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Internet Message Format | 1996-08-15 | 19.5 KB

Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.mathworks.com!zombie.ncsc.mil!newsgate.duke.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!paperboy.wellfleet.com!news3.near.net!amber.ora.com!not-for-mail From: norm@ora.com (Norman Walsh) Newsgroups: comp.fonts,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: comp.fonts FAQ: NeXT Info Supersedes: <font-faq-12_817479312@ora.com> Followup-To: poster Date: 14 Aug 1996 10:35:12 -0400 Organization: O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. Lines: 515 Sender: norm@ruby.ora.com Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Distribution: world Expires: 27 Sep 1996 14:34:08 GMT Message-ID: <font-faq-12_840033248@ora.com> References: <font-faq-1_840033248@ora.com> Reply-To: norm@ora.com (Norman Walsh) NNTP-Posting-Host: ruby.ora.com Summary: This posting answers frequently asked questions about fonts. It addresses both general font questions and questions that are specific to a particular platform. X-Web-Homepage: http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/ Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.fonts:48309 comp.answers:20523 news.answers:79244 Archive-name: fonts-faq/part12 Version: 2.1.5 Subject: 7. NeXT Information If you have any suggestions for this section, please forward your suggestions to norm. Subject: 7.1. Tell me about NeXTstep fonts NeXTstep fonts are Adobe Type 1 fonts stored in ASCII (PFA) format. There are several rules about how fonts must be installed before they work. I'd like to thank Henry for rewriting this section. Basic Format ============ NeXTstep fonts live in one of three folders: /NextLibrary/Fonts Contains system fonts. In general, you will not install any new fonts here. /LocalLibrary/Fonts Contains fonts which are accessible to every user on a system or a network. ~/Library/Fonts (where ~ is your home folder) means fonts which are private to a specific user. A NeXTstep font is actually a folder containing various components of the font. Components are: * the outline font file - REQUIRED * the font metrics (AFM) file - REQUIRED * one or more screen font (bitmap) files - OPTIONAL Font Folder and Font Filename Requirements ========================================== The name of the folder containing a font and the name of the font file itself must follow strict rules - the names can NOT be any old name you like. For a font to work correctly, the base folder and font filename MUST BE THE SAME as the name of the outline font. This is usually the same as the value of the FontName field in the AFM file or the value of the /FontName key in the actual font itself. Suppose you have a font called Headhunter. The Headhunter font must live within a folder called Headhunter.font within one of the three folders mentioned above. Within the Headhunter.font folder, you must have the two files Headhunter ( the outline file ) Headhunter.afm ( the AFM file ) If you have a bitmap file for Headhunter, it must live in a file Headhunter.bepf ( the bitmap file ) Variations such as Bold, Italic, etc., should be their own font files in their own folder. So if you have a font called Headhunter-Bold, you need to create a folder called Headhunter-Bold.font within one of the three folders mentioned above. Within the Headhunter.font folder, you must have the two files Headhunter-Bold ( the outline file ) Headhunter-Bold.afm ( the AFM file ) If you have a bitmap file for Headhunter, it must live in a file Headhunter-Bold.bepf ( the bitmap file ) For NeXTstep 1.0 ONLY, you also need to take the following steps: ----------------------------------------------------------------- * If they do not already exist, create the following folders: * ~/Library/Fonts/outline * ~/Library/Fonts/afm * ~/Library/Fonts/bitmap * In each of these folders, create a symbolic link to the corresponding component file in each font. For NeXTstep 2.0 and up: ------------------------ The font description is taken from the font folder itself, so you don't need to do this. It may be beneficial to simply create these folders and put nothing in them, but I'm not sure it matters. Certain "old" applications which haven't upgraded to the NeXTstep 2.0 scheme of fonts may depend on these folders being present. The last step is to get the system to recognize the new font(s). You may have noticed the existence of three files in the Fonts folder: .fontdirectory, .fontlist, and .afmcache. These are files the system looks at to see which fonts exist. The easiest way to update them is to simply start up an application and open the font panel. It should recognize that the update time stamp on the Fonts folder has changed, and update the files accordingly. It is probably a good idea to simply delete the three above files beforehand. You should get a message window saying "incorporating information on new fonts. Please wait (this may take xx seconds)". Your new fonts should be available now. If this does not work, you can update them manually. Open up a Terminal shell and go to your Fonts folder. At the prompt, type two commands: buildafmdir cacheAFMData afm (the parameter is the <afm dir>) The new fonts will not work if the cacheAFMData command is not run, and since it is an undocumented command, it is a common culprit. [ed: the cacheAFMData step may not be required in 3.0 OS] I believe this is true. Looks like the PasteBoard Services runs cacheAFMData in 3.0. You should now be able to see and preview your fonts in the font panel. If you are still having problems with your font, such as the << Unusable font >> message, consult NeXTAnswers. There are some useful suggestions for debugging faulty fonts there. It is also always helpful to look at existing fonts to see how they are installed. One note on the NeXTAnswers. Supposedly there are only a few discrete values which are allowed to appear in the weight field of the font: "Ultra Light", "Thin", "Light", "Extra Light", "Book", "Regular", "Plain", "Roman", "Medium", "Demi", "Demi-Bold", "Semi-Bold", "Bold", "Extra Bold", "Heavy", "Heavyface", "Black", "Ultra", "UltraBlack", "Fat", "ExtraBlack", and "Obese". However, I have a few fonts where this is not the case ("standard" is a common entry) and have had no problems as of yet. But it would probably be wiser to be on the safe side. See below for a definitive list. This is Info file compfont.