[Textures] A bit of everything (1/7)

[Al Shenk]

Michael:
	Did you intend to send this to me?
								Al
On Mar 28, 2011, at 11:09 AM, Michael Sharpe wrote:

>
> On Mar 28, 2011, at 8:59 AM, Paolo Matteucci wrote:
>
>> Some [far from enlightening :-/] comments [on PS fonts], as promised…
>>
>> 2011/3/22 Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at me.com>
>>
>> General principles: Fonts
>> =========================
>>
>> TeX fonts generally come in PostScript Type 1 format (either PFB  
>> binary files or PFA ascii files), often accompanied with metric  
>> files in AFM format (if not, the AFM files can be recreated from  
>> the PFB or PFA files). To be used by Textures, the fonts must be  
>> converted to a format recognized by OS X, which may raise license  
>> issues. I won't enter into these, except in one case (Lucida), and  
>> leave it to the reader to assess the matter…
>>
>> PostScript
>> ----------
>>
>> The Mac version of a PostScript font is a screen font suitcase, in  
>> FFIL resource format or DFONT data format, plus printer font files  
>> in LWFN format. These are legacy formats inherited from Mac OS  
>> Classic. On OS X they are deprecated and may stop being supported  
>> at any point in the future (Lion?).
>>
>> […]
>>
>> In addition, FFIL/DFONT screen fonts are required. These are only  
>> used by OS X to locate the LWFN files and get basic metric info, no  
>> character bitmaps or outlines from the screen fonts are actually  
>> used. For that reason, the Windows-only Y&Y Font Manipulation  
>> Package (see "Creating Mac screen fonts from Type 1 outlines" at  
>> the bottom of <http://www.faqs.org/faqs/fonts-faq/part7/>) included  
>> a tool AFMtoSCR for creating fake Mac screen fonts from AFM metric  
>> files.
>>
>> […]
>>
>> AFMtoSCR still lives as C source <http://code.google.com/p/yytex/source/browse/trunk/src/c32/afmtoscr.c 
>> >, but I do not think it has ever been ported to the Mac or to Unix.
>>
>> Actually, the code seems to make use of fairly standard libraries  
>> (different paths [and path separator] aside), and I believe it  
>> would be worthwhile porting not just AFMtoSCR, but the whole Y&Y  
>> Font Manipulation Package to Mac/Linux, but am afraid that would  
>> require someone better at C than me! :-(
>>
>> This only leaves FontForge <http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/>,  
>> using the binary packages now relegated at <http://sourceforge.net/projects/fontforge/files/fontforge-executables/ 
>> >. FontForge can be scripted, and the GW Extras i-Package includes  
>> such a script dumpafm.pe for extracting AFM files from a DFONT  
>> suitcase or a TTC collection (see the penultimate message in this  
>> series). However, I am totally helpless at scripting and won't  
>> venture into this territory.
>>
>> So let's go GUI: with FontForge installed, practically any font  
>> file can be double-clicked in the Finder and it will open in  
>> FontForge. For each PFB file you must first create a bitmap version  
>> by going to
>>
>>       Element > Bitmap Strikes Available
>>
>> (namely, go to the Element menu and select "Bitmap Strikes  
>> Available"). Check the Mac checkbox and enter a bitmap size; I  
>> chose 4 pt, which was the bitmap size of the screen fonts in BSR's  
>> distribution of the Lucida fonts (this is immaterial, since the  
>> bitmaps are not actually used). Then go to
>>
>>       File > Generate Fonts
>>
>> and select
>>
>>       PS Type 1 (Resource) + NFNT (Resource)
>>
>> This will create a .bmap screen font in FFIL format, and a LWFN  
>> printer font file. The FFIL file will have the name of the AFM  
>> metrics inside the PFB file, and the LWFN file will have a name  
>> satisfying some norm like 3-letter abbreviations for each of Bold,  
>> Italic, etc.
>>
>> However, the result doesn't work because of the way the fonts are  
>> grouped in families by Mac OS.
>>
>> Actually, this doesn’t work for me even for a single font!  
>> (FontForge 20090923) …whereas it works perfectly if I use FontLab  
>> Studio (v5.0.4). :-?
>>
>> I did actually create (read: "snatch" —see http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/scripting-tutorial.html) 
>>  a simple FontForge script, which would come in extremely handy (if  
>> I could just make the result work for me, that is! [N.B. the result  
>> is the same for me if I follow the above steps for the FontForge  
>> GUI, instead]):
>>
>> #!/usr/local/bin/fontforge
>> i = 1
>> while(i < $argc)
>> Open($argv[i])
>> BitmapsAvail([10])
>> Generate($argv[i]:r + ".res", "bin")
>> i = i + 1
>> endloop
>>
>> Call it, say, convert.pe, place it into your PFB files folder, cd  
>> to that directory in the Terminal and issue
>>
>> $ chmod +x convert.pe
>> $ convert.pe *.pfb
>>
>> The latter will generate the LWFN + FFIL files for all the PFB  
>> files in that directory for you.
>>
>
> I don't have a recent Textures that can serve as the ultimate test,  
> but with a small change to Bruno's instructions, I can produce a PS  
> Type 1 (Resource) + NFNT (Resource) that works when installed via  
> Fontbook.
>
> Before opening your pfb, make sure that the corresponding afm is in  
> the same folder, so that when FontForge opens the pfb, it picks up  
> the complete metrics from the afm.
>
> After you open the pfb, select the menu item Encoding > Reencode >  
> Macintosh Latin. (The font may print OK, but will not show correctly  
> on the screen without this step.)
>
> Then follow the remaining steps to generate the single old-style  
> Macintosh font pair. I didn't try it, but I think the same should  
> work for a family if you choose instead File > Generate Mac Family.
>
> Michael
>
>
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