ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/GRAPHICS/PSCRIPT/GS241PS.ZIP/FONTS.DOC

Text File | 1992-04-06 | 9.1 KB | 220 lines

   Copyright (C) 1990, 1991 Aladdin Enterprises.  All rights reserved.
   Distributed by Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This file is part of Ghostscript.

Ghostscript is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.  No author or distributor accepts responsibility
to anyone for the consequences of using it or for whether it serves any
particular purpose or works at all, unless he says so in writing.  Refer
to the Ghostscript General Public License for full details.

Everyone is granted permission to copy, modify and redistribute
Ghostscript, but only under the conditions described in the Ghostscript
General Public License.  A copy of this license is supposed to have been
given to you along with Ghostscript so you can know your rights and
responsibilities.  It should be in a file named COPYING.  Among other
things, the copyright notice and this notice must be preserved on all
copies.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This file, fonts.doc, describes the fonts and font facilities supplied
with Ghostscript.

For an overview of Ghostscript and a list of the documentation files, see
README.

Ghostscript fonts
-----------------

The fonts included with Ghostscript come in several parts:

    - Font data in files *.gsf: each file defines one (transformable)
      font specified in outline form.

    - BuildChar procedures in gs_fonts.ps: these provide the
      algorithms for interpreting the data in the .gsf files.

    - The Fontmap file: this relates Ghostscript font names to .gsf
          file names.

Currently, the fonts supplied with Ghostscript are based on various public
domain bitmap fonts, mostly the ones supplied with the X11 distribution
from MIT, and on the public domain Hershey fonts.  The fonts are
distributed in the file `ghostscript-N.NNfonts.tar.Z'.  The bitmap-derived
fonts include the usual Helvetica, Times-Roman, and so on; see the file
`Fontmap' for the complete list, in the usual roman, italic, bold, and
bold italic styles (for the most part).  The Hershey fonts, on the other
hand, are quite different from traditional ones; the file `hershey.doc'
describes them in more detail.

There is also a single rather heavy home-grown font called Ugly.  This
font is the file `uglyr.gsf' in the Ghostscript source distribution.

The file gs_fonts.ps, which is loaded as part of Ghostscript
initialization, arranges to load fonts on demand using the information
from Fontmap.  If you want to preload all of the known fonts, invoke the
procedure
    loadallfonts
This is not done by default, since the fonts occupy about 50K each and there
are a lot of them.

Ghostscript fonts are actually ordinary Ghostscript programs: they use the
extension .gsf instead of .ps simply to be informative.  This convention
is only embodied in the Fontmap file: there is no code that knows about
it.

If you want to try out the fonts, prfont.ps contains code for printing a
sampler.  Load this program, by including it in the gs command line or by
invoking
    (prfont.ps) run
and then to produce a sampler of a particular font, invoke
    /fontName DoFont
e.g.
    /Times-Roman DoFont


Contents of fonts
-----------------

A Ghostscript font is a dictionary with a standard set of keys as follows.
The keys marked with a * have the same meanings as in P*stScr*pt fonts;
those marked with # have the same meanings as in Adobe Type 1 fonts.  Note
that FontName is required; StrokeWidth is required for all stroked or
outlined fonts; and Metrics is not currently supported.

*    - FontMatrix <array>: the transformation from character
      coordinates to user coordinates.

*    - FontType <integer>: the type of the font, either 1 or 3.

*    - FontBBox <array>: the bounding box of the font.

*    - Encoding <array>: the map from character codes to character
      names.

*    - FontName <name>: the name of the font.

*    - PaintType <integer>: an indication of how to interpret the
      character description from CharInfo.

*    - StrokeWidth <number>: the stroke width for outline fonts.

*    - FontInfo <dictionary>: additional information about the font
      (optional, not used by the standard Ghostscript software).

*    - UniqueID <integer>: a unique number identifying the font.

*    - BuildChar <procedure>: the procedure for showing a character
      (not required in type 1 fonts).

#    - CharStrings <dictionary>: the map from character names to character
      descriptions (relevant only in type 1 fonts).

#    - Private <dictionary>: additional information used by the
      algorithms for rendering outlines fonts (relevant only in type 1
      fonts).

The format of values in the CharStrings and Private dictionaries are
described in the Adobe Type 1 Font Format book.

Adding your own fonts
---------------------

The program bdftops.ps (and invoking shell script bdftops.bat or bdftops)
converts these bitmap files to Ghostscript input, using the Ghostscript
``type1imagepath'' operator to convert the bitmaps into outlines.

If you want to add fonts of your own, you need to do two things.  First,
edit Fontmap to include an entry for your new font at the end.  The format
for entries is documented in the Fontmap file.  Second, you need to
prepare the .gsf file.  If you are converting a file from BDF format, the
Ghostscript distribution already includes a program for doing this: run
the shell command
    bdftops <BDF_file_name> [<AFM_file1_name> ...] <your_gsf_file_name>
      <font_name> <uniqueID> [<encoding_name>]
e.g.,
    bdftops pzdr.bdf ZapfDingbats.afm pzdr.gsf ZapfDingbats 4100000
You may find it helpful to read, and to add an entry to, the fonts.mak
file, which is a makefile for converting the standard Ghostscript fonts.

There is a similar utility to convert files from .PFB form to plain text
.gsf form.  Run the shell command
    pfbtogs <.PFB_file_name> <gsf_file_name>
e.g.,
    pfbtogs timesrmn.pfb ptmr.gsf
Files in .PFA form can be used directly by Ghostscript -- no conversion is
required, just an entry in Fontmap.

Starting in release 2.4, Ghostscript can also use .PFB fonts directly: you
don't have to run pfbtogs, just put the .PFB file in the Fontmap.

Precompiling fonts
------------------

You can compile any font into C and link it into the Ghostscript
executable.  This doesn't have any effect on rendering speed, but it
eliminates the time for loading the font dynamically.

The utility for precompiling fonts is called font2c.  (Note that font2c is
actually a PostScript program, so you must have some version of
Ghostscript already running to be able to run font2c.)  For example, to
precompile the Times-Roman font,
    font2c Times-Roman timesrmn.c
where the first argument is the font name and the second is the name of
the .c file.  (You can use any file name you want, as long as it ends in
.c.  It doesn't have to be limited to 8 characters, unless your operating
system requires this.)

Besides running font2c, you must edit the makefile so that the file will
be compiled from C to machine code, and linked into the executable.
First, you must add the compiled fonts "feature" to your platform-specific
makefile.  On MS-DOS systems, you edit turboc.mak, tbcplus.mak, or
watc.mak; on Unix systems, you edit makefile.  (The situation on VMS
systems that do not use `make' is too complicated to describe here;
contact Aladdin Enterprises for assistance.)  Find the definition of
FEATURE_DEVS in the makefile, e.g.,
    FEATURE_DEVS=filter.dev dps.dev
Add ccfonts.dev on the end, e.g.,
    FEATURE_DEVS=filter.dev dps.dev ccfonts.dev

Next, you must add the specific fonts to the generic makefile.  On MS-DOS
systems, you edit gs.mak; on Unix systems, you edit makefile.  Find the
line in the relevant makefile that says
    ccfonts_=ugly.$(OBJ) cour.$(OBJ)
Edit this to add your compiled font file names, e.g.,
    ccfonts_=ugly.$(OBJ) cour.$(OBJ) timesrmn.$(OBJ)
Then find the line that says
    $(SHP)gsaddmod ccfonts -oper font_Ugly font_Courier
Add your own fonts to the end of this line.  If the line gets too long,
add another line of the same form, e.g.,
    $(SHP)gsaddmod ccfonts -oper font_Ugly font_Courier
    $(SHP)gsaddmod ccfonts -oper font_Times_Roman
Notice that you must replace `-' by `_' in the font name.  Now find the
lines that say
    ugly.$(OBJ): ugly.c $(CCFONT)

    cour.$(OBJ): cour.c $(CCFONT)
Add a similar line for each font, separating these lines from each other
by a blank line.  In our example,
    ugly.$(OBJ): ugly.c $(CCFONT)

    cour.$(OBJ): cour.c $(CCFONT)

    timesrmn.$(OBJ): timesrmn.c $(CCFONT)

Finally, run `make'.  The executable will now include the fonts you added.
They will be present in FontDirectory when Ghostscript starts up.

Fonts that have been precompiled and linked in this way do not need to
appear in the Fontmap, although if they do appear there, no harm is done.

Because of RAM and compiler limitations, you shouldn't use compiled fonts
on MS-DOS systems unless you are using a 32-bit compiler such as Watcom
C/386 or djgpp.

Note that ugly.c and cour.c are not supplied with the Ghostscript fileset,
since they are quite large and can easily be recreated using the font2c
program as described above.