Font HOWTO
Donovan Rebbechi, elflord@panix.com
<mailto:elflord@panix.com>
____________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 The Location of This Document
1.2 Rationale
1.3 Credits and Acknowledgements
2. Fonts 101 -- A Quick Introduction to Fonts
2.1 Types of fonts
2.1.1 Bitmap Fonts
2.1.2 Type1 Fonts
2.1.3 Type3 fonts
2.1.4 TrueType fonts
2.1.5 Type42 Fonts
2.1.6 Type1 vs TrueType -- a comparison
2.1.7 Metafont
2.2 Families of Typefaces
3. Fonts 102 -- Typography
3.1 Classifications of Typefaces
3.1.1 Fixed versus variable width
3.1.2 To serif or not to serif ?
3.1.3 The old and the new -- different types of Serif fonts
3.1.3.1 Old Style
3.1.3.2 Moderns ( or didone )
3.1.3.3 Transitional
3.1.3.4 Slab Serifs
3.1.4 The Sans Serif Revolution
3.1.4.1 Grotesque
3.1.4.2 Geometric
3.1.4.3 Humanist
3.1.5 Compatible Typefaces
3.2 Ligatures, Small caps fonts and expert fonts
3.2.1 Ligatures
3.2.2 Small caps fonts
3.2.3 Expert fonts
3.3 Font Metrics and Shapes
4. Making Fonts Available To X
4.1 The font path
4.2 Installing Type1 Fonts
4.2.1 Run Type1inst
4.2.2 If You Have the
4.2.3 If You Don't Have The
4.3 True Type Fonts
4.3.1 xfstt
4.4 xfs
4.4.1 The
4.4.2 Installing a Font Into
5. Making Fonts Available To Ghostscript
5.1 Type1
5.2 True Type
5.3 Using Ghostscript To Preview Fonts
6. True Type to Type1 Conversion
6.1 Why ?
6.2 How ?
7. WYSIWYG Publishing and Fonts
7.1 Introduction and Overview
7.2 Applixware
7.2.1 FontTastic
7.2.2 Using System Wide Fonts With Applixware
7.2.2.1 Make the fonts available to X
7.2.2.2 Make the fonts available to ghostscript
7.2.2.3 Edit the fontmap.dir
7.3 Star Office
7.3.1 Backup Your Configuration Before you Start !
7.3.2 Adding Type1 Fonts to Star Office
7.3.3 Adding TrueType Fonts to Star Office
7.3.4 Under the Hood
7.4 Word Perfect
8. Netscape
9. TeX / LaTeX
9.1 A Quick Primer on LaTeX/TeX fonts
9.2 Adding Type1 fonts
9.2.1 Naming the fonts
9.2.2 Creating the virtual fonts and tex font metrics
9.2.3 Configure dvips
9.2.4 Test the font
9.2.5 Create a .sty file
10. Getting Fonts For Linux
10.1 True Type
10.1.1 Commercial Software
10.1.2 Microsoft's Font Download
10.1.3 Luc's Webpage
10.1.4 Web sites with truetype fonts
10.1.5 Foundries
10.2 Type 1 Fonts and Metafont
10.2.1 Dealing With Mac and Windows Formats
10.2.2 Free Stuff
10.2.3 Commercial Fonts
10.2.3.1 Value vs Premium: Why Should I buy Premium Fonts ?
10.2.3.2 Value
10.2.3.3 Premium
10.2.3.4 More Links
11. Useful Font Software for Linux
12. Ethics and Licensing Issues Related to Type
13. References
13.1 Font Information
13.2 Postscript and Printing Information
14. Glossary
______________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
1.1. The Location of This Document
This document is located at my webpage
<http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/font_howto>
1.2. Rationale
I'm going to make this brief (-; The purpose of this document is to
address what was a gaping hole in font documentation. While
previously, there were several documents about fonts for Linux, I felt
that none of them were comprehensive, all of them had a relatively
narrow focus. Hence the goal of this document is not to provide
radical new insight into the issue of font handling ( though I have
included material previously unavailable ), the main aim is to provide
a comprehensive source to act as a starting point for any and all font
questions about Linux.
1.3. Credits and Acknowledgements
Special thanks are due to Rod Smith, who made several helpful
suggestions, and fixed pfm2afm. Also thanks to Doug Holland, whose
Font Deuglification HOWTO proved to be a good reference, John
McLaughlin, author of the document that helped me come to grips with
Star Office, and the Linux community for their suggestions and
construtive comments.
2. Fonts 101 -- A Quick Introduction to Fonts
2.1. Types of fonts
2.1.1. Bitmap Fonts
A bitmap is a matrix of dots. Bitmap fonts are represented in
precisely this way -- as matrices of dots. Because of this, they are
device dependent -- they are only useful at a particular resolution. A
75 DPI screen bitmap font is still 75 DPI on your 1200 DPI printer.
There are two types of bitmap fonts -- bitmap printer fonts, such as
the pk fonts generated by dvips, and bitmap screen fonts, used by X
and the console. The bitmap screen fonts typically have a bdf or pcf
extension. Bitmap screen fonts are most useful for terminal windows,
consoles and text editors, where the lack of scalability and the fact
that they are unprintable is not an issue.
2.1.2. Type1 Fonts
The Type1 font standard was devised by Adobe, and Type1 fonts are
supported by Adobe's postscript standard. Because of this, they are
also well supported under linux. They are supported by X and
ghostscript. Postscript fonts have traditionally been the choice of
font for anything on UNIX that involves printing.
