summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/accfonts/README
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorDr. Clea F. Rees <cfrees@imapmail.org>2008-12-28 23:55:42 +0000
committerDr. Clea F. Rees <cfrees@imapmail.org>2008-12-28 23:55:42 +0000
commit0ea692dfc516c549c696115ab6e0672659fde2dd (patch)
treeb4010874865e73b344cab4ebdc96fe0720c673a9 /Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/accfonts/README
parentd48f7c90859ad4c4f2d617a2c7f8456c5b1b5b8e (diff)
accfonts update 2008/12/28
git-svn-id: svn://tug.org/texlive/trunk@11742 c570f23f-e606-0410-a88d-b1316a301751
Diffstat (limited to 'Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/accfonts/README')
-rw-r--r--Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/accfonts/README333
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 333 deletions
diff --git a/Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/accfonts/README b/Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/accfonts/README
deleted file mode 100644
index 23fbbb553e2..00000000000
--- a/Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/accfonts/README
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,333 +0,0 @@
-
-
- Mkt1font and vpl2vpl: programs to generate accented fonts
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
- John D. Smith, University of Cambridge, 1997
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
-
-These two programs address the same requirement using the same basic
-algorithms: their aim is to make it easy to create versions of
-existing fonts containing whatever accented characters the user may
-need, arranged according to whatever encoding he/she may favour.
-Mkt1font does this by reading in the two files that define a Type 1
-PostScript font and writing out new versions of them; vpl2vpl does
-it by reading in the file that defines a TeX virtual font and
-writing out a new version of it. In each case information about what
-accented characters are required and where they should be located is
-supplied by means of a simple definition file, which has the same
-format for both programs.
-
-It is common to hear someone say, "I need a font containing
-such-and-such special characters," when really they should be
-saying, "I need a version of Times/Palatino/New Century Schoolbook
-etc. containing the special characters for such-and-such a
-language." If we are to take full advantage of computer typesetting
-and desktop publishing, we need to be able to choose our fonts on
-grounds of aesthetic merit rather than expediency, and to move
-towards standardised encodings. These programs should go some way to
-making this possible.
-
-Note that most Type 1 PostScript fonts are commercial products
-subject to both copyright and licensing restrictions. If the license
-for such a font forbids reverse-engineering it, it is presumably
-illegal to run mkt1font on it; in any case it would certainly be a
-serious breach of copyright to make modified versions of the font
-available to third parties. The author of mkt1font will not be held
-responsible for any such misuses of the software. (No such legal
-problems surround the use of TeX virtual fonts, which merely specify
-new ways to use existing fonts.) However, would-be users may wish to
-note the existence of a body of high-quality freeware lookalikes for
-many of the standard Type 1 fonts: like mkt1font and vpl2vpl, the
-Ghostscript fonts developed by URW++ Design and Development
-Incorporated are made available under the GNU General Public License
-(see the file COPYING), which permits them to be modified and
-redistributed provided that certain simple decencies are observed.
-These fonts are available from many ftp sites, including those
-forming the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN), for example
-ftp.tex.ac.uk: look for the most recent font archive file in the
-directory /tex-archive/support/ghostscript/gnu/fonts.
-
-A detailed specification of the form of the definition file used by
-mkt1font and vpl2vpl is given below in the instructions for using
-the two programs, but it may be helpful to give a quick idea of its
-contents here. Each line of the file contains something similar to
-"128 x acute", which is an instruction to create a new character
-formed from "x" with an acute accent and located at position 128 in
-the character set. Once a new character has been defined in this
-way, it "exists" in just the same way as any other character, under
-the name "xacute" (or whatever); thus it can even receive further
-accents. The two lines
-
- 129 e macron
- 130 emacron breve
-
-will create a "long e" and a "long-or-short e" at the positions
-specified. (If only the latter is desired, they can both be assigned
-the same position in the encoding -- the second will overwrite the
-first.) Subscript as well as superscript accents are available. Some
-sample definition files are included to give an idea of the format:
-note that two of these (CSX.def and Norman.def), used for Indian
-language material in Roman script, contain the triple-accented
-character "runderdotmacron acute"!
-
-In addition to accented characters proper, both programs can produce
-digraphs -- single characters composed of pairs of other characters.
-In itself this may seem to be of limited use, since the digraph
-should always be indistinguishable from its two constituent
-characters printed consecutively. However, some Unicode-style
-encodings require that certain character-pairs be treated as
-digraphs. In addition, use of a digraph in subsequent definitions
-allows an accent to be applied to two characters as a pair: so, for
-example,
-
- 131 k h
- 131 kh underbar
-
-will produce a character consisting of an underlined "kh" at
-position 131.