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.55 from the input file FAQ.texinfo. Subject: 7.2. Tell me more about NeXTstep fonts Outline files should be in PFA or hexadecimal ASCII format. The font name should be taken either from the outline (font) file or the AFM file. In both case the name is given after the word "FontName" at the beginning of the file) As a matter of fact, fonts don't strictly HAVE to be in all hexadecimal ASCII format. The eexec portion of the font can be in binary if you wish, and in fact some Mac->NeXTstep or PFB->NeXTstep font converters simply strip off the Mac/PFB storage format headers and leave the binary sections as binary. However, if you wish to send such a font across a serial channel to a PostScript printer, you will need some way to unpack the binary eexec portion to seven-bit ASCII before sending the font. Converted Fonts After Conversion -------------------------------- After conversion they are just like any other freeware or shareware font that you can get in NeXTstep-format from the archives. That's just outline and AFM files but no bitmapped screen fonts. So small point size means poor resolution on screen but they most of should print OK if they are any good ( = usually made with Fontographer). About Conversion Utilities -------------------------- NeXTstep utilities .................. * unfont You can find a package, named something like pcATMfont2NeXT.tar.Z, from NeXT archives (cs.orst.edu) that converts PC fonts to NeXT format (PFB -> PFA). The most useful tool for me has been "unfont" which converts the .pfb (binary outline) font to ASCII outline font. I usually use it like this $ unfont new_font.pfb >NewFont If the conversion was successful all I have to after that is maybe to rename the font correctly and move the outline file in the correct .font folder. * Opener.app Opener seems to be a very useful application since it can open several kinds file packages on NeXTstep that are common on other platforms. E.g. ".sit", ".hqx", ".zoo", ".zip", ".z", etc. I haven't used it a lot but looks very promising. * T1utils-1.1 This is collection of command-line programs that manipulate PS Type 1 fonts and one of them can also do the PFB->PFA conversion (t1ascii?). Basic unarchiving of Mac and PC files. On your Unix machine: xbin Converts .hqx to: .data Rename and transfer to PC (or use opener.app on NeXT?) .info Discard .rsrc Discard unzip Converts .zip to: .inf Discard .wfn Discard .pfm Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file) everything else Transfer to NeXT On a PC: xbin Converts .hqx to: .data Rename and transfer to PC (or use opener.app on NeXT?) .info Discard .rsrc Discard extract -f ... Converts .cpt to: file with no extension This is usually the outline font. Refont and transfer to NeXT. .afm Transfer to NeXT. .pfm Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file) .bma Discard if you have an AFM file. unsit30 -eb ... Converts .sit to: file with no extension This is usually the outline font. Refont and transfer to NeXT. .afm Transfer to NeXT. .pfm Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file) .bma Discard if you have an AFM file. refont Converts outline formats from Mac to NeXT format (PFA). pkunzip Converts .zip to: .inf Discard .wfn Discard .pfm Discard (unless it can generate a better AFM file) everything else Transfer to NeXT On a NeXT Opener.app Converts archive formats (.sit, .hqx, .zip) to NeXT format. unfont Converts PFB files to NeXT format. afm Converts AFM files to NeXT format AFM files (CR/LF hackery) Installation ------------ There are scripts (installfont) available that can handle the installation process but here is how you do it manually. * .font After all that you have to create the .font folder, move the outline and .afm files there and start fighting with the strangely formatted .afm file. The most common problems are font name mismatch between outline and AFM files (family name is incorrect or too long, etc) and missing fields (ex. no ItalicAngle entry) in the AFM file. * buildafmdir AND cacheAFMData buildafmdir puts its complains to Console but cacheAFMData put them on stdout or stderr (ie. Terminal Window). PARSE ERRORS ----------- "Parse error 10000011 ..." comes from mismatch between of CharMetrics declared in the .afm and actually found. I haven't been able to figure out the other strange parse errors. buildafmdir in the 3.0 release has the limitation of not being able to install more that 255 fonts in any one font folder. This is supposed to be fixed in 3.1. * The Dreaded <<Unusable Font>> Message <<Unusable Font>> appears in the font panel when you have run buildafmdir and it finds things it thinks are wrong with the AFM file. Errors can also be generated by parsing routines inside the PasteBoard Services. <<Unusable Font>> almost NEVER has anything to do with the font itself, since buildafmdir doesn't actually look inside the font. Errors in the font due to faulty conversion will likely show up at the time the PostScript server actually attempts to define the font or render characters from the font. The only error I have ever seen from a converted font was the results of a naive Macintosh to PFA converter, which