Contents of Making PK fonts on demand

Making PK fonts on demand

All of 's dialog boxes for printing or viewing a DVI file have a check box called ``Make missing PK fonts'' (only available in System 7 or later). If this box is checked and detects a missing PK font, then will be called to build the required PK file. does not call ${\logo METAFONT\null}$ directly. Instead it starts up MakeTeXPK which runs ${\logo METAFONT\null}$ to build a GF (Generic Font) file, then runs GFtoPK to convert the GF file into a PK file. uses the new PK file to continue previewing or printing. The location of the PK file is determined by the pk_file template. The template in 's Default file will create PK files in the PK-files folder. If you want MakeTeXPK to create PK files in appropriate subfolders of PK-files then set pk_file to ``:PK-files:%d:%f.%dpk''. See the comments at the end of the Default file for details about the pk_file template. If you decide to change the template then make sure it matches one of the templates in the pk_files list used by so that it can find PK files created by MakeTeXPK! It is possible that the font creation process will fail. For example, ${\logo METAFONT\null}$ might not find the required .mf input file. Or you might decide to cancel the process. In such cases will report a missing PK font and append a line of information to a file called missfont.make in the PK-files folder. If ``Make missing PK fonts'' is not checked then won't attempt to create a missing PK font, but it will append a line to missfont.make. This file can be used later by MakeTeXPK to build all the listed PK fonts. For many people this might be more convenient than having build PK fonts on the fly — on a slow Mac it can take quite a while for ${\logo METAFONT\null}$ to create a font. If you don't have a Power Mac, I recommend leaving ``Make missing PK fonts'' unchecked, at least initially. Preview all your DVI files and select ``Page Info'' from the View menu. If there are any missing PK fonts, will create a missfont.make file. Edit this file and remove any duplicate lines. Start up , select MakeTeXPK from the Tools menu, open missfont.make and go to bed! When you wake up, all the PK files should have been created in the PK-files folder. Note that MakeTeXPK will keep processing if errors occur. All error messages are appended to a MakeTeXPK.log file in the same folder as the .make file. This is handy when building lots of PK fonts because a minor ${\logo METAFONT\null}$ error won't stop the entire process. It is a good idea to delete (or rename) missfont.make after using it to build PK files. simply appends missing font info to missfont.make without checking to see if that info already exists, and MakeTeXPK simply builds all the listed PK files, even if they already exist. If you preview a DVI file and select the ``Ignore missing fonts'' check box then the ``Make missing PK fonts'' setting is ignored. If a missing PK font is detected then won't attempt to call MakeTeXPK, nor will it append any information to missfont.make. This feature is useful when previewing certain DVI files (like trip.dvi) where you know there are missing fonts and have no desire to create them.