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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
- Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!ames!sgi!odin!news
- From: ib@ivan.esd.sgi.com (Ivan Bach)
- Subject: Re: Font Manager (long)
- Message-ID: <1992Sep7.204815.26508@odin.corp.sgi.com>
- Followup-To: <1992Sep7.142540.11890@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>
- Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: ivan.esd.sgi.com
- Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
- References: <1992Sep3.184249.2962@odin.corp.sgi.com>
- Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 20:48:15 GMT
- Lines: 77
-
- In article <1992Sep7.142540.11890@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>, taylorf@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.g
- ov (Frank S. Taylor IV 283-4278) writes:
- >> The IRIS Font Manager in IRIX 4.0.5 and higher can use outline fonts ...
- > Are there more extensive notes on these changes than those found in the
- > release notes?
- I prepared a paper called "Font Technologies" for the 2nd SGI Developer's
- Forum. In that paper I said that last year outline fonts were used only by
- Display PostScript (DPS), and that the use of outline font files will probably
- soon spread to the IRIS Font Manager, X Window System, and application
- programs. That paper also contained detailed instructions on how to add
- bitmap and outline fonts to an SGI system, how to find out which outline fonts
- are built into a PS printer, how to download additional outline fonts to that
- printer, etc. If you want to develop programs for SGI systems, you may want
- to join one of the SGI programs for developers.
-
- > I'd like to know more about how to take advantage of these changes.
- When you install the subsystem eoe2.sw.Xfonts in IRIX 4.0.5 or higher, the
- Adobe outline font files:
-
- Utopia-Bold
- Utopia-BoldItalic
- Utopia-Italic
- Utopia-Regular
-
- are stored in the directory /usr/lib/DPS/outline/base, while the corresponding
- Adobe Font Metric (AFM) files are installed in the directory /usr/lib/DPS/AFM.
- Since that subsystem is usually installed by default, your program could treat
- these four outline fonts as default fonts which are almost always available.
-
- When you install Display PostScript (DPS) in IRIX 4.0 or higher, 13 more Adobe
- outline font files are stored in the directory /usr/lib/DPS/outline/base,
- while the corresponding Adobe font metric (AFM) files are stored in the
- directory /usr/lib/DPS/AFM. You can use the PS demo program Fontview to see
- which outline fonts are available, and what they look like. The basic 13
- fonts which come with DPS are usually built into PS printers, so there is no
- need to download them. Utopia fonts are usually not built into PS printers.
-
- The IRIS FM in IRIX 4.0.5 and higher uses outline font files to produce a
- bitmap font when it cannot find a bitmap font for a requested point size
- within a certain tolerance.
-
- If you use a text editor to look at an outline font file that SGI ships, you
- will see that it is a PostScript (PS) program. Outline fonts are used by
- programs which know how to interpret PS code. An application program that
- does not know how to interpret PS code, can check whether the DPS extension
- of the X server is available, and use DPS to interpret PS code (see the demo
- program dpsglx that you can get from the directory sgi/src/dpsglx on sgi.com
- by ftp). That would allow your program to, for example, import Encapsulated
- PS files.
-
- You don't need outline font files to generate PS code for a PS device. Your
- program can use the information stored in AFM files to generate PS code. You
- can get sample code for the parsing of AFM files by sending the message:
-
- Subject: send Programs parseAFM.shar
-
- to ps-file-server@adobe.com. You can get a description of the AFM 3.0 format
- by sending the message:
-
- Subject: send Documents AFMformat3.0.ps
-
- to that server.
-
- The SGI Inventor uses bitmap fonts for 2D text, and outline fonts for 3D text.
- You can use that 3D toolkit to take advantage of outline fonts.
-
- > was it intended to make these changes transparent to the user?
- We knew that there would be some changes in fonts that could not be avoided,
- because the IRIS FM started using new algorithms to scale bitmap fonts, and
- to produce bitmap fonts from character outlines. Every effort was made to
- minimize those changes. It is very difficult to improve the processing of
- fonts in a font manager, without making some changes to the font information
- passed to the programs that use that font manager. For example, your program
- may get a font which was previously not available. You could get the same
- kind of effect by adding bitmap fonts.
-
- Ivan Bach, ib@sgi.com
-