didn't understand that the POST resources in a Macintosh format Type 1 font do not have to be in order, nor do the POST resources all have to be contiguous - they can be interspersed with other resources. The results were that a comment resource ended up in the middle of the eexec section of the font and the PostScript interpreter threw out lots of errors. <<Unusable Font>> almost ALWAYS occurs because there is something wrong with the AFM file you installed. Here is a partial list of problems that can occur with AFM files: * Carriage-return characters (^M) at ends of lines. This happens when you get incomplete translations from PC files, which use carriage-return-line-feed combinations at ends of lines. Solution: edit away the carriage returns. Make sure the lines are terminated only by line-feed characters. * Spaces or tabs at ends of lines. Fixed in NeXTstep 3.1. * Missing fields. NeXTstep DEMANDS that certain fields be present in the AFM file. Required fields are: FontName, FullName, FamilyName, Weight, EncodingScheme, and ItalicAngle. If any of these fields are missing, you will get the <<Unusable Font>> message. Solution: fill in the required fields. * Incorrect Weight field. buildafmdir accepts only a certain set of values for the Weight field. Acceptable values are: "Ultra Light", "Thin", "Light", "Extra Light", "Book", "Regular", "Plain", "Roman", "Medium", "Demi", "Demi-Bold", "Semi-Bold", "Bold", "Extra Bold", "Heavy", "Heavyface", "Black", "Ultra", "UltraBlack", "Fat", "ExtraBlack", and "Obese". * Character information count mismatches. AFM files contain several sets of information which are introduced by a "Startxxxxx nnn" line where the xxxxx is the name of the section (such as StartCharMetrics) and nnn is the purported number of lines of information of this type to follow. Sad to say, many many AFM files supplied by vendors and others are such that the actual number of lines of data do not match the number stated on the Startxxxxx line. When this error occurs in the AFM file, buildafmdir emits a Parse Error message to the console and the font will be marked unusable. The parse error messages from buildafmdir is of the form: Parse error nnnnnnnn xx yy where nnnnnnnn is the error number, xx is the number of lines of information claimed to exist, and yy is the number of lines actually read. The nnnnnnnn are are: 10000011 mismatch in the StartCharMetrics section 10000012 mismatch in the StartTrackKern section 10000013 mismatch in the StartKernPairs section 10000014 mismatch in the StartComposites section 10000015 mismatch in a composite character specification I have converted many fonts from the Berkeley Macintosh User Group CD ROM and fully half of the supplied AFM files are incorrect. * Other AFM file errors. Parse error numbers 10000001 through 10000010 means some kinds of syntax errors in the AFM data file. Any of these errors mean that the AFM file is truly hosed. Subject: 7.3. Porting fonts to the NeXT Porting PC/Unix Type 1 Fonts ============================ You must have the .pfb and .afm files A PC Adobe font is stored in binary format, so the first step is to convert it to ascii. There are a couple of utilities out there which can do this. I think t1utils can do it, and there is a nice utility called pcATMfont2Next which has a couple of tools to do this (unfont and pfb2ps). Look for the file pcATMfont2Next.tar.Z; it is available on many ftp sites. Also, since NeXTstep run on Unix, there is the customary problem of converting the CRs (carriage returns) that PCs use to the LFs (Linefeeds) that Unix uses. The easiest way to do this is to use tr to delete the octal for the CR character from both the .afm and outline file. The command to do this is: tr -d '\015' < inputfile > outputfile The unfont program will do this automatically when it converts the .pfb file, but pfb2ps does not. I'm not sure if t1utils' utility does or not. Once you have the outline file, you can go ahead and install it by the process outlined above. Otto J. Makela (otto@jyu.fi) posted a terrific cshell script to comp.fonts, which automates just about everything for you. It converts the .pfb to ASCII format, extracts the name from the FontName field, creates the font folder, copies in the component files with the correct name, and runs buildafmdir and cacheAFMData when done. A newer version of this script is now available from the standard NeXT step archives (Sonata, etc.). Porting Mac Type 1 Fonts ======================== A variety of programs and scripts exist to convert Macintosh format Type 1 fonts to UNIX format. Their ability to do a complete job varies. Common traps which naive font converters fall into are: * not dealing with Macintosh POST which are out of order. * not dealing with Macintosh POST which are interspersed with other resources. * not dealing at all with POST Type 4 resources where the font program starts in resource fork of the file but the remainder of the data is in the data fork. Most naive converters we've looked at have this problem. This means that most Type 3 fonts won't convert at all. * not dealing with MacBinary headers. Subject: 7.4. Font availability [ The archive site at sonata.purdue.edu seems to have disappeared. ] Subject: 7.5. Why can I only install 256 fonts on my NeXT? Included to NS3.0 there's a new 'buildafm'-routine (for non-NeXTers: 'buildafm' is a shell script which announces a new font to the computer) at /usr/bin/buildafmdir. The new one only allows to install about 256 fonts. Running the new 'buildafmdir' to install a new font surpresses every font above this number. Workaround: Re-install the 'old buildafmdir' from NS2.1 at /usr/bin/buildafmdir and everything should be fine! (thanks to: Rob Parkhill and d'Art Computers/Germany d'art) [ed: and my thanks to Borris Balzer for sending this to me]