB and AFM files) into the "\os2\dll" directory. Win-OS/2 by default installs PFB files into "\psfonts" and PFM files into "\psfonts\pfm". These defaults can be changed; since OS/2 and Win-OS/2 use the same PFB files, the user can save disk space by allowing these to be shared (through installing into the same directory, e.g., install OS/2 fonts into the "\psfonts" directory instead of "\os2\dll".) Note that fonts must be intalled and removed through the Font Palette; if you copy, move, or delete a font file without using the Font Palette, the system configuration files are not updated and all hell breaks loose. Deleting fonts from Win-OS/2 causes the system to update the win.ini file to remove references to the font, but does not delete any files physically. Deleting fonts from the OS/2 Font Palette updates the os2.ini configuration file and physically deletes the AFM and PFB files from the disk. This means that if you are sharing PFB files between OS/2 and Win-OS/2, you can delete a Win-OS/2 font without hurting native OS/2 operations, since the PFB reamins installed where OS/2 thinks it is. But if you delete an OS/2 font using the Font Palette, the PFB file is erased from the disk even though the win.ini file is not updated, so that Win-OS/2 thinks it is still there. Subject: 4.6. FontSpecific PostScript Encoding Every PFB file contains an "encoding vector"; this is a plain text line embedded near the head of the PFB file. Encoding vectors are of two types: AdobeStandardEncoding and everything else. Adobe usually uses the label "FontSpecific" for fonts that are not encoded according to AdobeStandardEncoding, and I use it as a cover term here for any such font. If you look at the readable plain text information at the head of a FontSpecific type font, it includes a range of text that begins: /Encoding 256 array followed by a bunch of lines, each of which includes a number (which corresponds to a cell in the font layout) and the name of the glyph that lives in that cell. The unreadable binary data below this array specification lists the name of each glyph and the PostScript instructions for how the glyph is to be drawn. There may be PostScript code for drawing glyphs that are not included in the mapping array, but only glyphs mentioned in the array specification are available to applications. FontSpecific type fonts are comparable to the bitmapped fonts I used under DOS. Each character physically is assigned to a specific cell within the font file and operating environments are not allowed to remap these. The glyph in cell 246 will be the same in both Windows and OS/2. Subject: 4.7. AdobeStandardEncoding AdobeStandardEncoding is a specific mapping of certain glyphs to certain cells; in this respect it resembles FontSpecific encoding. Because it is standardized, the array is not spelled out in the PFB file; the line /Encoding StandardEncoding def tells Adobe Type Manager (ATM, either the Windows and Win-OS/2 version or the native OS/2 version) that the encoding is "standard," and the environments are expected to know what this standard is without having the array spelled out in each font file. Although AdobeStandardEncoding is a real mapping, there is an importance difference between it and various FontSpecific mappings: operating environments are expected to remap AdobeStandardEncoding fonts according to their own requirements. That is, although AdobeStandardEncoding does assign glyphs to cells, no operating environment actually uses these assignments and any environment remaps the glyphs before rendering them. Confusion arises because Windows and OS/2 remap such fonts in different ways. Subject: 4.8. AdobeStandardEncoding under Windows (and Win-OS/2) An AdobeStandardEncoding font under Windows is remapped according to a character map (code page) that MicroSoft calls Windows ANSI (can other code pages be installed in Windows?). This determines which character resides in which cell and the font is remapped so that glyphs and characters will correspond. Since Fontographer for Windows is a Windows application, it displays glyphs not in the cells in which they live according to AdobeStandardEncoding, but in the cells to which they get reassigned under the remapping to Windows ANSI. There is nothing explicit in the PFB file that associates these characters with the specific cells in which they appear under Windows. Subject: 4.9. AdobeStandardEncoding under OS/2 OS/2 operates within a set of supported code pages; two system- wide code pages are specified in the config.sys file and an application is allowed to switch the active code page to any supported code page (not just these two). DeScribe, for example, currently operates in code page (CP) 850, which includes most letters needed for western European Latin alphabet writing. CP 850 does not contain typographic quotes, en- and em-dashes, and other useful characters. It does contain the IBM "pseudographics," which are useful for drawing boxes and lines with monospaced fonts. When the user inputs a value (through the regular keyboard or the numeric keypad), the application checks the active CP, looks up in an internal table the name of the character that lives in that cell within that CP, and translates it into a unique number that corresponds to one of the 383 glyphs supported by OS/2 (the union of all supported code pages). This number is passed to PM-ATM (the OS/2 ATM implementation), which translate the glyph number into the glyph name that PostScript fonts expect and searches the font for that name. The system never looks at where a glyph is assigned under the AdobeStandardEncoding array; rather, it scans the font looking for the character by name and gives it an assignment derived from the active code page. This is the remapping that OS/2 performs on AdobeStandardEncoding type fonts. As a result, a situation arises where, for example, is mapped to cell 246 under Windows ANSI but to cell 148 under CP 850. Using the identical PFB file, this glyph is accessed differently in the two operating environments. Subject: 4.10. Consequences for OS/2 users If your font has a FontSpecific encoding, there are no unexpected consequences; the same glyphs will show up at the same locations in both Windows (Win-OS/2) and native OS/2. Regardless of what the active code page is, if the font has a FontSpecific encoding OS/2 goes by cell value; a specific glyph is hard-coded to a specific cell and OS/2 will give you whatever it finds there, even if what it finds disagrees with what the active code page would normally predict. In other words, FontSpecific encoding means "ignore the mapping of the active code page and rely on the mapping hard-coded into the font instead." If your font has an AdobeStandardEncoding encoding, the following details obtain: 1) The same PFB file may have glyphs that are accessible in one environment but not another. For example, if DeScribe thinks it is operating in CP 850, there is no access to typographic quotes, even if those do occur in the PFB file and even if Windows can find them in the same exact font file. DeScribe could switch code pages, but if the application isn't set up to do so (and DeScribe currently isn't), those characters are absolutely inaccessible to the user. 2) If the active code page includes a character that isn't present in the font, OS/2 has to improvise. For example, AdobeStandardEncoding fonts do not normally include the IBM pseudographics, yet the user who inputs the character value for one of these sends the system off to look for it. As described above, OS/2 first checks the active font for the glyph name that corresponds to that character and, if it finds it, displays it. If the glyph isn't found, OS/2 looks to the system Symbol font. This is not reported back to the user in DeScribe; if I have Adobe Minion active (AdobeStandardEncoding, no information anywhere in the font files for pseudographics) and input a pseudographic character, DeScribe tells me it is still using Adobe Minion, even though it has fetched the character it displays and prints from the Symbol font, a different font resource file. Subject: 4.11. Advice to the user OS/2's code page orientation provides some advantages, in that it separates the character set (code page) mapping from the encoded font mapping. The main inconvenience isn't a loss of function, but a disorientation as users become accustomed to the new paradigm. If you need a glyph that you know is in your PFB file but that isn't in the active code page (and if you can't change code pages within your application), you can't get at it in OS/2 without tampering with the font files. To tamper, you can use font manipulation tools to redesignate the PFB file as FontSpecific ("Symbol" character set to Fontographer). If you then map the glyphs you need into one of the lower 256 cells (with some limitations), they will be accessible in all environments. The Fontographer manual does not explain what the "Symbol" character encoding label really does, it just tells you not to use it except for real symbol fonts. In fact you should use it for any font that will not correspond in inventory to the code page supported by your application, which means any non-Latin fonts. You do not have to recode all your fonts, and you wouldn't normally want to do so, since Fontographer hinting is not nearly as good as Adobe's own hand-tuning and regenerating a font regenerates the hints. All you have to do is make sure you have one FontSpecific type font installed that includes your typographic quotes, etc. for each typeface you need. Within DeScribe, you can then write a macro that will let you switch fonts, fetch a character, and switch back, thereby allowing you to augment any group of fonts with a single, shared set of typographic quotes (or whatever) that you put in a single FontSpecific font. Alternatively, OS/2 also supports CP 1004, which does contain typographic quotes and other characters used for high-quality typography, but the user may not be able to convince an application to invoke this code page if it was not designed to do so. You can have any number of FontSpecific fonts installed, which means that there is a mechanism for dealing with unsupported character sets (code pages). You can also tinker with the