Typically, a UNIX Type1 font is distributed as an afm ( adobe font
metric ) file, and an outline file, which is usually a pfb ( printer
font binary ) or pfa ( printer font ascii ) file. The outline file
contains all the glyphs, while the metric file contains the metrics.
Type 1 fonts for other platforms may be distributed in different
formats. For example, postscript fonts for windows often use a
different format ( pfm ) for the metric file.
2.1.3. Type3 fonts
These fonts are distributed in a similar manner to Type1 files -- in
groups of afm font metrics, and pfa files. While they are supported
by the postscript standard, they are not supported by X, and hence
have limited use.
2.1.4. TrueType fonts
True type fonts were developed by Apple. They made the format
available to Microsoft, and succesfully challenged Adobe's grip on the
font market. True type fonts store the metric and shape information
in a single file ( usually one with a ttf extension ). Recently, font
servers have been developed that make TrueType available to X. And
postscript and ghostscript have supported TrueType fonts for some
time. Because of this, TrueType fonts are becoming more popular on
linux.
2.1.5. Type42 Fonts
Type42 fonts are actually just TrueType fonts with headers that enable
them to be rendered by a postscript interpreter. Most applications,
such as ghostscript and SAMBA handle these fonts transparently.
However, if you have a postscript printer, it may be necessary to
explicitly create Type42 font files.
2.1.6. Type1 vs TrueType -- a comparison
Despite the historical feuding between the proponents to Type1 and
TrueType fonts, both have a lot in common. Both are scalable outline
fonts. Type1 fonts use cubic as opposed to quadratic curves for the
glyphs. This is in theory at least a slight advantage since they
include all the curves available to TrueType fonts. In practice, it
makes very little difference.
TrueType fonts have the apparent advantage that their support for
hinting is better ( Type1 fonts do have hinting functionality, but it
is not as extensive as that of TrueType fonts ). However, this is
only an issue on low resolution devices, such as screens ( the
improved hinting makes no discernable difference on a 600dpi printer,
even at small point sizes. ) The other point that makes this apparent
advantage somewhat questionable is the fact that well hinted TrueType
fonts are rare. This is because software packages that support
hinting functionality are out of the budget of most small time
designers. Only a few major foundries, such as Monotype make well
hinted fonts available.
In conclusion, the main differences between TrueType and Type1 fonts
are in availability and application support. The widespread
availability of TrueType fonts for Windows has resolted in webpages
designed with the assumption that certain TrueType fonts are
available. Also, many users have large numbers of TrueType fonts
because they ship with the users Windows applications. However, on
Linux, most applications support Type1 fonts but do not have the same
level of support for TrueType. Moreover, most major font foundries
still ship most of their fonts in Type1 format. For example, Adobe
ship very few TrueType fonts. My recommendation to users is to use
whatever works for your application, and try to avoid converting from
one format to another where possible ( because the format conversion
is not without loss ).
2.1.7. Metafont
Metafont was developed by Donald E Knuth as part of the TeX
typesetting system. Metafont is a graphics programming language ( like
postscript ) that has applications wider than just fonts. Metafonts
exhibit some very desirable qualities. One of the important features
is that metafonts can scale very gracefully. The metafont Computer
Modern has different shape at 20 point and 10 point. The shape changes
with size, because it is desirable for a smaller font to be
proportionately wider than a larger font ( this makes the larger fonts
more elegant and the smaller font more readable ).
Metafonts typically have a mf extension. They are rendered to device
dependent bitmap fonts. The rendering is slow, so they are of
excellent quality, but are not well suited to WYSIWYG publishing.
2.2. Families of Typefaces
Typically typically come in groups of a few variants. For example,
most fonts come with a bold, italic, and bold-italic variant. Some
fonts may also have small caps, and demibold variants. A group of
fonts consisting of a font and its variants is called a family of
typefaces. For example, the Garamond family consists of Garamond,
Garamond-italic, Garamond-bold, Garamond bold-italic, Garamond demi-
bold, and Garamond demi-bold-italic. The Adobe expert Garamond font
also makes available Garamond small caps, and Garamond titling
capitals.
3. Fonts 102 -- Typography
Here, we discuss some typography basics. While this information is not
essential, many font lovers will find it interesting.
3.1. Classifications of Typefaces
3.1.1. Fixed versus variable width
There are several classifications of typefaces. Firstly, there are
fixed width fonts, and variable width fonts. The fixed width fonts
look like typewriter text, because each character is the same width.
This quality is desirable for something like a text editor or a
computer console, but not desirable for the body text of a long
document. The other class is variable width. Most of the fonts you
will use are variable width, though fixed with can be useful also (
for example, all the example shell commands in this document are
illustrated with a fixed with font ). The most well known fixed width
font is courier.
3.1.2. To serif or not to serif ?
Serifs are little hooks on the ends of characters. For example, the
letter i in a font such as Times Roman has serifs protruding from the
base of the i and the head of the i. Serif fonts are usually
considered more readable than fonts without serifs. There are many
different types of serif fonts.
Sans serif fonts do not have these little hooks, so they have a
starker appearance. One usually does not write a long book using a
sans serif font for the body text. There are sans serif fonts that are
readable enough to be well suited to documents that are supposed to be
browsed / skimmed ( web pages, catalogues, marketting brochures ).