-
-The algorithms used in both programs take great care to secure the
-most attractive results, placing accents centrally over/under their
-characters at appropriate heights/depths, varying their position
-according to the angle of slant in Italic and similar fonts,
-providing new characters with kerning information (which will be
-resolutely ignored by most word-processors), and -- in the case of
-mkt1font -- giving hinting instructions to improve output on
-low-resolution printers. However, users may feel that some
-characters need "tweaking". This tends to happen when the part of
-the character adjacent to the accent is highly asymmetrical:
-subscript accents below "r" may need moving to the left, while
-superscript accents above "d" may need moving to the right. It is
-relatively easy to modify the output of vpl2vpl to make such
-improvements by hand (vpl files are designed to be easy for humans
-to read, and vpl2vpl identifies each character with a comment). Type
-1 fonts are another matter; mkt1font generates a human-readable and
-commented ".dis" file as well as the ".pfb" font file, and it is
-possible to make changes to this and rebuild the pfb file with t1asm
-(see below), but this is not quite as simple as modifying a TeX
-virtual font.
-
-The programs are written in Perl, and have not been tested on
-systems other than Unix. (Apart from the #! line at the top, the
-only Unix specificities the author is aware of are two references to
-"/dev/null" in mkt1font and the general assumption that filenames
-can be of any length.) At run time, mkt1font invokes two further
-font utilities, t1asm and t1disasm, written by I. Lee Hetherington
-and available from CTAN ftp sites: look in the directory
-/tex-archive/fonts/utilities/t1utils. If it is intended to use the
-fonts output by mkt1font with Adobe Type Manager, it will probably
-be necessary to create ".inf" and/or ".pfm" files for them: for this
-there is a useful shareware program for MS-DOS called REFONT, which
-can be found at http://www.asy.com/sharewr.htm.
-
-Detailed instructions for using the two programs follow. In each
-case these instructions can also be seen by typing the name of the
-program with a "-h" option.
-
-
-Mkt1font
-~~~~~~~~
-Syntax: mkt1font -n fontname -d definition-file -a afm-file -f font-file
- [-s shrink-factor] [-c candrabindu-adjustment] [-b]
-
-Mkt1font creates new Type 1 PostScript fonts based on existing fonts
-("input fonts"). In order to do this it makes use of I. Lee
-Hetherington's programs t1asm and t1disasm, which must be present on
-the system. A successful run will generate an AFM file and a PFB
-file, as well as a DIS file containing a disassembled version of the
-PFB file (including useful comments). Four options must be specified
-on the command line, as follows:
-
- -n should name the font it is intended to generate. Avoid names
- such as "myfont", as both mkt1font and other programs attempt
- to draw conclusions from the name; better would be something
- like "Utopia_French-BoldItalic". The generated font files will
- also use this for their basename.
-
- -d should refer to a font definition file. This file (which could
- usefully be named, e.g., "French.def") should consist of lines
- of character definitions, in the form
- "number" "character"
- or
- "number" "character" "accent"
- Here "number" represents the character's position in the new
- encoding and may be expressed in decimal, octal or hex;
- "character" names the character (e.g. "comma", "eight", "A")
- or consists of the word ".notdef" (indicating that the
- specified number's "slot" in the new encoding is to be empty);
- and "accent" optionally names an accent to be placed on the
- character. In addition to the standard accents available in
- PostScript fonts, "underbar" and "underdot" are also available,
- as are "under" versions of all the normal superscript accents
- ("underdieresis", "underring", etc.). The Indian accent
- "candrabindu" may also be specified: it is formed by
- overprinting a breve with a dotaccent. Finally, "overdot" may
- be used as a synonym for "dotaccent".
-
- If the character named in the "accent" position is not in fact
- a valid accent character, the program interprets the definition
- as a request for a digraph formed from the "character" and the
- "accent". A digraph consisting of, say, "k" and "h" will be
- indistinguishable from the letters "k" and "h" printed
- consecutively, but the digraph "kh" can itself receive accents
- like any other character: see next paragraph.
-
- A new character (such as "amacron" or "kh") may be freely
- used in the "character" position of a further definition (such
- as "amacron breve" or "kh underbar"). There is no constraint
- on the ordering of definitions within a definition file. The
- definition of "a macron" does not have to precede that of
- "amacron breve": requests for "impossible" characters are
- deferred until their constituents have had a chance to come into
- being.
-
- "Slots" for which no new definition is given retain the
- definition they have in the input font.
-
- The definition file may also contain blank lines and comments
- (introduced by "#").
-
- -a should refer to the AFM (Adobe Font Metrics) file for the input
- font.
-
- -f should refer to the binary font file (PFB) for the input font.
- (In fact the equivalent ASCII file (PFA) is also acceptable for
- input, but the output font is always in PFB format.)
-
- -s may optionally give the factor, expressed as a per-thousand
- value, by which normally superscript accents (such as dieresis,
- ring) should be shrunk when they are used as subscript accents
- (such as underdieresis, underring). Values of around 800 may be
- found useful.
-
- -c may optionally give two comma-separated numerical values to
- adjust the x and y coordinates of the dotaccent placed within a
- breve to form the candrabindu accent.
-
- -b may optionally be specified to block the use of predefined
- accented characters, forcing mkt1font to define its own
- versions. This may be useful to secure a consistent appearance
- in cases where a font designer does not share mkt1font's views
- on where accents should be placed.
-
-The -h option prints this help.
