Finding the fonts (*.mf, *.tfm, *.gf, and *.pk) trips up TEX, , GFtoPK and the output drivers continually. `pics.tfm' needs to be put where TEX will look for TFMs, so I needed to ensure that `.' was in the appropriate path environment variable. Similarly for the , GF and PK font files.
Environment variables can be tricky. For instance, emTEX's font-making automation program `MFjob' cannot make fonts in the current directory unless both `.' and `..' are added to MFINPUT. This was not documented.
Also, some popular TEX output drivers, such as the emTEX drivers on MS-DOS and OS/2, and Tomas ROKICKI's `dvips' which has been ported to many systems, make missing fonts automatically — provided that they can find the necessary source files. Again, making fonts in the current directory can require some tweaking.