Another application that sans serif fonts have is as display fonts on
computer screens, especially at small sizes. The lack of detail in the
font can provide it with more clarity. For example, Microsoft touts
Verdana as being readable at very small sizes on screen.
Notable sans serif fonts include Lucida sans, MS Comic Sans, Verdana,
Myriad, Avant Garde, Arial, Century Gothic and Helvetica. By the way,
Helvetica is considered harmful by typographers. It is somewhat
overused, and many books by typographers plead users to stay away from
it.
3.1.3. The old and the new -- different types of Serif fonts
3.1.3.1. Old Style
Old style fonts are based on very traditional styles dating as far
back as the late 15th century. Old style fonts tend to be conservative
in design, and very readable. They are well suited to writing long
documents. The name ``old style'' refers to the style of the font, as
opposed to the date of its design. There are classic old style fonts,
such as Goudy Old Style, which wre designed in the 20th century. The
old style class of fonts has the following distinguishing features:
o Well defined, shapely serifs.
o Diagonal emphasis. Imagine drawing a font with a fountain pen,
where lines 45 degrees anticlockwise from vertical are heavy and
lines 45 degrees clockwise from verticle are light. Old style fonts
often have this appearance.
o Readability. Old style fonts are almost always very readable.
o Subtlety and lack of contrast. The old style fonts have heavy lines
and light lines but the contrast in weight is subtle, not stark.
Notable Old Style fonts include Garamond, Goudy Old Style, Jenson,
and Caslon ( the latter is contentious -- some consider it
transitional )
3.1.3.2. Moderns ( or didone )
The moderns are the opposite of old style fonts. These fonts typically
have more character, and more attitude than their old style
counterparts, and can be used to add character to a document rather
than to typeset a long piece. However, nothing is black and white --
and there are some modern fonts such as computer modern and Monotype
modern, and New Century Schoolbook are very readable ( the contrast
between heavy and light is softened to add readability ). They are
based on the designs popular in the 19th century and later. Their
distinguishing features include:
o Lighter serifs, often just thin horizontal lines.
o Vertical emphasis. Vertical lines are heavy, horizontal lines are
light.
o Many moderns have a stark contrast between light and heavy strokes.
o Modern typefaces with high contrast between light and heavy strokes
are not as readable as the old style fonts.
Bodoni is the most notable modern. Other moderns include computer
modern, and Monotype modern ( on which computer modern is based ).
3.1.3.3. Transitional
Transitional fonts fit somewhere in between moderns and old style
fonts. Many of the transitionals have the same kind of readability as
the old styles. However, they are based on slightly later design.
While a move in the direction of the moderns may be visible in these
fonts, they are still much more subtle than the the moderns. Examples
of transitionals include Times Roman, Utopia, Bulmer, and Baskerville.
Of these, Times leans towards old style, while Bulmer looks very
modern.
3.1.3.4. Slab Serifs
The slab serif fonts are so named because they have thick, block like
serifs, as opposed to the smooth hooks of the old styles or the thin
lines of some of the moderns. Slab serif fonts tend to be sturdy
looking and are generally quite readable. Many of the slab serifs have
Egyptian names -- such as Nile, and Egyptienne ( though they are not
really in any way Egyptian ). These fonts are great for producing
readable text that may suffer some dilution in quality ( such as
photocpied documents, and documents printed on newspaper ). These
fonts tend to look fairly sturdy. The most notable slab serif fonts
are Clarendon, Memphis and Egyptienne, as well as several typewriter
fonts. Many of the slab serif fonts are fixed width. Conversely, most
( almost all ) fixed width fonts are slab serif.
3.1.4. The Sans Serif Revolution
Surprisingly, the rise of sans serif fonts is a fairly recent
phenomenon. The first well known sans serif fonts were designed in the
19th early 20th century. The earlier designs include Futura, Grotesque
and Gill Sans. These fonts represent respectively the ``geometric'',
``grotesque'' and ``humanist'' classes of sans serif fonts.
3.1.4.1. Grotesque
The grotesques where so named because the public were initially
somewhat shocked by their relatively stark design. Groteques are very
bare in appearance due to the absence of serifs, and the simpler,
cleaner designs. Because of their ``in your face'' appearance,
grotesques are good for headlines. The more readable variations also
work quite well for comic books, and marketting brochures, where the
body text comes in small doses. Grotesques don't look as artsy as
their geometric counterparts. Compared to the geometrics, they have
more variation in weight, more strokes, they are squarer ( because
they don't use such circular arcs ). They use a different upper case G
and lower case a to the geometrics. While they are minimalistic but
don't go to the same extreme as the brutally avant-garde geometrics.
Notable grotesques include the overused Helvetica, Grotesque, Arial,
Franklin Gothic, and Univers.
3.1.4.2. Geometric
The Futura font came with the manifesto: form follows function. The
geometric class of fonts has a stark minimalistic appearance.
Distinguishing features include a constant line thickness ( no weight
). This is particularly conspicuous in the bold variants of a font.
Bold groteques and humanist fonts often show some notable variation in
weight while this rarely happens with the geometric fonts. Also
notable is the precise minimalism of these designs. The characters
almost always are made up from straight horizontal and vertical lines,
and arcs that are very circular ( to the point where they often look
as though they were drawn with a compass ). The characters have a
minimal number of strokes. This gives them a contemporary look in that
they embrace the minimalistic philosophy that would later take the
world of modern art by storm. A tell tale sign that a font is a
geometric type is the upper case ``G'', which consists of a
minimalistic combination of two strokes -- a long circular arc and a
horizontal line. The other character that stands out is the lower
case ``a'' -- which is again two simple strokes, a straight vertical
line and a circle ( the other ``a'' character is more complex which is
why it is not used ). Notable geometrics include Avant Garde, Futura,
and Century Gothic.
