Typing on the Command Line

Most implementations permit you to type commands on the command line, instead of at the ** prompt. (Rather, it is automatically passed to that prompt.)

On MS-DOS, type commands as at the ** prompt: 

    mf \mode=localfont; input myfont10

On UNIX, command shells typically interpret semicolons, backslashes and parentheses specially, unless they are 'quoted'. So, when typing those characters as part of instructions to on the UNIX command line, it's wise to accustom yourself to protecting them with apostrophes: 

    mf '\mode=localfont; input myfont10'
If localfont makes fonts for a 300 dots per inch (dpi) device, this should produce a TFM file, `myfont10.tfm', and a 300 dpi GF font file, `myfont10.300gf'. Almost all of the following will presume a 300 dpi device, and other resolution devices will have appropriately different font file names.

These command lines are a bit long, very often used, and rather intolerant of mistakes (see subsection [*] below), so you might type the repetitive parts into a UNIX shell script or an MS-DOS batch file, as appropriate.

In UNIX, the ** prompt has the advantage that those pesky apostrophes are not needed. (Indeed, those apostrophes are always wrong at the ** prompt — doesn't understand them. It would not understand them on the command line either—it's just that the shell does not hand them over to .) However, for shell scripts (and for batch files in MS-DOS), the command line is a boon.

For the Macintosh, which is not command line based, Tim BELL reports that one port of (by Timothy MURPHY <tim@maths.tcd.ie> 22 January 1993) simulates the command line within the program (using a special THINK C library written just for that). But what you type goes through some string processing, so you need double `\'s. Thus your example line reads: 

    mf \\mode=localfont; input myfont10