Mac => PC Font Conversion Toolkit Have you ever suspected that all the really neat freeware and shareware Type 1 and Truetype fonts are available only in Macintosh formats? Do you have some PC fonts that are obviously Mac conversions (e.g., high-ANSI characters are in the wrong place, font names include extraneous version numbers, etc.), but they lack documentation? Here, all in one place for the first time ever (at least at ftp.cica.indiana.edu), are all the tools you need to extract Mac font archives and convert the fonts to PC format for Windows or ATM. All these tools came originally from an assortment of FTP sites (they are listed in HOW_TO.TXT). They are all either shareware or freeware, and they are included in this archive in the same format (ZIP or self-extracting) in which I obtained them. I don't see any legal problems with including them all together like this. If any of the authors object, please contact me (address below). These are the included files: README.TXT This file HOW_TO.TXT Instructions, from comp.fonts FAQ BINHEX13.ZIP Converts Mac Binhex (.HQX) to binary XBIN23.ZIP Converts Mac Binhex (.HQX) to binary EXT-PC.ZIP Uncompresses Mac Compactor files UNSITI.EXE Uncompresses Mac Stuffit files UNSIT30.ZIP Uncompresses Mac Stuffit files REFONT14.ZIP Converts Type 1 and Truetype fonts: Mac to PC, PC to Mac, *NOT* Type 1 to TTF or TTF to Type 1 BM2AFM02.ZIP Creates .AFM files from Mac bitmaps HOW_TO.TXT is taken from the MS-DOS FAQ (frequently asked questions) for the Usenet group comp.fonts. It tells where most of these programs came from, and how to use them. All the programs are plain DOS programs, but I have had no trouble using them in a DOS box in Windows. Two of the programs, BINHEX13 and XBIN23, convert "binhexed" files into binary format. Binhex is the Mac equivalent of UU-encoding, allowing files to be appended to e-mail messages or sent over 7-bit communication links. XBIN23 is the more robust of the two, ignoring text headers at the beginning of the file, but occasionally it will choke on a file (e.g., mira.sit.hqx from archive.umich.edu). It always creates three files, .DAT (the one you want), .INF, and .RSR (these can be deleted. BINHEX13 has a full-screen user interface with a dialog box for selecting files. A text header fools it into thinking that it can't handle a file (you can remove the header in advance with Notepad). It successfully converted the files that XBIN23 couldn't. It creates only the .DAT part, and gives it a more instructive file extension: .CPT for Compactor files and .SIT for Stuffit files. Compactor and Stuffit are types of compressed archives, similar to ZIP files. Compactor seems to be used more, especially for fonts. EXT-PC (EXTRACT.EXE) extracts these files. It is ordinarily run twice: EXTRACT FOO.CPT -F ;extracts the data fork, including .AFM ;and README files EXTRACT FOO.CPT -F -R ;extracts the resource fork, including ;.PFB, .TTF, and Mac bitmap files Mac filenames can be long, can contain spaces, don't have consistent naming conventions, and are otherwise unruly. EXTRACT takes the first 11 letters (minus spaces) of the Mac filename and turns them into the DOS filename: "Happy Holiday Dingbats Plain" would become "HAPPYHOL.IDA". This is not necessarily a problem (you can always rename the file) unless the next file happens to be "Happy Holiday Dingbats Oblique", which would be contracted to the same DOS name. When EXTRACT encounters this situation, it stops, and will not extract any more files, even if their DOS names would be unique. The only way to prevent this is to use the -U switch, which tells the program to create "unique filenames". These are NAME001, NAME002, etc.; it tells you the Mac names as it converts. It starts with NAME001 *every time you run it*, so remember to change the names to something else before you run it again. I find that it helps to run the program with the -L switch to get a listing of the archive, so I can decide whether -U is necessary and to get an idea of what the archive contains. Of the two programs for extracting Stuffit archives, UNSITI is in my opinion the best; it works in an interactive mode, allowing you to decide for each file whether to extract it and whether to rename it. UNSIT30 is explained in HOW_TO.TXT. REFONT converts either Type 1 or Truetype fonts from Mac to PC format (PC to Mac, also). It recognizes which type of file it is working with (.AFM, Type 1 outline, or Truetype) and automatically creates a DOS file of the same name (first eight characters) and the appropriate extension (.PFM, .PFB, or .TTF, respectively). REFONT does not change the character sequence; characters above 127 will not be in the standard Windows ANSI order, and sometimes high-ANSI characters referred to in the font's documentation may not appear (I'm sure there is a reason for this, but I don't know what it is). BM2AFM02 creates an .AFM file from a Mac bitmap; this is useful only if the .AFM is missing. I have tried it out, but have no experience with it. All my observations are based on converting about 60 fonts, all from the mirror of archive.umich.edu at wuarchive.wustl.edu. I have read that Mac fonts can also be found on ftp.cs.umb.edu and sumex-aim.stanford.edu. In the comp.fonts FAQ (HOW_TO.TXT) is the statement, "Some font authors specifically deny permission to do cross-platform conversions." My feeling is that this refers to fonts that you plan to redistribute (that is why I am not posting all the fonts I converted to ftp.cica.indiana.edu), but not to fonts you plan to use yourself. I certainly expect that if you pay the shareware fee on a font, the author isn't going to care where you use it. This file is copyright 1993 by Curtis Clark (for what it's worth). If for some reason you decide to distribute it separately from the included program files, I (or my designated agent) may choose to wonder why you bothered. Curtis Clark jcclark@csupomona.edu Biological Sciences California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Pomona CA 91768 USA