3.1.4.3. Humanist
As the name might suggest, humanist fonts were designed with a goal of
being less mechanical in appearance. In many ways, they are more
similar to the serif fonts than the geometrics and the grotesques.
They are said to have a ``pen drawn'' look about them. They tend to
have subtle variation in weight, especially observable in bold
variants. The curve shapes are considerably less rigid than those of
the geometrics. Many of them are distinguishable by the ``double
story'' lower case g, which is the same shape as the g used in the old
style serif fonts. The humanist typefaces are the easiest to use
without producing an ugly document as they are relatively compatible
with the old style fonts.
3.1.5. Compatible Typefaces
Grouping typefaces is not easy, so it pays to avoid using too many on
the one page. A logical choice of two typefaces consists of a serif
and a sans serif. Monotype's Typography 101 page
<http://www.monotype.com/newmedia/type101_ex.htm> provides a category-
matchup. They conclude that the moderns and geometrics form good
pairs, while the old styles and humanists also go together well. The
transitionals are also paired with the humanists. The slab serifs are
paired with the grotesques, and some variants of the slab serifs are
also said to match the geometrics or humanists.
From reading this, one gets the impression that their philosophy is
essentially to match the more conservative serifs with the more
moderate sans serifs, and pair the wilder modern serifs with the avant
garde looking ( pun unavoidable ) geometrics.
3.2. Ligatures, Small caps fonts and expert fonts
3.2.1. Ligatures
Properly spacing fonts brings with it all sorts of issues. For
example, to properly typeset the letters ``fi'', the i should be very
close to the f. The problem is that this causes the dot on the i to
collide with the f, and the serif on the head of the i to collide with
the horizontal stroke of the f. To deal with this problem, font
collections include ligatures. For example, the ``fi'' ligature
character is a single character that one can substitute for the the
two character string ``fi''. Most fonts contain fi and fl ligatures.
Expert fonts discussed later often include extra ligatures, such as
ffl, ffi, and a dotless i character.
3.2.2. Small caps fonts
Small caps fonts are fonts that have reduced size upper case letters
in place of the lower case letters. These are useful for writing
headings that require emphasis ( and they are often used in LaTeX ).
Typically, when one writes a heading in small caps, they use a large
cap for the beginning of each word, and small capitals for the rest of
the word ( ``title case'' ). The advantage of this over using all caps
is that you get something that is much more readable ( using all caps
is a big typographic sin ).
3.2.3. Expert fonts
Expert fonts consist of several extras designed to supplement a
typeface. These include things like ligatures, ornaments ( much like
a mini-dingbats collection designed to go with the typeface ), small
caps fonts, and swash capitals ( fancy, calligraphic letters ).
3.3. Font Metrics and Shapes
Font metrics define the spacing between variable width fonts. The
metrics include information about the size of the font, and kerning
information, which assigns kerning pairs -- pairs of characters that
should be given different spacing. For example, the letters ``To''
would usually belong in a kerning pair, because correctly spaced ( or
kerned ), the o should partly sit under the T. Typesetting programs
such as LaTeX need to know information about kerning so that they can
make decisions about where to break lines and pages. The same applies
to WYWIWYG publishing programs.
In addition to the metrics, is the font outline, or shape. The
components of the fonts shape ( a stroke, an accent, etc ) are called
``glyphs''.
4. Making Fonts Available To X
There are a number of ways fonts can be added to X. Firstly, XFree86
has a font path which is just a list of several directories or font
servers where it searches for fonts. A font server is just a
background process that makes fonts available to XFree86. An
advantage of font servers is that they can send fonts to remote
displays.
Recently, xfs ( the ``X font server'' ) has been patched to support
TrueType fonts, and run as a stand-alone program. The patched version
ships with Redhat and Redhat-based distributions, and is included in
XFree86 3.9.17 ( the latest version at the time of writing. It will
also be a part of XFree86 4.0 ) xfs is actually just the standard font
server that comes with XFree86. It's source code is part of the
XFree86 source tree. However, distributions have recently been
shipping a version that runs in stand alone mode. The standalone X
font server, with the TrueType support patch ( the TrueType support
takes place via a font server called xfsft ) is probably the nicest
font management solution currently available. Its advantages include:
o Support for different types of fonts, including Type1, TrueType and
bitmap.
o Makes fonts available to remote displays.
o Greatly simplifies editing the fontpath -- you can do it via the
command line utility chkfontpath, as opposed to having to edit
configuration files. This not only makes life easier for users, it
makes packaging more safer and more scriptable for packagers.
Because different distributions ship with different configurations, it
is not true that one size fits all. We can split users up into three
groups:
o Your distribution ships with a standalone xfs and it has been
patched to support TrueType. This group includes Redhat users and
users of derivatives of Redhat such as Mandrake, TurboLinux, and
Independence. For this group, the wisest strategy is to install
both TrueType and Type1 fonts through xfs
o Some distributions ship with a stand alone xfs package, but no
TrueType support (at the time of writing. Note that XFree86
supports TrueType as of version 3.9.17 ). This includes Debian.