-
-
-Vpl2vpl
-~~~~~~~
-Syntax: vpl2vpl -d definition-file [-s shrink-factor]
- [-c candrabindu-adjustment] [-b] vpl-file
-
-Vpl2vpl creates new TeX virtual fonts based on existing virtual
-fonts ("input fonts"). A successful run will read a vpl (Virtual
-Property List) file and a definition file, and will generate a new
-vpl file on standard output. The input font is assumed to adhere to
-the standard TeX encoding for text fonts unless it was created with
-the program afm2tfm, in which case it is assumed to conform to the
-encoding specified in the file dvips.enc. In either case, the name
-of the input font is assumed to be the name of the input file
-without its .vpl extension: it must conform to normal TeX
-conventions for naming fonts, as vpl2vpl attempts to draw
-conclusions from it about the kind of font it is dealing with.
-
-In the case of a non-virtual font (such as the Computer Modern
-fonts), use a pl (Property List) file, created with the standard
-utility tftopl, as the input file in place of a vpl file; vpl2vpl
-will make the necessary changes on the fly.
-
-A typical complete sequence of commands to create a new virtual
-font might therefore be
- afm2tfm Times-Roman.afm -t dvips.enc -v ptmr rptmr
- vpl2vpl -d ISO-Latin1.def ptmr.vpl >ptmr_isol1.vpl
- vptovf ptmr_isol1.vpl ptmr_isol1.vf ptmr_isol1.tfm
-for a PostScript font, or
- tftopl cmr10.tfm cmr10.pl
- vpl2vpl -d ISO-Latin1.def cmr10.pl >cmr10_isol1.vpl
- vptovf cmr10_isol1.vpl cmr10_isol1.vf cmr10_isol1.tfm
-for a Computer Modern font.
-
-In order to keep the whole upper half of the character set free for
-the requirements of the encoding specified in the definition file,
-certain modifications are made to input fonts following the
-dvips.enc encoding to bring them into greater conformity with the
-TeX norm. In particular, the characters dotaccent and hungarumlaut
-are placed in the positions assigned by TeX ("5F, "7D), not those
-enforced by dvips.enc ("C7, "CD). The f-ligatures, double quotes and
-dashes are also moved from the upper half of the character set to
-their normal TeX positions. As a result, the following characters
-are not found in the lower half of the character set: quotesingle,
-quotedbl, backslash, underscore, braceleft, bar, braceright. These
-characters can, however, be assigned positions in the output font if
-they are needed. (Indeed, they could all be explicitly restored to
-their dvips.enc positions if this were desired.)
-
-Options:
-
- -d should refer to a font definition file. This file (which could
- usefully be named, e.g., "French.def") should consist of lines
- of character definitions, in the form
- "number" "character"
- or
- "number" "character" "accent"
-
- Here "number" represents the character's position in the new
- encoding and may be expressed in decimal, octal or hex;
- "character" names the character (e.g. "comma", "eight", "A") or
- consists of the word ".notdef" (indicating that the specified
- number's "slot" in the new encoding is to be empty); and
- "accent" optionally names an accent to be placed on the
- character. In addition to the standard accents available in
- PostScript fonts, "underbar" and "underdot" are also available,
- as are "under" versions of all the normal superscript accents
- ("underdieresis", "underring", etc.). The Indian accent
- "candrabindu" may also be specified: it is formed by
- overprinting a breve with a dotaccent. Finally, "overdot" may
- be used as a synonym for "dotaccent".
-
- If the character named in the "accent" position is not in fact
- a valid accent character, the program interprets the definition
- as a request for a digraph formed from the "character" and the
- "accent". A digraph consisting of, say, "k" and "h" will be
- indistinguishable from the letters "k" and "h" printed
- consecutively, but the digraph "kh" can itself receive accents
- like any other character: see next paragraph.
-
- A new character (such as "amacron" or "kh") may be freely
- used in the "character" position of a further definition (such
- as "amacron breve" or "kh underbar"). There is no constraint
- on the ordering of definitions within a definition file. The
- definition of "a macron" does not have to precede that of
- "amacron breve": requests for "impossible" characters are
- deferred until their constituents have had a chance to come into
- being.
-
- "Slots" for which no new definition is given retain the
- definition they have in the input font.
-
- The definition file may also contain blank lines and comments
- (introduced by "#").
-
- -s may optionally give the factor, expressed as a per-thousand
- value, by which normally superscript accents (such as dieresis,
- ring) should be shrunk when they are used as subscript accents
- (such as underdieresis, underring). Values of around 800 may be
- found useful.
-
- -c may optionally give two comma-separated numerical values to
- adjust the x and y coordinates of the dotaccent placed within a
- breve to form the candrabindu accent. A coordinate scheme using
- "DESIGNUNITS R 1000" is assumed.
-
- -b may optionally be specified to block the use of predefined
- accented characters, forcing vpl2vpl to define its own
- versions. This may be useful to secure a consistent appearance
- in cases where a font designer does not share vpl2vpl's views
- on where accents should be placed.
-
- -h prints this help.
-
-
-John D. Smith john.smith@oriental.cam.ac.uk
-University of Cambridge http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk