TFM files
A TEX Font Metric file contains the crucial typesetting information for
a font, such as each character's height, depth and width.
The actual character images are not stored in a TFM file.
TFM files are the only source of font information used when running TEX;
it doesn't need to know anything about character images to be able
to create a DVI file.
See The TEXbook if you want to know more about how
TEX uses fonts, especially Chapter 4 and Appendix F.
reads TFM files when printing or viewing a DVI file
containing any of the fonts listed at the end of your configuration file.
The dummy TFM file specified in your configuration file will also be read
if a requested PK file can't be found
(PK files are discussed in section
).
will look for a TFM file in the current folder before looking in
the sub-folders in TeX-fonts.
All the TFM files in the CM
sub-folder belong to the
Computer Modern family of fonts (created by Donald Knuth using
).
The TFM files in the LaTeX
sub-folder are used by LATEX.
The TFM files in the PS
sub-folder correspond to PostScript fonts;
their names follow a scheme devised by Karl Berry in an attempt
to make TEX input files more portable. See section
for
more information about these PostScript fonts.