For these users, the best thing to do is use xfs to install Type1
fonts, and install TrueType fonts via xfstt. Debian users can seek
out the TrueType Fonts in Debian mini-HOWTO
<http://www.dimensional.com/~bgiles/debian-tt.html> for information
about installing TrueType fonts in Debian.
o If you don't have xfs then you will need to install Type1 fonts by
adding to their XFree86 font path and using xset. You should
install TrueType via xfstt.
4.1. The font path
XFree86 finds your fonts by searching a font path, a list of
directories ( or servers -- we'll explain this further later. )
containing fonts. When an application requests a font, it searches
through the directories in your font path one at a time until the font
is found. To make fonts available requires you to set your font path.
You can add a directory to your font path with the command
xset fp+ directory
Once you have done this, you need to ask the X server to re-scan for
available fonts with the command
xset fp rehash
Since you will want these commands to run automatically, you should
put them in your .xinitrc file ( or possibly your .Xclients or .xses-
sion file -- this depends on how you start X. It's convenient to make
two of these files symlinks to the other to avoid confusion ).
Another way to have the commands set automatically is edit XF86Con-
fig. For example, to add /usr/share/fonts/myfonts to the fontpath
when X is started, edit XF86Config like this:
...
Section "Files"
...
FontPath /usr/share/fonts/myfonts
...
EndSection
...
The advantage of editing XF86Config is that the resulting changes are
system wide.
4.2. Installing Type1 Fonts
4.2.1. Run Type1inst
The easiest way to make Type1 fonts available to X is with the help of
the Type1inst utility. This is a perlscript that automatically creates
the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files that you need for X to use the
fonts. Simply CD to the directory, and run type1inst.
cd directory
type1inst
4.2.2. If You Have the xfs Package
Now you need to add the fonts to your fontpath. If you already have
the standalone ``xfs'' running, you do this by editing your xfs
configuration file.
Redhat users can just use ``chkfontpath''. the format is chkfontpath
--add directory
Your fonts should now be available to X. Now you just run
xset fp rehash
and X will be able to find the new fonts.
4.2.3. If You Don't Have The xfs Package
In this case, you need to add the directory containing your new fonts
to the font path, as described previously.
4.3. True Type Fonts
Adding TrueType fonts is a little more difficult, because you need to
have a font server that is capable of serving TrueType fonts. Two
font servers that do this are xfstt and xfs.
xfstt is a TrueType font server. While it's easy to configure, and
quite useful, it appear that xfs is becoming more popular. The main
advantage of xfs over xfstt is that it supports both Type1 and
TrueType fonts.
4.3.1. xfstt
To set up xfstt, just download it and install it. If you have an rpm
based distribution, there is a well packaged version of xfstt at
http://independence.seul.org/. Once you install it, you need to do
the following:
1. install fonts into the appropriate directory ( read the
documentation that comes with the package ).
2. cd to that directory and run xfstt --sync. This causes it to look
for the fonts and create the fonts.dir file.
3. Now add unix/:7100 to your font path.
Your TrueType fonts should now display and be available to
applications such as GIMP and Netscape. You may want to configure
it to start every time your system starts up. Check to see if
there's a startup file included ( if you are using RPM, you can use
rpm -ql xfstt |grep init and look for the file with a name
something like this: /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfstt ) If you don't have an
init script, just put two lines in /etc/rc.local like this:
/usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt --sync
/usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt &
4.4. xfs
Some of the newer Linux distributions ship with the X font server xfs
configured to run as a stand alone program. Notably, Redhat and all
the redhat based distributions use this modularised xfs with TrueType
compiled in. Debian also ship xfs, but the version they ship doesn't
have built in true type support.
Running xfs as a stand alone server has several benefits, especially
if it is compiled with TrueType support. The main advantage is that
since the font server is no longer attached to the X server, it is
possible to serve fonts to remote displays. Also, it makes it much
easier to modify the font path.
4.4.1. The xfs Path
As a font server, xfs has it's own font path. One might wonder where
this fits into the picture. It works like this: you can place the xfs
font server in XFree86's font path, by adding unix/:port to the
XFree86 font path. Once you do this, any font in the xfs font path
automatically becomes available to XFree86.
The xfs font path is determined by the xfs configuration file, which
is /etc/X11/fs/config on Redhat, and /etc/X11/xfs/config on Debian.
Redhat users do not need to explicitly edit this file, they can use
the chkfontpath utility. The syntax is simple:
chkfontpath --add directory
Users of other distributions can edit the configuration file as fol-
lows:
catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
...
/usr/share/fonts/my_new_fonts/,
...
/usr/share/fonts/some_other_directory
# in 12 points, decipoints
default-point-size = 120
...
The above would add /usr/share/fonts/my_new_fonts/ to the xfs font
path. Note that the last line of the list of directories doesn't have
a comma at the end. For these modifications to the font path to
become effective, xfs must be restarted. It's also a good idea to
restart your X session after restarting xfs.
4.4.2. Installing a Font Into xfs
To prepare a font for xfs, you need to follow the following steps:
o If you don't have xfs installed, you need to install it.
o Put the new fonts in a directory.
o If you are installing Type1 fonts, prepare the new directory for
the server by running type1inst in the directory.
o If you are installing TrueType fonts, ( remember, not all
distributions can do TrueType via xfs ! ), prepare the new
directory for the server by running
ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale
mkfontdir
in the directory containing your new fonts. ttmkfdir is part of the
freetype package.
o Now you can add the new directory to your xfs search path. Users
of Redhat-like distributions can do this with the chkfontpath
utility: Other users can do this by editing their xfs configuration
file.
o if xfs is already installed on your system, you should see which
port it is running on. You can do this as follows:
ps ax|grep xfs
o Then check your XFree86 font path.
xset -q
o If your font path includes something like unix:/port_number were
port_number is the port which the server is running on, then you
already have xfs set up properly. Otherwise, you should add it to
your XFree86 font path.
xset fp+ unix/:port_number
xset fp rehash
You can add it permanently by editing your .xinitrc as explained pre-
viously. To add it system wide, edit your XF86Config file ( probably
either /etc/X11/XF86Config, /etc/XF86Config or
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config ), by adding a line FontPath
"unix:/port_number" in the Files section. Here's an example:
...
Section "Files"
...
FontPath "unix/:-1"
...
EndSection
...
o If xfs is already properly installed, then you can restart it like
this:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart
o After restarting xfs, it's a good idea to restart your X-session.
5. Making Fonts Available To Ghostscript
To make fonts available to ghostscript, it suffices to tell
ghostscript where the files corresponding to a given font are located.
The file that needs to be edited is
/usr/share/ghostscript/version/Fontmap. The format is very simple,
almost immediately self evident on perusing it.
5.1.
Type1
Adding Type1 fonts is straightforward. Run type1inst on the directory
containing the font. type1inst will output a file called Fontmap.
Append this file to the ghostscript Fontmap file.
5.2.
True Type
Adding truetype fonts is a little trickier, because we have to get the
name of the TrueType font. One way (brute force, alas) to do this is
using the ttf2pt1 TrueType to Type1 converter, and grabbing the font
name from the afm ( there's got to be a more efficient way ! but this
works, ugly as it is ). You do it like this:
ttf2pt1 -A fontname - 2 > /dev/null |grep FontName
Then you add an entry to the ghostscript Fontmap file in the correct
format, eg
some-font (/usr/share/fonts/subdirectory/somefont.pbf);
Well, that works fine, but try doing it with 500 or so fonts. This is
the kind of thing that calls for a short perlscript:
#!/usr/bin/perl
# ttfontmap -- generate fontmap file for TrueType fonts
my $directory=shift || print STDERR "Usage: ttfontmap {directory}\n";
$directory=~s/\/$//;
for my $fontname ( glob ( "$directory/*.ttf" ) )
{
open ( R, "sh -c \"ttf2pt1 -A $fontname - 2>/dev/null\" |" );
while ( <R> )
{
if ( $_ =~ /^FontName/ )
{
s/^FontName\s*//;
chomp;
print "/" . $_ . " ($fontname);\n" ;
}
}
close R;
}
You can download this script <http://pegasus.rut-
gers.edu/~elflord/font_howto/ttfontmap>
To set this script up, all you need to do is cut and paste it into a
file called ttfontmap, and place the file somewhere in your PATH (
such as /usr/bin ). You run this script like this:
ttfontmap directory > output_file
where directory is the directory containing the fonts. You are left
with the file output_file which you can append to your ghostscript
fontmap. Note: some will observe that you could just use
ttfontmap directory >> /usr/share/ghostscript/version/Fontmap
However, I advise against this ( what would happen if you typed ``>''
instead of ``>>'' ? )
5.3. Using Ghostscript To Preview Fonts
Once you've made fonts available to ghostscript, you can preview them.
Do this by running the ghostscript interpreter on the file prfont.ps
in your ghostscript installation, and after you start it, type:
/Fontname DoFont
at the ghostscript font ( where FontName is the ghostscript name of
the font you wish to preview ). There are several other ways you can
invoke gs. For example, if you want to create a postscript file that
you can look at in a nicer postscript viewer such as gv, you can use
gs -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=somefile.ps prfont.ps
Having done this, you can also print your output file.
6. True Type to Type1 Conversion
6.1. Why ?
or perhaps the right question to ask is ``why not ?'' The typical
Linux user has experienced a migration from Windows, and probably has
an enormous collection of TrueType fonts. Many of these fonts ( eg
those that ship with MS Word and Corel's products ) are of fairly good
quality. However, some Linux applications, such as Star Office and
LaTeX do not support TrueType fonts, but do support Type1 fonts.
update: it looks like Star Office can handle TrueType fonts, but I'm
still trying to work out the details. At best, it involves some fairly
gruesome hacks. This is a pity, because with ghostscript support for
TrueType, and TrueType font servers, Linux has the infrastructure it
needs to handle TrueType.
6.2. How ?
To convert your TrueType fonts into Type1 fonts, go to
http://quadrant.netspace.net.au/ttf2pt1/
<http://quadrant.netspace.net.au/ttf2pt1/> and get ttf2pt1. To
convert a TrueType to a Type1 font, use the following syntax:
ttf2pt1 -b file.ttf name
Where name is the name of the file corresponding to the new Type1 font
( ie it's arbitrary. It's a good idea to make it the same as the ttf
file. eg ttf2pt1 -b foo.ttf foo.
Well, that worked fine for one font. If we have a lot, we need a
smarter way to do it. One can just just use a loop:
for X in *.ttf; do ttf2pt1 -b $X ${X%%.ttf}; done
Alternatively, you can download the ttfutils <http://pegasus.rut-
gers.edu/~elflord/font_howto/ttfutils-0.2.tar.gz> package and use
ttf2type1 for the conversions.
ttf2type1 *.ttf
7. WYSIWYG Publishing and Fonts
7.1. Introduction and Overview
Installing fonts for WYSIWYG publishing on Linux is a relatively
complex task. It typically involves three steps:
o Make the font available to the X server
o Make the font available to ghostscript
o Make the font available to the application
The main reason for the complexity is that the font printing system
( ghostscript ) is unrelated to the screen font system. In a way,
Linux's left hand does not know what it's right hand is doing.
This problem is nontrivial to solve, because it is possible that
printer fonts and display fonts reside on different machines, so
there is no guarantee that all fonts the XClient uses are
printable.
The good news is that most WYSIWYG applications use what is a
reasonable solution to this problem. The solution involves
constructing some kind of mechanism that maps screen fonts to printer
fonts ( this is the main issue. There are also other issues, such as
grouping bold, italic and roman variants into ``families'' of fonts ).
Unfortunately, there is no standard way to do this. It seems that font
management standards which address this issue would greatly simplify
the installation of fonts into WYSIWYG publishing systems, because all
applications could use a system-wide ( as opposed to application-
specific ) configuration.
7.2. Applixware
There are two ways to install fonts into Applixware. One method
involves using FontTastic, which is Applixware's ``private'' font
server. The other method involves editing Applixware's fontmap, to use
a font already installed on the system. Installing into the font
server is more convenient, but fonts installed in this manner may only
be printed at 300 dpi.
7.2.1. FontTastic
Using FontTastic is the easy way to do it. To install new fonts like
this, simply do the following:
1. Run Applixware as root
2. Click on the tools menu.
3. Choose ``Font Installer''
4. Check ``OK'' in the popup dialog
5. Click the ``Catalogs'' menu and choose ``create''
6. Fill in the catalog name box. It doesn't matter what you put there.
For the rest of this example, we'll assume it's called ``foobar''
7. Select your foobar catalog from the catalog manipulations list.
8. From the ``Services'' menu, select ``install fonts into ->
FontTastic font server''
9. Make sure catalog foobar is selected in the catalogs list, then
press the ``select files'' button.
10.
Use the select files dialog to select the fonts you want to
install. Press ``OK'' when you've selected the files. For example,
if you want to select arial.ttf in the directory
/usr/share/fonts/ttfonts/, you would type /usr/share/fonts/ttfonts
in the ``Current Directory'' dialog, then select arial.ttf from the
files dialog box, then click ``OK''. Note that you can select
multiple files, but they all must come from the same directory.
11.
You can edit your list by checking on the different fonts in the
list box and possibly removing or renaming them.
12.
When you're ready, click the ``install fonts'' button. Then click
``OK''.
13.
Go to the ``services'' menu and choose ``update''. Check ``OK'' on
the annoying modal dialog, then choose exit from the services menu.
Exit applix.
14.
Congrats, you're done ! The new fonts will be available when you
restart Applix.
7.2.2. Using System Wide Fonts With Applixware
This method is more involved, but produces better results. I
recommend that this method is used for fonts that are really
important, and that you use a lot. There are a few steps to this:
7.2.2.1. Make the fonts available to X
This is explained ``in the previous section''
7.2.2.2. Make the fonts available to ghostscript
This is explained in ``in the previous section''
7.2.2.3. Edit the fontmap.dir
This is the final step in making your fonts available to Applix, and
also the most time consuming step. The file fontmap.dir is in under
the axdata/fontmetrics of your applix installation. The purpose of
this step is basically to tell applix which screen fonts go with which
outline fonts. This is in general a very nontrivial problem, because
the screen fonts are not always on the same computer that the
application is installed.
We describe how to add fonts to fontmap.dir. In this example, we add
the font Baskerville Italic.
1. First, we add a line that says FontRecord = Baskerville-Normal-
Italic In fact, the name we use in FontRecord is completely
arbitrary. However, the font record must be unique to the font.
Because of this, it's good practice to use the name that
ghostscript uses for the font.
2. Next, we a line that says Family = Baskerville The family name for
a font is the name that appears in Applix's font selection menu.
Typically, it is non-unique, since bold, italic, roman and bold-
italic variants of a font will typically go under the same family.
3. If the font is either a bold, or italic variant, or both, we need
to add the following lines:
Slant = 1
if the font is italic, and
Weight = 1
if the font is bold. If the font is bold and italic, we add both
lines. In this example, we need only add the line
Slant = 1
4. We add a line that looks like this:
ScreenName = "-paradise-baskerville-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1"
The screen name is the name that the X-server uses for the font. We
can list font names containing the string ``bask'' by typing
xlsfonts|grep -i bask
5. Now we add a line that gives the name of the printer font:
PostScriptPrinterName = Baskerville-Normal-Italic
6. Next, we need to specify the location of the font metric file and
the outline file
MetricsFile = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvli.afm
Type1FontFileName = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvli.pfb
If you are adding a TrueType file, you can use ttf2pt1 to generate an
afm file :
ttf2pt1 -A foo.ttf - > foo.afm
( or get the ttfutils package and use ttf2afm ) Then you use something
like this:
MetricsFile = /usr/share/fonts/misc/foo.afm
Do not include a Type1FontFileName directive -- let ghostscript take
care of this.
