[OS X TeX] Help for FontForge needed

[André Bellaïche]

Le 31 août 06 à 02:00, Bruno Voisin a écrit :

> Le 31 août 06 à 00:11, André Bellaïche a écrit :
>
>> I fancied to install Small Caps and Oldstyle Figures to match with  
>> Times and MathTime, so I bought the needed font from Linotype.
>>
>> I have read that the first step is to make .pfb fonts from the  
>> files sent by the vendor. I could install FontForge, which, I was  
>> said, can manage all types of fonts. The first answer by FontForge  
>> is "There are several fonts in this file. Choose anyone." (In  
>> French, in fact.) Easy step. But after that, there is nowhere any  
>> mention of a conversion to .pfb. Only BDF, which is, I guess a  
>> kind af bitmat format. What should I do now ?
>>
>> Neither Bruno Voisin, nor Philip Lehman or Matthew Amster-Burton,  
>> or the University of Cambridge Engineering Department explain how  
>> to convert vendor fonts to pfa/pfb with FontForge. Only Bruno does  
>> it a little, the others suppose that the problem has already been  
>> solved.
>>
>> Maybe I should try ttf2pt1 from http://ttf2pt1.sourceforge.net/
>>
>> But the main problem is that I do not know if the fonts I have  
>> bought are ttf. Maybe there are already Adobe Type 1, .pfa  
>> or .pfb, but included in a larger file (I choose Ps-Mac format).
>
> Bonsoir André,
>
> What is it exactly that you are attempting to do? Convert from TTF  
> to PFB format?

Thanks to Pete, I could find in "Livre des Polices" that the font is  
"Postscript Type 1".
>
> There's more than a year that I last attempted to do such things,  
> and I've forgotten most of it. Only thing I can say, I just got  
> hold of a font file that I had created in FontForge's own private  
> SFD format, and from which I had later produced PFB, AFM, FFIL and  
> LWFN files. If only I could remember how!
>
> I suspect this is done using FontForge's "Fichier > Générer  
> fonte..." menu item (in French, in the X11 version), playing then  
> with the format scroll-down submenu to specify the format of the  
> generated font and with the options scroll-down submenu to specify  
> whether an accompanying AFM file is generated.

It should be... (in the manual, they say that this command is in the  
third column "Element", but in my version it is in the File (Fichier)  
column).

 From the quick tests I just did, the format submenu must be  
interpreted as:
>
> PS Type 1 (Ascii) -> PFA
> PS Type 1 (Binary) -> PFB
> PS Type 1 (Resource) -> LWFN

So, it should not be very diffcult to transform a LWFN  
(LaserWriterFont) in a PFB.

The obstacle, now, is this one.

In the directory sent by the vendor, you see three font files, and  
two AFM:
- TimesTen SC&OsF
- TimesTenRomSC
- TimesTenRomOsF
- TimesTenRomSC.afm
- TimesTenRomOsF.afm

In the Font Book (Livre des Polices), you see, as memebers of the  
TimesTen family, two fonts only:
- Times Ten Roman Small Caps & Oldstyle Figures (full name) --  
TimesTenRomanSC (Postscriptname)
- Times 10 Roman Oldstyle Figures (full name) -- TimesTenRomanOsF  
(Postscriptname)

In the directory, FontForge sees only one file:
- TimesTen SC&OsF (with an icon made of two T's one mathbb style, and  
the other rather thin).

If you click on the name of that file, you are answered: "There are  
several fonts in this file, choose one (any one)." But you quickly  
understand that all of these fonts are bitmap: suppose you choose  
TimesTen RomanSC. A new window opens,  letting you try one the File/ 
Generate fonts... This action leads you to a another window where you  
can read:

TimesTen RomanSC-*.bdf
Aucune fonte de contour (No outline font)

As a bonus, the 5 files of the directory can now be seen in the  
window, but TimesTenRomSC and TimesTenRomOsF have an icon bearing a  
question mark.

Other manipulations give rise to "Impossible to read the font--The  
TimesTen SC&OsF has an incorrect format", or to a list of possible  
format displayed by File/Generate Fonts... where all the possible  
formats are grayed, except the last one.

> [...]

> I hope this all makes sense to you.

Yes. Thanks to Pete and you, I understand much better what it is all  
about.

But do you think my 22 euros are lost?

Best regards,

André------------------------- Info --------------------------
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