font files to try to trick the operating system. For example, using Fontographer or other utilities, you can change the name assigned to a glyph description within the PFB file. If you want to use AdobeStandardEncoding and you want to see a specific glyph at a specific cell when DeScribe thinks it's using CP 850, you have to make sure that the name assigned to the description of that glyph is what DeScribe expects to find. OS/2 doesn't care whether, say, really looks like with two dots over it, as long as it bears the right name. This second approach is obviously far more complex and provides much more opportunity for error. Its advantage is that OS/2 does not support case conversion and sorting (other than in machine order) for unsupported code pages, since these operations depend on character names. Keeping supported names from supported code pages while changing the artwork is one way to maintain order and case correspondences while increasing the range of glyphs actually supported. I have not experimented with this approach, since the use I would get out of the adding functionality (over the FontSpecific encoding approach) is not worth the amount of effort required. Subject: 4.12. OS/2 2.1 and beyond OS/2 2.1 will change some aspects of font handling. First, OS/2 2.0 GA+SP has a bug that can cause OS/2 to crash when an AFM file with more than 512 kern pairs is read. This is fixed in 2.1. (This bug is separate from a design limitation in MicroSoft Windows that causes large kern tables to be read incorrectly. This problem is still under investigation; watch this space for a report.) Fonts in 2.1 will be installed by default into the "\psfonts" directory, so that they will normally be shared with Win-OS/2 fonts. (The user will still be able to specify a directory; all that will change is the default). The user will also be able to instruct the Font Palette not to delete font files when fonts are uninstalled, so as to avoid clobbering a Win-OS/2 font by removing it from native OS/2 use through the Font Palette (although the default will still be to delete the physical font files). OS/2 will stop using AFM files and will replace these with OFM files, a binary metrics file (different from PFM) that OS/2 will compile from the AFM file during font installation. This will speed font loading, since the system will not have to parse a plain text metrics file. Additionally, the OS/2 PostScript printer driver used to install its own, large font files, but will now use the OFM and PFB files, thereby saving 50k-200k of disk space per installed font outline. IBM's long-term goal is to replace the 383-entity inventory of supported glyphs with Unicode. This is very much a long-term goal and there is not even a hint of when it might become available. It has its own problems, stemming from the fact that Unicode is essentially a character standard and glyph and character inventories may differ is assorted ways, but it will be a significant step in the proverbial right direction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part7 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 5. Unix Information This section needs a lot of work. At the time of this release, I'm not in a position to write it so I'm leaving it basically blank. Even if you don't have time to write it, if you know what _should_ be in this section, please forward it to norm. Please consult the 'utilities' section for more information. Most of the utilities described in that section run under Unix. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part8 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 6. Sun Information Someone mailed a file of Sun-related font tips. Unfortunately, I cannot find the file. If you have any suggestion for this section (or if you are the person that mailed me the other list), please forward your suggestions to norm. Subject: 6.1. Fonts Under Open Windows The following information regarding fonts under Open Windows was stolen from Liam R.E. Quin's Open Windows FAQ. The original author was Rick Heli. Subject: 6.1.1. Does OpenWindows support Type 1 PostScript fonts? Type 1 fonts are supported starting with the NeWSprint 2.0 and Solaris 2.0 (OpenWindows 3.0.1) releases. There are also 57 F3 format fonts supplied with OpenWindows which are fully hinted. Documentation on the F3 font format and the F3 font interpreter, TypeScaler, is available from Sun. The TypeScaler product is separately licensable from SunPics (the printing arm of Sun Microsystems). If you're interested in licensing this product, Rick Heli can put you in touch with Marketing to work out the arrangements. TypeScaler does not appear as a standalone portion of OpenWindows, though it is resident within the X11/NeWS server. Subject: 6.1.2. Improving font rendering time Although the Sun type renderer (TypeScaler) is pretty fast, it's not as fast as loading a bitmap. You can pre-generate bitmap fonts for sizes that you use a lot, and you can also alter and access the font cache parameters. If you have a lot of memory you might want to increase the font cache size. $ psh -i Welcome to X11/NeWS Version3 <--- psh will say this at you currentfontmem = % type this line ... 300 % ... my server was using 300 Kbytes 1024 setfontmem % Just to check: currentfontmem = 1024 See pp. 328ff of the NeWS 3.0 Programmer's Guide. You need to say psh -i so that the PostScript packages are loaded - see the psh man page. Subject: 6.1.3. Making bitmap fonts for faster startup Sun supports the F3 scalable outline format. These descriptions are stored in .f3b files. The makeafb program is used to create a bitmap font at a particular size which is stored in a .afb file, which is an Adobe ASCII format for font bitmaps. X11/NeWS really prefers a binary format though for speed and other reasons, so convertfont is used to "compile" the font into a font binary or .fb file. Once this is done, X11/NeWS needs to understand the relationship between the .f3b file and all the bitmaps which are based on it. Thus, the bldfamily program makes these correlations and stores the data in the font family or .ff file. bldfamily also builds a global list of all fonts stored in the working directory, writing the results out to the file Families.list. If one wishes to create font aliases, these can be added to the Synonyms.list file by hand and bldfamily will then add them to Families.list for you. X11/NeWS uses Families.list to construct the font list it advertises to applications. To go from F3 to BDF, use makeafb to generate a bitmap font in .afb format. Then use one of convertfont's many options to change to this to .bdf format and from there it should be clear. $ mkdir $HOME/myfonts $ cd $HOME/myfonts $ makeafb -20 -M $OPENWINHOME/lib/fonts/Bembo.f3b Creating Bembo20.afb $ convertfont -b Bembo20.afb Bembo20.afb->./Bembo20.fb Chars parameter greater than number of characters supplied. $ ls Bembo20.afb Bembo20.fb Synonyms.list $ bldfamily * Bembo ./Bembo.ff (Encoding: latin) cat: ./Compat.list: No such file or directory $ xset +fp `pwd` $ xset fp rehash If you want the server to see your new font directory every time, add this directory to your FONTPATH environment variable in one of your start-up files, e.g. .login or .profile. Subject: 6.1.4. Converting between font formats (convertfont, etc.) You can also use F3 fonts with an X11 server, by converting them to a bitmap (X11 bdf format) first. Your license restricts use of these fonts on another machine, and unless you have NeWSPrint you shouldn't use them for printing. Having said all that... you can use makeafb and convertfont to generate bdf files that you can compile with bdftosnf or bdftopcf. Use mftobdf (from the SeeTeX distribution) to convert TeX PK fonts to X11 BDF format, which you can then use with either X11 or OpenWindows. Subject: 6.1.5. Xview/OLIT fonts at 100 dpi There aren't any. More precisely, the various text fonts, such as Lucida Typewriter Sans, are available at 100 dpi, and in fact are scalable under OpenWindows. The glyph fonts are bitmaps, and don't scale very well. Subject: 6.2. Where can I order F3 fonts for NeWSprint and OpenWindows? 600 F3 fonts are available for unlocking from Printer's Palette, a CD available with NeWSprint 2.0. In addition, F3 fonts are available from the following sources: Linotype AG Linotype Company Mergenthaler Allee 55-75 425 Oser Avenue 6236 Eschborn Germany Hauppague, NY 11788 49/(61 96) 4031 (800) 336-0045 FAX 011/49/6196-982185 FAX 516-434-2055 attn: F3 Font Production attn: F3 Font Production Monotype Plc. Monotype Typography Salfords Redhill RH1 5JP 53 W. Jackson Boulevard Suite 504 England Chicago, IL 60604 44/(737) 765959 (800) 666-6893 FAX 011/44/737-769243 FAX (312) 939-0378 attn: F3 Font Production attn: F3 Font Production U R W U R W Harksheider Strasse 102 One Tara Boulevard Suite 210 D2000 Hamburg Germany Nashua, NH 03062 49/(40) 606050 (603) 882-7445 49/(40) 60605148 (603) 882-7210 attn: F3 Font Production attn: F3 Font Production Bigelow & Holmes Autologic P. O. Box 1299 1050 Rancho Conejo Boulevard Menlo Park, CA 94026 Newbury Park, CA 91320 415/326-8973 (800)235-1843, or (805)498-9611 in CA FAX (415) 326-8065 FAX (805) 499-1167 attn: F3 Font Production attn: F3 Font Production ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part9 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 7. NeXT Information If you have any suggestions for this section, please forward your suggestions to norm. Subject: 7.1. Tell me about NeXTstep fonts NeXTstep fonts are Adobe Type 1 fonts stored in ASCII (PFA) format. There are several rules about how fonts must be installed before they work. I'd like to thank Henry for rewriting this section. Basic Format ============ NeXTstep fonts live in one of three folders: /NextLibrary/Fonts Contains system fonts. In general, you will not install any new fonts here. /LocalLibrary/Fonts Contains fonts which are accessible to every user on a system or a network. ~/Library/Fonts (where ~ is your home folder) means fonts which are private to a specific user. A NeXTstep font is actually a folder containing various components of the font. Components are: * the outline font file - REQUIRED * the font metrics (AFM) file - REQUIRED * one or more screen font (bitmap) files - OPTIONAL Font Folder and Font Filename Requirements ========================================== The name of the folder containing a font and the name of the font file itself must follow strict rules - the names can NOT be any old name you like. For a font to work correctly, the base folder and font filename MUST BE THE SAME as the name of the outline font. This is usually the same as the value of the FontName field in the AFM file or the value of the /FontName key in the actual font itself. Suppose you have a font called Headhunter. The Headhunter font must live within a folder called Headhunter.font within one of the three folders mentioned above. Within the Headhunter.font folder, you must have the two files Headhunter ( the outline file ) Headhunter.afm ( the AFM file ) If you have a bitmap file for Headhunter, it must live in a file Headhunter.bepf ( the bitmap file ) Variations such as Bold, Italic, etc., should be their own font files in their own folder. So if you have a font called Headhunter-Bold, you need to create a folder called Headhunter-Bold.font within one of the three folders mentioned above. Within the Headhunter.font folder, you must have the two files Headhunter-Bold ( the outline file ) Headhunter-Bold.afm ( the AFM file ) If you have a bitmap file for Headhunter, it must live in a file Headhunter-Bold.bepf ( the bitmap file ) For NeXTstep 1.0 ONLY, you also need to take the following steps: ----------------------------------------------------------------- * If they do not already exist, create the following folders: * ~/Library/Fonts/outline * ~/Library/Fonts/afm * ~/Library/Fonts/bitmap * In each of these folders, create a symbolic link to the corresponding component file in each font. For NeXTstep 2.0 and up: ------------------------ The font description is taken from the font folder itself, so you don't need to do this. It may be beneficial to simply create these folders and put nothing in them, but I'm not sure it matters. Certain "old" applications which haven't upgraded to the NeXTstep 2.0 scheme of fonts may depend on these folders being present. The last step is to get the system to recognize the new font(s). You may have noticed the existence of three files in the Fonts folder: .fontdirectory, .fontlist, and .afmcache. These are files the system looks at to see which fonts exist. The easiest way to update them is to simply start up an application and open the font panel. It should recognize that the update time stamp on the Fonts folder has changed, and update the files accordingly. It is probably a good idea to simply delete the three above files beforehand. You should get a message window saying "incorporating information on new fonts. Please wait (this may take xx seconds)". Your new fonts should be available now. If this does not work, you can update them manually. Open up a Terminal shell and go to your Fonts folder. At the prompt, type two commands: buildafmdir cacheAFMData afm (the parameter is the ) The new fonts will not work if the cacheAFMData command is not run, and since it is an undocumented command, it is a common culprit. [ed: the cacheAFMData step may not be required in 3.0 OS] I believe this is true. Looks like the PasteBoard Services runs cacheAFMData in 3.0. You should now be able to see and preview your fonts in the font panel. If you are still having problems with your font, such as the << Unusable font >> message, consult NeXTAnswers. There are some useful suggestions for debugging faulty fonts there. It is also always helpful to look at existing fonts to see how they are installed. One note on the NeXTAnswers. Supposedly there are only a few discrete values which are allowed to appear in the weight field of the font: "Ultra Light", "Thin", "Light", "Extra Light", "Book", "Regular", "Plain", "Roman", "Medium", "Demi", "Demi-Bold", "Semi-Bold", "Bold", "Extra Bold", "Heavy", "Heavyface", "Black", "Ultra", "UltraBlack", "Fat", "ExtraBlack", and "Obese". However, I have a few fonts where this is not the case ("standard" is a common entry) and have had no problems as of yet. But it would probably be wiser to be on the safe side. See below for a definitive list. Subject: 7.2. Tell me more about NeXTstep fonts Outline files should be in PFA or hexadecimal ASCII format. The font name should be taken either from the outline (font) file or the AFM file. In both case the name is given after the word "FontName" at the beginning of the file) As a matter of fact, fonts don't strictly HAVE to be in all hexadecimal ASCII format. The eexec portion of the font can be in binary if you wish, and in fact some Mac->NeXTstep or PFB->NeXTstep font converters simply strip off the Mac/PFB storage format headers and leave the binary sections as binary. However, if you wish to send such a font across a serial channel to a PostScript printer, you will need some way to unpack the binary eexec portion to seven-bit ASCII before sending the font. Where to Obtain Fonts for NeXTstep ================================== Adobe Type 1 fonts are available in NeXTstep format from RightBrain Software of Palo Alto. RightBrain are the authorised Adobe reseller for Type 1 fonts on NeXTstep. Adobe fonts for NeXTstep come with AFM files and a font installer for installing on NeXTstep and downloading to non-NEXT printers. RightBrain Software 132 Hmilton Avenue Palo Alto California 94301 (415) 326-2974. info@rightbrain.com Other vendors in general do not provide Type 1 fonts in a form suitable for UNIX/NeXTstep. In such cases you must obtain the fonts in either Macintosh format or PC (PFB) format. When you obtain fonts from other vendors, MAKE SURE you INSIST they supply AFM files. Fonts without AFM files can be converted to NeXTstep format, but it can be a big deal. Trilithon Software currently supply utilities to generate AFM files directly from the font, but you get only the character metrics - other data such as kerning pairs is not in the font and cannot be synthesised. Converted Fonts After Conversion -------------------------------- After conversion they are just like any other freeware or shareware font that you can get in NeXTstep-format from the archives. That's just outline and AFM files but no bitmapped screen fonts. So small point size means poor resolution on screen but they most of should print OK if they are any good ( = usually made with Fontographer). About Conversion Utilities -------------------------- NeXTstep utilities .................. * unfont You can find a package, named something like pcATMfont2NeXT.tar.Z, from NeXT archives (cs.orst.edu) that converts PC fonts to NeXT format (PFB -> PFA). The most useful tool for me has been "unfont" which converts the .pfb (binary outline) font to ASCII outline font. I usually use it like this $ unfont new_font.pfb >NewFont If the conversion was successful all I have to after that is maybe to rename the font correctly and move the outline file in the correct .font folder. * Opener.app Opener seems to be a very useful application since it can open several kinds file packages on NeXTstep that are common on other platforms. E.g. ".sit", ".hqx", ".zoo", ".zip", ".z", etc. I haven't used it a lot but looks very promising. * T1utils-1.1 This is collection of command-line programs that manipulate PS Type 1 fonts and one of them can also do the PFB->PFA conversion (t1ascii?). Basic unarchiving of Mac and PC files. On your Unix machine: xbin Converts .hqx to: .data Rename and transfer to PC (or use opener.app on NeXT?) .info Discard .rsrc Discard unzip Converts .zip to: .inf Discard .wfn Discard .pfm Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file) everything else Transfer to NeXT On a PC: xbin Converts .hqx to: .data Rename and transfer to PC (or use opener.app on NeXT?) .info Discard .rsrc Discard extract -f ... Converts .cpt to: file with no extension This is usually the outline font. Refont and transfer to NeXT. .afm Transfer to NeXT. .pfm Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file) .bma Discard if you have an AFM file. unsit30 -eb ... Converts .sit to: file with no extension This is usually the outline font. Refont and transfer to NeXT. .afm Transfer to NeXT. .pfm Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file) .bma Discard if you have an AFM file. refont Converts outline formats from Mac to NeXT format (PFA). pkunzip Converts .zip to: .inf Discard .wfn Discard .pfm Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file) everything else Transfer to NeXT On a NeXT Opener.app Converts archive formats (.sit, .hqx, .zip) to NeXT format. unfont Converts PFB files to NeXT format. afm Converts AFM files to NeXT format AFM files (CR/LF hackery) Installation ------------ There are scripts (installfont) available that can handle the installation process but here is how you do it manually. * .font After all that you have to create the .font folder, move the outline and .afm files there and start fighting with the strangely formatted .afm file. The most common problems are font name mismatch between outline and AFM files (family name is incorrect or too long, etc) and missing fields (ex. no ItalicAngle entry) in the AFM file. * buildafmdir AND cacheAFMData buildafmdir puts its complains to Console but cacheAFMData put them on stdout or stderr (ie. Terminal Window). PARSE ERRORS ----------- "Parse error 10000011 ..." comes from mismatch between of CharMetrics declared in the .afm and actually found. I haven't been able to figure out the other strange parse errors. buildafmdir in the 3.0 release has the limitation of not being able to install more that 255 fonts in any one font folder. This is supposed to be fixed in 3.1. * The Dreaded <> Message <> appears in the font panel when you have run buildafmdir and it finds things it thinks are wrong with the AFM file. Errors can also be generated by parsing routines inside the PasteBoard Services. <> almost NEVER has anything to do with the font itself, since buildafmdir doesn't actually look inside the font. Errors in the font due to faulty conversion will likely show up at the time the PostScript server actually attempts to define the font or render characters from the font. The only error I have ever seen from a converted font was the results of a naive Macintosh to PFA converter, which didn't understand that the POST resources in a Macintosh format Type 1 font do not have to be in order, nor do the POST resources all have to be contiguous - they can be interspersed with other resources. The results were that a comment resource ended up in the middle of the eexec section of the font and the PostScript interpreter threw out lots of errors. <> almost ALWAYS occurs because there is something wrong with the AFM file you installed. Here is a partial list of problems that can occur with AFM files: * Carriage-return characters (^M) at ends of lines. This happens when you get incomplete translations from PC files, which use carriage-return-line-feed combinations at ends of lines. Solution: edit away the carriage returns. Make sure the lines are terminated only by line-feed characters. * Spaces or tabs at ends of lines. Fixed in NeXTstep 3.1. * Missing fields. NeXTstep DEMANDS that certain fields be present in the AFM file. Required fields are: FontName, FullName, FamilyName, Weight, EncodingScheme, and ItalicAngle. If any of these fields are missing, you will get the <> message. Solution: fill in the required fields. * Incorrect Weight field. buildafmdir accepts only a certain set of values for the Weight field. Acceptable values are: "Ultra Light", "Thin", "Light", "Extra Light", "Book", "Regular", "Plain", "Roman", "Medium", "Demi", "Demi-Bold", "Semi-Bold", "Bold", "Extra Bold", "Heavy", "Heavyface", "Black", "Ultra", "UltraBlack", "Fat", "ExtraBlack", and "Obese". * Character information count mismatches. AFM files contain several sets of information which are introduced by a "Startxxxxx nnn" line where the xxxxx is the name of the section (such as StartCharMetrics) and nnn is the purported number of lines of information of this type to follow. Sad to say, many many AFM files supplied by vendors and others are such that the actual number of lines of data do not match the number stated on the Startxxxxx line. When this error occurs in the AFM file, buildafmdir emits a Parse Error message to the console and the font will be marked unusable. The parse error messages from buildafmdir is of the form: Parse error nnnnnnnn xx yy where nnnnnnnn is the error number, xx is the number of lines of information claimed to exist, and yy is the number of lines actually read. The nnnnnnnn are are: 10000011 mismatch in the StartCharMetrics section 10000012 mismatch in the StartTrackKern section 10000013 mismatch in the StartKernPairs section 10000014 mismatch in the StartComposites section 10000015 mismatch in a composite character specification I have converted many fonts from the Berkeley Macintosh User Group CD ROM and fully half of the supplied AFM files are incorrect. * Other AFM file errors. Parse error numbers 10000001 through 10000010 means some kinds of syntax errors in the AFM data file. Any of these errors mean that the AFM file is truly hosed. You'd probably be better off obtaining AfmBuilder from Trilithon Software and building a new AFM file straight from the font. This is Info file comp.fonts.faq.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the input file FAQ.texinfo. Subject: 7.3. Porting fonts to the NeXT Porting PC/Unix Type 1 Fonts ============================ You must have the .pfb and .afm files A PC Adobe font is stored in binary format, so the first step is to convert it to ascii. There are a couple of utilities out there which can do this. I think t1utils can do it, and there is a nice utility called pcATMfont2Next which has a couple of tools to do this (unfont and pfb2ps). Look for the file pcATMfont2Next.tar.Z; it is available on many ftp sites. Also, since NeXTstep run on Unix, there is the customary problem of converting the CRs (carriage returns) that PCs use to the LFs (Linefeeds) that Unix uses. The easiest way to do this is to use tr to delete the octal for the CR character from both the .afm and outline file. The command to do this is: tr -d '\015' < inputfile > outputfile The unfont program will do this automatically when it converts the .pfb file, but pfb2ps does not. I'm not sure if t1utils' utility does or not. Once you have the outline file, you can go ahead and install it by the process outlined above. Otto J. Makela (otto@jyu.fi) posted a terrific cshell script to comp.fonts, which automates just about everything for you. It converts the .pfb to ASCII format, extracts the name from the FontName field, creates the font folder, copies in the component files with the correct name, and runs buildafmdir and cacheAFMData when done. Note that it uses the unfont utility from the pcATMfont2Next package, so to use this you will need that too. Just take everything between the CUT HERE lines, save it into a text file, and make it executable with the chmod command or the Inspector. --------------CUT HERE--------------- #!/bin/csh -f # Font install program -- 1992 by Otto J. Makela set progname="$0" todir=~/Library/Fonts set progname="$progname:t" if ( $#argv>0 && -d "$1" ) then set todir="$1" shift endif if ( $#argv == 0 ) then echo "usage: $progname [installdir] afmfile..." exit endif foreach afmfile ( $* ) echo "${afmfile}:" set fontname=`tr -d '\015' < $afmfile | awk '$1=="FontName" { print $2 } '` if ( -d $todir/${fontname}.font ) then echo "${progname}: font $fontname already installed" continue endif # If there already is a pfa, no need to translate, otherwise convert to ascii if ( -f ${afmfile:r}.pfa ) then mkdir ${todir}/${fontname}.font cp ${afmfile:r}.pfa ${todir}/${fontname}.font/${fontname} else if ( -f ${afmfile:r}.pfb ) then mkdir ${todir}/${fontname}.font unfont ${afmfile:r}.pfb > ${todir}/${fontname}.font/${fontname} else echo "${progname}: no pfa/pfb file for $fontname afm" continue endif # Strip CR's from afm file tr -d '\015' < $afmfile > ${todir}/${fontname}.font/${fontname}.afm echo "installed as $fontname" end buildafmdir $todir cacheAFMData $todir ---------------CUT HERE----------- The original installfont script is available as a shar file from ibis.cs.umas.edu in /pub/norm/comp.fonts/installfont-for-NeXT. Porting Mac Type 1 Fonts ======================== A variety of programs and scripts exist to convert Macintosh format Type 1 fonts to UNIX format. Their ability to do a complete job varies. Common traps which naive font converters fall into are: * not dealing with Macintosh POST which are out of order. * not dealing with Macintosh POST which are interspersed with other resources. * not dealing at all with POST Type 4 resources where the font program starts in resource fork of the file but the remainder of the data is in the data fork. Most naive converters we've looked at have this problem. This means that most Type 3 fonts won't convert at all. * not dealing with MacBinary headers. MacToPfa -------- Trilithon Software provides a commercial NeXTstep `MacToPfa' utility which converts Mac to NeXTstep format and installs the converted fonts for you. `MacToPfa' overcomes a lot of the problems which plague other font conversion schemes. MetroTools ---------- MetroSoft provides a commercial NeXTstep Mac->NeXTstep utility as a part of their MetroTools package for NeXTstep. MetroTools is a kind of Boy Scout Knife, containing a Mac to NeXTstep font converter, a Mac to NeXTstep sound converter, a screen saver, a dock extender, and others. MetroTools will not convert Macintosh fonts if it can't find AFM files. The font converter converts font formats and installs them on NeXTstep for you. MetroSoft, San Diego, California 94028 (619) 488 9411. info@metrosoft.com Porting PC (PFB) Type 1 Fonts ============================= Trilithon Software provides a commercial NeXTstep `PfbToPfa' utility which converts Mac to NeXTstep format and installs the converted fonts for you. `PfbToPfa' overcomes a lot of the problems which plague other font conversion schemes. Subject: 7.4. Font availability Public Domain fonts for the NeXT are available via anonymous FTP from sonata.purdue.edu, in the directory next/graphics/fonts. The README for this file states that the directory is currently being restructured by the archive moderator, although fonts are still available in that directory. Subject: 7.5. Why can I only install 256 fonts on my NeXT? Included to NS3.0 there's a new 'buildafm'-routine (for non-NeXTers: 'buildafm' is a shell script which announces a new font to the computer) at /usr/bin/buildafmdir. The new one only allows to install about 256 fonts. Running the new 'buildafmdir' to install a new font surpresses every font above this number. Workaround: Re-install the 'old buildafmdir' from NS2.1 at /usr/bin/buildafmdir and everything should be fine! (thanks to: Rob Parkhill and d'Art Computers/Germany d'art) [ed: and my thanks to Borris Balzer for sending this to me] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part10 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 8. Amiga Information This section needs a lot of work. At the time of this release, I'm not in a position to write it so I'm leaving it basically blank. Even if you don't have time to write it, if you know what _should_ be in this section, please forward it to norm. Adobe Type 1 fonts for the Amiga ================================ Darrell Leland contributes the following information: There are now three high end DTP packages for the Amiga that can directly or indirectly use Adobe Type 1 Fonts or AGFA Compugraphic fonts. The best of the lot in both my and Amiga World's opinions is SoftLogik's Pagestream, currently in version 2.2 but about to go to version 3.0. Pagestream can take Adobe fonts in MS-DOS format directly with no format conversion needed. All you have to do is get them on an Amiga format disk, which is very easy using the new version of Commodore's Workbench operating system. Pagestream has import modules for MacWrite, Adobe Illustrator, and every other format in the universe (seems like). It is generally a very stable and well behaved program with a lot of features. I haven't had a chance to see 3.0 yet, but they are claiming it's going to be a real killer. We shall see. It does color seps, twists and rotates fonts, etc. Pagestream's job has been made easier with Commodore's (about time) release of their own Postscript printer drivers and Preferences postscript printer control tools. SoftLogik also sells a program called Typesmith, which is (at last!) a structured font maker/editor for the Amiga. Typesmith will work with both formats mentioned above plus SoftLogik's own font format, which I get the impression they are discontinuing in favor of Postscript. They also sell ArtExpression, a very nice structured drawing package that does everything I can think of. I understand SoftLogik has also been getting several Mac and PC font makers to make Amiga fonts for them too. They even have a program system that allows programs to publish to other programs, sort of like in Mac System 7.0. They are lisencing it out to any Amiga developer who pays a paltry sum to lisence it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part11 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 9. X11 Information This section needs a lot of work. At the time of this release, I'm not in a position to write it so I'm leaving it basically blank. Even if you don't have time to write it, if you know what should be in this section, please forward it to norm. Subject: 9.1. Getting X11 The standard location for X software is ftp.x.org. Subject: 9.2. Historical Notes about X11 The X Window System has been in widespread use through releases 3, 4, and now 5 of X Version 11. Fonts weren't really treated by the X Consortium very well until X11 release 5 (X11R5). In X11R3 and X11R4, the default format used by the X servers was called SNF (server normal format). Basically the font was formatted on disk in such a way that the X server could quickly read and use it (it was basically a memory-dump). The important element of the SNF format is that it was not a portable format: it depended on the architecture of the machine running the server (little endian vs. big endian, for example) and as a consequence you needed different directory structures for different systems on your network. On top of that, several systems vendors implemented their own font format, making font portability even more difficult. With X11R5, two things changed: the font service protocol was defined as a standard and interoperable way for an X server to obtain fonts (independent of their format, origin, or current location on disk) and the default format for storing fonts was changed from SNF to PCF (Portable Compiled Font). PCF is a format originally developed by DEC. Its primary advantage is that it is not architecture dependent. That is, if you compile a font to PCF format on different systems, then you may end up having two different PCF files, but each system will be able to read the other's file correctly. Subject: 9.3. X11 Font Formats There are many different font formats that can play a role in an X11 system configuration. The following table summarizes some of the common formats: * BDF The Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) is the standard format for distribution of fonts. It is an ASCII format so it can easily be edited it with your favourite editor or E-mailed to other users. As the name suggests, it stores bitmap fonts only. Another virtue of the BDF format is that most font format converters convert to or from this format. Means if you want to go from format A to format B, neither of which is BDF, then you are likely to convert A to BDF, then BDF to B. The BDF format is defined by Adobe. A document describing the format is available by ftp from Adobe's file server at "ps-file-server@adobe.com". It is also available in the standard X distribution. Look under ../X11R4(5)/mit/hardcopy/BDF. This document is also reproduced in any text describing the X standard. * SNF The Server Normal Format (SNF) is an older format for bitmap fonts. The format is X Server and host dependent. This means that if you have two SNF files, their actual format may be different. Also, if you have an "snftobdf" utility, it may not be able to read font files from other systems. Convert to BDF format before you move it off the host system. Snftobdf is one utility that can generate a BDF file from a SNF file. It was part of the X11R4 contrib release. To compile under X11R5, you need some of the X11R4 snf include files. * PCF The Portable Compiled Font (PCF) format is a binary format for bitmap fonts. The binary contains sufficient information to be readable by other systems. * PHIGS These fonts are only applicable in PEX environments. PHIGS fonts don't really have any relationship to the normal X font mechanism. * DWF The DECWindows Fonts (DWF) are bitmap fonts. * Intellifont These are HP scalable fonts. * PFA/PFB These are Adobe Type 1 PostScript fonts. They can be used in X11R5 based X servers and font servers because IBM has donated a renderer for this format to the X Consortium. The renderer can be found on the X11R5 contrib, and on ftp.x.org. * Speedo This is a format from Bitstream, Inc. Bitstream has also donated a font renderer to the X Consortium, and a couple of fonts. I have been told that in order to use commercial fonts from BitStream, you must patch the renderer somewhat to make it use the right decryption code for the font. * FB These are Sun X11/NeWS format bitmap fonts used by the Sun OpenWindows system. You can use "convertfont" which comes with OpenWindows to convert to/from BDF. * F3/F3B This is the scalable Sun Folio format, also used by OpenWindows. You can use "convertfont" to convert to (not from) BDF. Subject: 9.4. X11 Font Server Information With X11 Release 5, the X Consortium has created a network-based standard font protocol. As a user of the X Window System, you have an X server on your desktop, which does the interface between the hardware (screen, mouse, keyboard), and the X network protocol. This X server needs fonts. Before X11r5, the only way it could get to those fonts was to make font directories readable for the X server on that host, either by NFS-mounting or by copying. With the X Font Service protocol, you just tell your X server that it must use the services of a font server, which is a daemon process sitting on a host on your network. The font server is a program which talks a standardized protocol on the network, and which is capable of reading several font formats. The font server sources are modular, such that it is easy to add a renderer for an additional font format to the existing code. This is obviously also the intention: the X Consortium provides the core technology, and supposes that all systems vendors will add font renderers for their proprietary formats to the code, and then ship that to their customers. If you have a multi-vendor environment, then you are supposed to run a font server on every host that carries the font files. Then all of the X servers on your network can put all the fonts they need in their font path. Automatically, IBM fonts will be requested from the font server on an IBM host, DEC fonts from a DEC host, etc. Other benefits of using font server technology include the ability of the font server to implement caching, provide for fault-tolerant setup, etc. A final example of the good use of the font server is the combination of a font server with a Type 1 font renderer. As mentioned above, IBM donated a Type 1 font renderer which can easily be built into the X font server. As the Type 1 font format, and the ATM format are the same, it is perfectly possible to use commercial ATM fonts with the X Window System. Subject: 9.5. Fonts and utilities for X11 Here's a quick list of possible steps to get from "what you got" to X: * Mac format bitmaps: No idea. If you know how to read a Mac format bitmap file on some other platform, please tell norm. * PC format bitmaps: Conversion to BDF is possible from TeX PK format and LaserJet softfont format. Other conversions are also within the realm of possibility. Feel free to ask norm for more information if you have a specific conversion in mind. * TeX PK format bitmaps: PKtoBDF gets us directly to BDF format from here. * Mac format postscript: Under MS-DOS, conversion to PC format postscript allows the font to be accessed with PS2PK (under *nix or MS-DOS). See above for TeX PK to X conversions. * PC/Unix format PostScript Conversion to TeX PK with PS2PK allows you to get to BDF (indirectly). * XtoBDF, getbdf, FStoBDF XtoBDF and getbdf are two public-domain applications which are capable of asking an X server to give them all it knows about a given font. They then print the BDF representation of that font on stdout. You can use these if you have an X server that can read some font file, but nothing else can. FStoBDF is distributed with X11R5. If you use one of these programs, you may actually be converting a scalable font into a bitmap font, but converting a bitmap font to a scalable one is not currently possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part12 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 10. Utilities I have just started collecting information about font utilities. I will gladly add any information that you can pass my way. Please send your submissions to norm. I would appreciate it if you could include a paragraph or so of description and the appropriate site/filename for retrieval. Subject: 10.1. PS2PK PS2PK is a utility for converting Type1 postscript fonts into TeX PK files. The source code is distributed and it has been compiled for both *nix boxes and MS-DOS based machines. Here is the original announcement: Ps2pk-1.2 available ------------------- (June 1992) Version 1.2 of ps2pk is now available on: ftp.urc.tue.nl (address: 131.155.2.79) directory: /pub/tex files: ps2pk12.README ( 1k) This file ps2pk12.tar.Z (391k) Sources ps2pk386.zip (232k) MSDOS executables utopia.tar.Z (342k) Adobe Utopia font family courier.tar.Z (207k) IBM Courier font family For people having difficulties in handling UNIX `.tar.Z' format I have made some UNIX tools (only executables) available in: directories: /pub/unixtools/dos /pub/unixtools/vms See the system specific TARZ file for some help. Ftp.urc.tue.nl can not handle E-mail requests. But sites are free to put the ps2pk12 stuff on any server that can. When do you need ps2pk? ======================= Ps2pk is a tool that converts a PostScript type1 font into a corres- ponding TeX PK font. The tool is especially interesting if you want to use fully hinted type1 fonts in your DVI previewer (instead of the unhinted type1 fonts currently used in GhostScript) or on a printer that has no PostScript interpreter. In order to use the ps2pk generated fonts your driver and previewer need to support virtual fonts. The reason is that PostScript fonts and TeX fonts do have a different font encoding and handle ligatures in a different way. With virtual fonts the PostScript world (encoding + ligatures) can be mapped to the old style TeX world on which the current plain macro packages still are based (despite the fact that TeX3.0 can handle 8bits). It is also possible to use the ps2pk generated PK fonts directly In addition, a modified version of PS2PK exists on ibis.cs.umass.edu. I have added some hacks to better support really large renderings and a primitive "range" facility. Subject: 10.2. TeX Utilities There are many TeX font utilities. For TeX related questions, I direct you to comp.text.tex or the Info-TeX mailing list. I will happily list any utilities here that the comp.fonts public feels should be present. I am listing MetaFont because it is the obvious font-specific component of TeX and PKtoSFP because it allows anyone to use PS2PK to create LaserJet softfonts. Liam R. E. Quin is the original author of the MetaFont section. It has been hacked at a bit by norm to make it fit the tone of the comp.fonts FAQ. Assume that norm is responsible for any errors, not Liam. MetaFont ======== About MetaFont: --------------- Metafont is a programming language for describing fonts. It was written by Donald Knuth and is documented in Computers & Typesetting/C: The METAFONTbook Knuth, Donald E. Addison Wesley, 1986 ISBN 0-201-13445-4, or 0-201-13444-6 (soft cover) Library access: Z250.8.M46K58, or 686.2'24, or 85-28675. A font written in MetaFont is actually a computer program which, when run, will generate a bitmap (`raster') for a given typeface at a given size, for some particular device. What do you need in order to use the fonts: ------------------------------------------- You cannot print the MetaFont fonts directly (unless you want a listing of the program, that is). Instead, you must generate a bitmap font and use that to print something. If you are using TeX, the sequence of steps is something like this: MF to MetaFont to GF Convert a MetaFont program into a bitmapped font. Also produces a TFM file. MF to MetaFont to TFM Covnert a MetaFont program into a TFM file. Also produces a GF bitmapped font. GF to GFtoPK to PK Convert a GF bitmapped font into a compressed PK font. TEX + TFM to TeX to DVI Produce a device independent output file. DVI + PK to dvi driver to output format Produce a device-specific output file (or preview). The above steps are idealized. In reality, you have to make sure that the fonts get installed in the correct places and you may have to adjust description files, etc. The friendly folks on comp.text.tex can probably get it staightened out for you if you can't find a local guru. If you are not using TeX, it's almost impossible to predict. At some point in the above sequence, you'll insert some other conversion program and proceed differently. Here, for example, is how you might use TeX fonts with WordPerfect and a LaserJet printer. PK to PKtoSFP to SFP Convert a TeX PK file into an HP LaserJet softfont. SFP to SFP2Auto to TFM Make HP AutoFont Tagged Font Metric file. SFP + HP AutoFont TFM to PTR to Installed in WP Install the new font in WordPerfect. Use WordPerfect as you normally would. Subject: 10.3. MFPic MFpic is a macro package for including pictures in TeX documents. The idea behind this package is to have Metafont do the actual drawing, and store the pictures in a font that TeX can include in the document. The macros have been designed so that the user should never have to learn Metafont to use these macros--the TeX macros actually write the Metafont file for you. Subject: 10.4. fig2MF Briefly, fig2MF uses the mfpic macros to create formatted, commented MF code from the fig graphics language. This means that programs like xfig can be used as interactive font creation tools. I wrote fig2MF so that I could portably illustrate TeX documents, but I suppose one could use it to design letterforms as well. The package consists of a single C source code file, modified mfpic macros, documentation, and sample fig files. It is available at the shsu archives. Subject: 10.5. GNU Font Utilities Here is a brief description of the programs included: * imageto extracts a bitmap font from an image in PBM or IMG format, or converts the image to Encapsulated PostScript. * xbfe is a hand-editor for bitmap fonts which runs under X11. * charspace adds side bearings to a bitmap font. * limn fits outlines to bitmap characters. * bzrto converts a generic outline font to Metafont or PostScript. * gsrenderfont renders a PostScript outline font at a particular point size and resolution, yielding a bitmap font. * fontconvert can rearrange or delete characters in a bitmap font, filter them, split them into pieces, combine them, etc., etc. * imgrotate rotates or flips an IMG file. We need volunteers to help create fonts for the GNU project. You do not need to be an expert type designer to help, but you do need to know enough about TeX and/or PostScript to be able to install and test new fonts. Example: if you know neither (1) the purpose of TeX utility program `gftopk' nor (2) what the PostScript `scalefont' command does, you probably need more experience before you can help. If you can volunteer, the first step is to compile the font utilities. After that, contact me [ed: Karl Berry] (karl@gnu.ai.mit.edu). I will get you a scanned type specimen image. The manual explains how to use these utilities to turn that into a font you can use in TeX or PostScript. You can get the source by ftp from any GNU archive site. You can also order tapes with GNU software from the Free Software Foundation (thereby supporting the GNU project); send mail to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu for the latest prices and ordering information, or retrieve the file DISTRIB from a GNU archive. Subject: 10.6. Font Editors * Editors for BDF fonts There is a bdf font editor that comes with HP/Apollo workstations. It's called 'edfont'. It's not the best but it works. Gary reports: The standard X distribution for X11R5 contains "xfed", which allows you to play with BDF fonts. "xfedor" has a more elaborate user interface, and is available on most contrib directories. The last time I tried: "xfedor" couldn't handle BDF files with more than 256 characters. "xfed" aborts if the BDF file contains a COMMENT line with no other text. The workaround is to edit the BDF file, to put text after the word COMMENT. A single blank space is sufficient. For some reason, the standard BDF files included in the X release contain blank spaces on the otherwise empty COMMENT lines. It was probably easier to add the space to the COMMENT lines of every BDF file than it was to fix the lex code for xfed. :-) * Editors for PK fonts The GNU font utilities include an X-based editor called Xbfe which edits bitmapped fonts under X. Eberhard Mattes' emTeX includes PKedit. Subject: 10.7. The T1 Utilities This is a snippet from the README file for I. Lee Hetherington's t1utils package: t1utils is a collection of simple type-1 font manipulation programs. Together, they allow you to convert between PFA (ASCII) and PFB (binary) formats, disassemble PFA or PFB files into human-readable form, reassemble them into PFA or PFB format. Additionally you can extract font resources from a Macintosh font file (ATM/Laserwriter). Subject: 10.8. Where to get bitmap versions of the fonts There are archives containing the bitmaps of many of these fonts at various sizes and resolutions. The fonts must have been generated for the correct print engine: e.g. write-white or write-black. The archives generally hold only the sizes used by TeX. These are `magstep' sizes, and are not exact point sizes. It is probably better to generate them from the Metafont sources yourself if you can. The best place to look for raster fonts was almost certainly: mims-iris.waterloo.edu but it isn't any more, the fonts have all gone. Let me know if you find them elsewhere. Most people seem to have moved to using PostScript fonts or Bitstream ones instead now. Some other sites are: ctrsci.math.utah.edu (128.110.198.1) science.utah.edu (128.110.192.2) ymir.claremont.edu (134.173.4.23) The occasional posting of ftp sites to comp.misc and comp.archives lists these and several other sites. Subject: 10.9. Converting between font formats Conversions to and from pbm and pk format were posted to comp.text.tex and to alt.sources on the 9th of August, 1990 by Angus Duggan. The program is pbmtopk, and there are also at least two patches. Chris Lewis' psroff package includes a program to go from pk both to the HP LaserJet and to PostScript. John McClain has some conversion programs for various graphics formats to/and from pk files. A PC program, CAPTURE, turns HPGL files into PK format, US$130 from Micro Programs Inc., 251 Jackson Ave., Syosset, NY 11791 U.S.A. Metaplot can take pen-plotter files and prouce metafont files. Note: Pat Wilcox is no longer at Ohio State. Kinch Computer Company sell .pk fonts derived from PostScript fonts. Kinch Computer Co., 501 S. Meadow St.Ithaca, NY 14850 U.S.A. telephone: +1 607 273 0222; fax: +1 607 273 0484 Subject: 10.10. Getting fonts by FTP and Mail If you are using ftp, you will need either the name of the host or the Internet number. For example, to connect to ymir, listed as ftp: ymir.claremont.edu [134.173.4.23] you will need to type something like ftp ymir.claremont.edu If that doesn't work, try using the number: ftp 134.173.4.23 If that doesn't work, on Unix systems you can use nslookup (it's usually /usr/etc/nslookup) to find the host number - it might have changed. Type the entire host name, and after a few seconds nslookup will give you the address. Of course, if you have nslookup installed, the first form will probably work... Once you have connected, you will need to go to the appropriate directory, lists its contents, and retrieve the files. Most of the machines listed here run Unix, and you use "ls" and "cd" to list files and to change directories. Ymir runs VMS, and you will have to put square brackets around directory names, like [this]. Remember that although Metafont sources are text files, pk fonts are not ASCII, and you will have to use binary mode for them. In general, use text mode for README files and *.mf files, and binary mode for other font files. Files ending in .Z are compressed binary files - you will need to use binary mode, and then uncompress the files when you get them. You can get files from ymir by sending mail messages to mailserv@ymir.claremont.edu For example, send [tex.mf.misc]cmapl10.mf will get the file cmapl10.mf from the directory "tex.mf.misc". You can't get binary files in this way. There is an ftp-by-mail BITNET service, BITFTP, for BITNET users. Before getting large files by mail, please remember to get permission from all intervening sites. Ask your site administrator, who can send mail to Postmaster at each site on the way if necessary. Subject: 10.11. MetaFont to PostScript Conversion There are (I believe) two programs that perform this task. At least one of them is called "mf2ps". If you have any more information about these tools, please let me know. Chang Jin-woong reports that he found the "mf2ps" package with Archie. It is written by Shimon Yanai and Daniel M. Berry . The source programs are written in Pascal. Subject: 10.12. How to use Metafont fonts with Troff If, when you run troff, you get the message `typesetter busy', you have the original Ossanna-troff, also called otroff. Chris Lewis has a package which will let you use TeX fonts with troff - it's called psroff, and comes with documentation. ftp: gatekeeper.dec.com (16.1.0.2) pub/misc/psroff-3.0 ftp: ftp.cs.toronto.edu [128.100.1.105] pub/psroff-3.0/* If, when you run troff, you get something like this: x T 300 x res 300 1 1 you have ditroff. This is sometimes called titroff or psroff. In this case, you will probably need to do the following: 1. convert the font to your printer's format 2. generate a width table for the font 3. add the font to the DESC file for the appropriate device 4. arrange for troff to download the font 5. tell troff about the font by running `makedev DESC' in the right place. If, when you run troff, you get something like this: X hp(SCM)(CM)(AF)(AD) 300 1 1 Y P default letter 2550 3300 0 0 90 90 2460 3210 you have sqtroff: 1. convert the font to your printer's format 2. generate a width table for the font 3. add the font to the DESC file for the appropriate device 4. put the font in the appropriate raster directory 5. tell sqtroff about the font by running `sqmakedev DESC' or `sqinstall'. In each case, you should be able to get help from your vendor. Note that Chris Lewis' psroff package has software to make width tables for troff from pk files. Subject: 10.13. PKtoBDF / MFtoBDF From the SeeTeX distribution, programs to help previewers under X11. They convert TeX PK files into X11 BDF fonts (which can be further converted into one or more server native formats). Subject: 10.14. PKtoPS Included in the psroff distribution, this utility converts PK fonts into PostScript fonts (bitmaps, I presume). If you have any more information about these tools, please let me know. Subject: 10.15. PKtoSFP / SFPtoPK Convert fonts from TeX PK format to HP LaserJet softfont (bitmap) format. Subject: 10.16. PostScript to MetaFont ps2mf started out as a way of creating bitmaps via MF for TeX. Only, when I had just finished it, Piet Tutelaers came with ps2pk. This was a far superior way runtime-wise. He uses the IBM X11-R5 fontutilities library, which is extremely ugly code. But, it works. So, to generate bitmaps, I suggest everyone use ps2pk. To generate a MF outline description, ps2mf is *the* tool. Yannis Haralambous has just started a project where he wants to create meta-ized fonts for MF from Postscript descriptions. ps2mf does the basic conversion. This project wants to revive the use of MF for it is a truly beautiful program with enormous possiblities. The following information comes from the README file for ps2mf: This is pfb2mf. It is a copyleft program. See the file COPYING for more details. I suggest that for the translation of Type-One to readable PostScript you use I. Lee Hetherington's Type-1-Utils. You can find these somewhere on obelix.icce.rug.nl in pub/erikjan. If you find any bugs, please do report. If you have any complaints, please do report. Now for some info about the different stages. This package contains four programs: * pfb2pfa * pfa2chr * chr2ps * ps2mf pfb2pfa ======= pfb2pfa will decompress an IBM (!) Postscript type 1 fontfile into readable and downloadable hexadecimal data. The resulting file still contains two layers of encryption: * eexec encryption * charstring encryption pfa2chr ======= pfa2chr will do an eexec-decryption of a readable hexadecimal font file to a fontfile with encrypted charstrings. chr2ps ====== chr2ps will perform a charstring-decryption of a font file with encrypted charstrings to fontfile with postscript commands for type 1 fonts. With a "-" as filename, these programs will read from and write to . This way you can pipe the results, as in: pfb2pfa garmnd - | pfa2chr - - | chr2ps - garmnd This will create a garmnd.ps from garmnd.pfb without explicitely creating the intermediate files. These previous stages can be replaced by (when using Lee Hetherington's type-1-utils): t1disasm garmnd.pfb garmnd.ps ps2mf ===== This last stage will convert to a MetaFont program with the use of the corresponding .afm file and a mapping configuration file. It can convert to an ordinary form with Bezier controlpoints. It can also generate a curl specification. For this last option specifify -C. Subject: 10.17. Mac Bitmaps to BDF Format I [ed: who?] have posted a program which I hacked together for extracting all NFNT and FONT resources from a MacBinary form of a standard Mac file and dumping the fonts as Adobe BDF files. It has only been compiled and tested on a Sun system to date. It can be fetched from METIS.COM, /pub/mac2bdf.c. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive-name: fonts-faq/part13 Version: 2.0.3 Subject: 11. Vendor Information Masumi Abe contributed the following list of commercial font vendors. Since a number of people have suggested other vendors for fonts (both commercial and shareware), I have taken the liberty of merging those suggestions into a single vendor list. If there are any errors in the following list, please blame norm, not Masumi. I've made some effort to continue Masumi's annotations regarding available font types, platforms, and languages. Innacuracies and ommisions are both present and accidental. Updates are always welcome. Acorn Plus, Inc. (HP/IBM) 4219 W. Olive Ave. #2011 Burbank, CA 91505 (213) 876-5237 Achtung Entertainment TrueType (shareware) for Macs, 300+ fonts. 508 N. College Ave. #215 HyperCard demo disk $3.00 (refundable/order) Bloomington, IN 47404 no phone number ADH Software (Mac) P.O. Box 67129 Los Angeles, CA 90067 Adobe Systems Incorporated : The Adobe Typeface Library (Mac) 1585 Charleston Rd. (Mac) (HP/IBM) P.O. Box 7900 Mountain View, CA 94039-7900 (415) 961-4400 (800) 344-8335 Advanced Vision Research (HP/IBM) 2201 Qume Dr. San Jose, CA 95131 (408) 434-1115 Agfa Division, Miles Inc. : CG Type 90 Industrial way Wilmington, MA 01887 (800) 424-TYPE Allotype Typographics : Downloadable Fonts (Mac) 1600 Packard Rd. Suite #5 Kadmos (Greek) Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Czasy & Szwajcarskie (313) 663-1989 Demotiki Alphabets, Inc. P.O. Box 5448 Evanston, IL 60204-5448 (312) 328-2733 Alphatype Corp. 220 Campus Dr., Suite 103 Arlington Heights, IL 60004 (312) 259-6800 Altsys Corporation, : FONTastic Fonts, Fontographer Fonts (Mac) 269 West Renner Road, Richardson, Texas 75080. (214) 680-2060. Artworx Software Co. (Mac) 1844 Penfield Rd. Hebrew Typefaces Penfield, NY 14526 (716) 385-6120 (800) 828-6573 Architext, Inc. (HP/IBM) 121 Interpark Blvd. Suite 1101 San Antonio, TX 78216 (512) 490-2240 Asiagraphics Technology Ltd. (Mac) 9A GreatMany Centre Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai 109 Queen's Road East Wanchai, Hong Kong (5) 8655-225 Fax: (5) 8655-250 Modem: (5) 865-4816 Autologic, Inc. (Mac) 1050 Rancho Conejo Blvd. Newbury Park, CA 91320 (805) 498-9611 Bear Rock Technologies, 4140 Mother Lode, Shingle Springs, California 95682-8038. (916) 672-0244 Berthold of North America 7711 N. Merrimac Avenue Niles, IL 60648 (312) 965-8800 Bitstream, Inc. Athenaeum House 215 First St. Cambridge, MA 02142 (617) 497-6222 (800) 237-3335 A representative of Bitstream sent the following correction to me. Bitstream offers: **1100 PostScript Type 1 fonts for the Mac & PC. (These can be ordered direct from Bitstream or thru several resellers.) ** Bitstream Type Treasury -- the Bitstream Type Library for the Mac (Type 1 format) on CD ROM. ** Bitstream Type Essentials--a series of 4 Typeface Packages for PC & Mac that were selected to work well for different jobs (Letters, Memos & Faxes; Newsletters, Brochures & Announcements; Spreadsheets, Graphs & Presentations; Headlines). **Bitstream Typeface Packages for the PC -- 52 packages (most with 4 faces each) that include a total of over 200 faces, with mutiple font formats in each package (Bitstream Speedo, Type 1, Bitstream Fontware) ** Bitstream TrueType Font Packs 1 & 2 for Microsoft Windows ** Bitstream PostScript Font Packs 1 & 2 for the PC ** Bitstream FaceLift for Windows ** Bitstream FaceLift for WordPerfect - both are font scaling/font management utilities. ** Bitstream MakeUp for Windows - a type manipulation/ special effects program. ** Bitstream Li'l Bits -- a new product line of novelty fonts in TrueType format for Windows 3.1. The first release began shipping last week and includes The Star Trek Font Pack, The Flintstones Font Pack and The Winter Holiday Font Pack. We offer OEM customers an extensive range of non-latin type (as you have noted in the current listing), but these faces are not currently available to individual end-users. We also offer font-scaling and rasterizing technology to OEM customers. Blaha Software/Janus Associates : Big Foot (Mac) (HP/IBM) 991 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138 (617) 354-1999 Blue Sky Research : Computer Modern Fonts 534 SW Third Avenue, #816 Portland, OR 97204 (800) 622-8398 Canon Canon Font Gothic, Canon Font Mincho Casady & Greene, Inc. : Fluent Fonts, Fluent Laser Fonts (Mac) 26080 Carmel Rancho Blvd. #202 Russian/Ukranian/Bulgarian/Serbian P.O. Box 223779 Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Kana, Polish Carmel, CA 93922 Glasnost (408) 484-9228 (800) 331-4321 -------------no longer valid (800) 851-1986 (California)-no longer valid Caseys' Page Mill (Mac) 6528 S. Oneida Court Englewood, CO 80111 (303) 220-1463 Century Software (MacTography) font developer for MacTographyc 702 Twinbrook Parkway : LaserFonts (Mac) Rockville, MD 20851 (301) 424-1357 Coda Music Software 1401 E. 79th St. Mineapolis, MN 55425-1126 (612) 854-1288 (800) 843-1337 Compugraphic Corporation (Mac) (HP/IBM) Type Division 90 Industrial Way Wilmington, MA 01887 (800) 622-8973 (U.S.) (800) 533-9795 (Canada) Computer EdiType Systems (HP/IBM) 509 Cathedral Parkway, Ste. 10A New York, NY 10025 (212) 222-8148 Computer Peripherals, Inc. : JetWare (HP/IBM) 2635 Lavery Ct. #5 Newbury Park, CA 91320 (805) 499-5751 Computer Prod. Unlimited (Mac) 78 Bridge St. Newburgh, NY 12550 (914) 565-6262 Conographic Corp. (Mac) (HP/IBM) 17841 Fitch Irvine, CA 92714 (714) 474-1188 Corel Systems Corp. (HP/IBM) 1600 Carling Ave. Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA KIZ 7M4 (613) 728-8200 Data Transforms (HP/IBM) 616 Washington St. Denver, CO 80203 (303) 832-1501 Davka Corp. (Mac) 845 N. Michigan Ave., Ste. 843 Arabic, Hebrew Chicago, IL 60611 (312) 944-4047 Devonian International software Co. (Mac) P.O. Box 2351 Cyrillic Montclair, CA 91763 (714) 621-0973 Digi-Fonts (HP/IBM) 528 Commons Drive Greek, Cyrillic Golden, Colorado 80401 (303) 526-9435 Fax: (303) 526-9501 Digital Type Systems (DTS) (HP/IBM) 38 Profile Circle Nashua, NH 03063 (603) 880-7541 Dubl-Click Software, Inc. : World Class Fonts (Mac) 9316 Deering Ave. Chatsworth, CA 91311 (818) 700-9525 Eastern Language Systems, Inc. (Mac) 39 W. 300 North Arabic, Hebrew Prove, UT 84601 (801) 377-4558 Ecological Linguistics (Mac) P.O. Box 15156 Cyrillic, Greek Washington, DC 20003 (202) 546-5862 The Electric Typographer 2216 Cliff Dr. Santa Barbara, CA 93109 (805) 966-7563 EmDash : EmDash Fonts (Mac) P.O. Box 8256 Northfield, IL 60093 (312) 441-6699 The Font Company 12629 N. Tatum Boulevard Suite 210 Phoenix, AZ 85032 (602) 996-6606 The Font Factory (HP/IBM) 2400 Central Parkway Ste. J-2 Houston, TX 77092 FontCenter (HP/IBM) 509 Marin St., #121 Thousand Oaks, CA 91360 (805) 373-1919 Font FunHouse CD-ROM (PC/Mac) Wayzata PO Box 807 Grand Rapids, Minnesota 55744 (800) 735-7321 FontHaus is a manufacturer of typefaces and a licensed reseller for Adobe, Monotype, Bitstream, Elsner+Flake, Giampa Textware, Treacyfaces, Panache Graphics, and others around the world. FontHaus discounts most Adobe fonts up to 40% off list price, and have CD-ROM discs available so you can buy individual fonts instead of entire families. All their fonts are available in Macintosh Type 1; most are also available in PC format; and a growing number are in TrueType format. In addition, some type manufacturers support other platforms through thier CD-ROM font libraries (i.e. Monotype for Mac, PC, or NeXT). Contact them regarding availability for the fonts and formats you want. FontHaus ships internationally and also has several agents overseas, although these agents may not have everything available as the main office here in the US. FontHaus Inc (United States) 15 Perry Avenue, A7 Norwalk CT 06850 203 846 3087 203 849 8527 Fax Rhyscon Systems (Canada) PO Box 245 Clarkson PO Mississauga Ontario L51 3Y1 416 278 2600 416 278 3298 Fax TypoGabor (France) 5, rue de 8 Mai 1945 92586 Clichy (Paris) 33 1 4739 6600 33 1 4739 0638 Fax Elsner+Flake Fontinform GmbH (German) Billstrasse 103 2000 Hamburg 26 40 789 2608 40 789 1217 Fax Signus Limited (Britain) South Bank TechnoPark 90 London Road London SE1 6LN 71 922 8805 71 261 0411 Fax Font Bolajet (Sweden, Finland, Norway) Kungstengaten 18 113 57 Stockholm 46.8.16.81.00 Font World (Mac) 2021 Scottsville Rd. Cyrillic, Hebrew Rochester, NY 14623-2021 (716) 235-6861 Genny Software R&D (Mac) P.O. Box 5909 Beaumont, TX 77706 (409) 860-5817 Gradco Systems Inc. 7 Morgan Irvine, CA 92718 (714) 770-1223 Hewlett-Packard (HP/IBM) P.O. Box 15 Boise, ID 83707 (208) 323-6000 ICOM Simulations, Inc. 648 S. Wheeling Rd. Wheeling, IL 60090 (312) 520-4440 (880) 877-4266 Image Club Graphics, Inc. : Laser Type (Mac) 1902 11th Street SE, #5 Calgary, Alberta T2G 3G2 Canada (800) 661-9410 (403) 262-8008 (Canada) Image Processing Systems :Turbofonts (HP/IBM) 6409 Appalachian Way, Box 5016 Madison, WI 53705 (608) 233-5033 Invincible Software (Mac) 9534 Burwick San Antonio, TX 78230 (512) 344-4228 Kabbalah Software 8 Price Drive Edison, NJ 08817 (908) 572-0891 (908) 572-0869 Fax Hebrew fonts for PC and Mac. While I am part owner, so I am biased, we have been reviewed in the October 27 1992 issue of PC Mag as having high- quality fonts. Keller Software (HP/IBM) 1825 Westcliff Dr. Newport Beach, CA 92600 (714) 854-8211 Kensington Microware Ltd. (Mac) 251 Park Ave. S New York, NY 10010 (212) 475-5200 Kingsley/ATF Type Corp. (Mac) 200 Elmora Ave. Elizabeth, NJ 07202 (201) 353-1000 (800) 289-TYPE Laser Technologies International : Lenord Storch Soft Fonts 15403 East Alondra Blvd. (HP/IBM) La Mirada, CA 90638 (714) 739-2478 LaserMaster Corp. : LM Fonts (HP/IBM) 7156 Shady Oak Rd. Eden Prairie, MN 55344 (612) 944-9330 (800) LMC-PLOT Fax: (612) 944-0522 LeBaugh Software Corp : LeFont (HP/IBM) 2720 Greene Ave. Onaha, NE 68147 (800) 532-2844 Letraset USA : LetraFont (Mac) 40 Eissenhower Dr. Paramus, NJ 07653 (201) 845-6100 (800) 634-3463 Linguists' Software, Inc. (Mac) P.O.Box 580 Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580 Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Tibetan, (206) 775-1130 Hindi, Sanskrit, Gujarati, Tamil, Punjabi Fax: (206) 771-5911 Burmese, Linotype Company (Mac) 425 Oser Ave. Hauppauge, NY 11788 (800) 645-5764 (US) (800) 832-5288 (NY) (800) 387-9553 (Canada) MacTography 326-D North Stonestreet Ave. Rockville, MD 20850 (301) 424-3942 Megatherium Enterprises : Mac The Linguist 2 (Mac) P.O. Box 7000-417 Redondo Beach, CA 90277 (213) 545-5913 Metro Software, Inc. (HP/IBM) 2509 N. Cambell Ave., Ste. 214 Tucson, AZ 85719 (602) 299-7313 Modern Graphics :Organic Fonts (Mac) P.O. Box 21366 Indianapolis, IL 46221 (317) 253-4316 Monotype Typography Inc. Suite 504-53 West Jackson Blvd. Chicago, IL 60604 (312) 855-1444 (800) MONOTYPE Network Technology Corp. : LaserTEX Font Library (HP/IBM) 6825 Lamp Post Lane Alexandria, VA 22306 (703) 765-4506 Nippon Information Science Ltd. (NIS) (Mac) Sumire Bldg. 4F 5-4-4 Koishikawa Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112 Japan (03) 945-5955 Olduvai Corporation : Art Fonts (Mac) 7520 Red Road, Suite A South Miami, FL 33143 (305) 665-4665 (800) 822-0772 (FL) Page Studio Graphics : PIXymbols (Mac) 3175 N. Price Rd. #1050 Chandler, AZ 85224 (602) 839-2763 Paperback Software : KeyCap Fonts 2830 9th St. Berkeley, CA 94710 (415) 644-2116 Prosoft (HP/IBM) 7248 Bellair Ave., P.O. Box 560 North Hollywood, CA 91605 (818) 764 3131 Qume Corp. (HP/IBM) 2350 Qume Dr. San Jose, CA 95131 (800) 223-2479 R.M.C. : PrintR fonts (HP/IBM) 12046 Willowood Dr. Woodbridge, VA 22192 (703) 494-2633 Richard Beatty Designs : He does wonderful work with otherwise 2312 Laurel Park Highway : unavailable Goudy typefaces, borders, Hendersonville, North Carolina 28739: ornaments, custom fonts, etc. (704) 696-8316 S. Anthony Studios : Fonts Vol. 1 889 DeHaro Street San Francisco, CA 94107 ScenicSoft Inc. : PC-Monochrome (Mac) 250 Harbor Bldg. 100 2nd Ave. S Edmonds, WA 98020 (206) 776-7760 SMK (Mac) 5760 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 947-9157 SoftCraft, Inc. : Fancy Font (HP/IBM) 16 North Carrol St., Suite 500 Madison, WI 53703 (608) 257-3300 SoftDisk Publishing : DTPublisher Fonts P.O. Box 30008 Shreveport, LA 71130-0008 (318) 221-8718 or (800) 831-2694 Software Apple-cations (Mac) 1934 Ridge Point Way Boise, ID 83712 (208) 345-0547 Software Complement : Complementary Type (Mac) 8 Penn Ave. Metamoras, PA 18366 (717) 491-2492 Software Shop : Studio 231 (Mac) 233 Bedford Ave. Bellmore, Long Island, NY 11710 (516) 785-41447 Software Touch : FontWorks 9625 Black Mountain Rd. San Diego, CA 92126 (619) 549-3091 Specific Solutions : FontPacks (Mac) (HP/IBM) 1898 Anthony Ct. Mountain View, CA 94040 (415) 941-3941 Springboard Software, Inc. 7808 Creekridge Circle Minneapolis, MN 55435 (612) 944-3915 (800) 445-4780 (US & Canada) Straightforward : ZFont (HP/IBM) 15000 Halldale Ave. Gardena, CA 90249 (213) 324-8827 Studio 231, Inc. 231 Bedford Ave. Bellmore, NY 11710 (516) 785-4422 SWFTE International (HP/IBM) Box 5773 Wilmington, DE 19808 (800) 237-9383 T/Maker Company : LaserLetters (Mac) 1390 Villa St. MountainView, CA 94041 (415) 962-0195 Treacyfaces, Inc : Treasyfaces (Mac) 303 Conway Ave. Narverth, PA 19072 (215) 668-8548 Trilithon Software, Two Ohlone, Portola Valley, California 94028 (415) 325 0767. info@trilithon.com TypeXpress 150 Fencl Lane Hillside, IL 60162 (800) 343-4424 Typographics Ltd. : Typo 46, Hehalutz St. Jerusalem 96222 Israel U-Design, Inc. : Type Foundry 201 Ann St. Hartford, CT 06102 (201) 278-3648 The Underground Phont Archive (TrueType,Shareware) 395 Kaymar Dr. Amherst, NY 14228 USA. Varityper, Inc. (Mac) 11 Mt. Pleasant Ave. East Hanover, NJ 07936 (800) 631-8134 (US except NJ) (201) 887-8000 ext. 999 (NJ) VS Software (HP/IBM) P.O. Box 6158 Little Rock, AR 72216 (501) 376-2083 Weaver Graphics : LJ Fonts (Mac) (HP/IBM) 5165 S. Hwy A1A Melbourne Beach, FL 32951 (407) 728-4000 Fax: (407) 728-5978 Wikes Publishing Corp. : Softjet (HP/IBM) 25251 Paseo de Alicia #200 Laguna Hills, CA 92653 (714) 855-0730 Wu Corp. : FeiMa (Mac) Chinese wordprocessor 46 West Avon Rd. Avon, CT 06001 (203) 673-4796 Xiphias : Digital Type Fonts (HP/IBM) 13464 Washington Blvd. Marina Del Ray, CA 90292 (213) 821-0074 Y&Y, Inc. : The ``TeX without bitmaps'' people 106 Indian Hill : Technical typesetting & fonts for same Carlisle, MA 01741 (508) 371-3286 Fax: (508) 371-2004 ZSoft Corp. : Soft Type 450 Franklin Rd. Suite 100 Marietta, GA 30067 (404) 428-0008 Fax: (404) 427-1150