That's it. Now after adding the whole family of fonts, you should have
something like this:
FontRecord = Baskerville-Normal
Family = Baskerville
ScreenName = "-paradise-baskerville-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1"
PostScriptPrintName = Baskerville-Normal
MetricsFile = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvl.afm
Type1FontFileName = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvl.pfb
FontRecord = Baskerville-Normal-Italic
Family = Baskerville
Slant = 1
ScreenName = "-paradise-baskerville-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1"
PostScriptPrintName = Baskerville-Normal-Italic
MetricsFile = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvli.afm
Type1FontFileName = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvli.pfb
FontRecord = Baskerville-Bold
Family = Baskerville
Weight = 1
ScreenName = "-paradise-baskerville-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1"
PostScriptPrintName = Baskerville-Bold
MetricsFile = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvlb.afm
Type1FontFileName = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvlb.pfb
FontRecord = Baskerville-Bold-Italic
Family = Baskerville
Weight = 1
Slant = 1
ScreenName = "-paradise-baskerville-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1"
PostScriptPrintName = Baskerville-Bold-Italic
MetricsFile = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvlbi.afm
Type1FontFileName = /usr/share/fonts/misc/baskvlbi.pfb
It is possible to do more with this configuration file. The file
itself has a glossary which explains the format of the configuration
file.
7.3. Star Office
Here, we cover Star Office 5.0. The procedure with Star Office 5.1 is
similar, but the utility is called spadmin, not psetup. It's worth
mentioning up front that John McLaughlin's page
<http://www.mindspring.com/~john_mcl/adding_fonts.html> is an
excellent source on this issue, and it inspired most of what follows.
Having tried both Star Office 5.0, and 5.1, I have found that Star
Office 5.1 seems to give me less grief when adding new fonts. I was
not succesful adding true type fonts to Star Office 5.0, but it proved
somewhat easier with Star Office 5.1.
7.3.1. Backup Your Configuration Before you Start !
It's good to make a backup in case you inadvertantly hose your
configuration. Modifying fonts will impact several files in the xp3.
You should definitely backup the file xp3/psstd.fonts. I recommend
going further and backing up the whole xp3 directory. You can do this
by cd-ing to your Star Office directory, then using
tar cvzf xp3.tgz xp3
to create a backup. To restore a backup, delete the xp3 directory and
unpack the archive
rm -rf xp3
tar xvzf xp3.tgz
7.3.2. Adding Type1 Fonts to Star Office
Adding Type1 fonts to Star Office is relatively simple. If you want
to use your TrueType fonts with Star Office 5.0, the best thing to do
is convert them to Type1 fonts, and then follow the procedure outlined
here. If you have Star Office 5.1, you might wish to use the
proceedure for installing TrueType fonts instead ( though it is
somewhat more difficult ). Firstly, do the usual thing -- make the
font available to both X and ghostscript. Once this is done, the font
can be installed into Star Office using the psetup tool. The procedure
is as follows:
1. As root, run psetup ( or spadmin if you have Star Office 5.1 )
2. Press the ``add fonts'' button.
3. The easiest thing to do after this is press the ``initialize font
paths'' button. This puts a list of all fonts in your X font path
in the list box.
4. Choose the directory containing the font you wish to install ( it
should be in the box ), and then press ``OK''.
5. Click the ``convert all font metrics button''.
That's it. You're done. You can exit ( or click ``OK'' until it
exits ). When you restart Star Office, you will have the new
fonts.
7.3.3. Adding TrueType Fonts to Star Office
Adding TrueType fonts to Star Office is nontrivial, but possible.
After some hard work, and long hours stareing at John McLaughlin's
page <http://www.mindspring.com/~john_mcl/adding_fonts.html> page, I
finally got them working in Star Office 5.1. Note that this does not
work with version 5.0. The following steps are appropriate it you are
printing through ghostscript:
o Make the fonts available to X.
o Make the fonts available to ghostscript.
o You need to have afm files for the fonts you wish to add. Use
ttf2pt1 -A foo.ttf - > foo.afm
to create the afm files. Alternatively, you can get the
o ttfutils
<http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/font_howto/ttfutils-0.2.tar.gz>
package and use ttf2afm The advantage of this is you can handle
several at a time, eg
ttf2afm *.ttf
o Star Office needs pfb files corresponding to each ttf file. You can
create them with the command
touch foo.pfb
Actually, Star Office only uses these files for printing purposes.
And by enterring the font in the PPD, thus duping Star Office into
thinking the fonts are inside your printer ( when they're actually
inside ghostscript's rendering system ), you get around needing to use
these files. Star Office just seems to require that the pfb file
exists to install the font.
o Now you can run spadmin and install the font(s).
o Now add the fonts to the PPD file corresponding to your printer
configuration. The name you use for the font should be the same
name Star Office uses for it, not the ghostscript font name. For
example, if the font is foobar.ttf and the corresponding afm file
is foobar.afm, you use the name ``foobar'' for the font in the PPD
file. The entry should look something like this:
*Font cloistrk: Standard "(001.002)" Standard ROM
On the other hand, if you are not printing from ghostscript, you have
different issues to deal with. In this case, tricking Star Office into
thinking that your printer has the fonts is a bad idea, because your
printer does not have the fonts in the ROM, so while gv will display
the postscript files nicely, your printer will not be able to print
them. If you have a postscript printer, the main differences are as
follows:
o Do not edit the PPD file.
o Instead of using touch foo.pfb to create empty pfb files, you need
the pfb files to be Type42 postscript fonts. A Type42 font is
really a ``printer TrueType font''. You don't really notice Type42
fonts even when you use them, because most applications handle them
transparently. To create Type42 fonts, you use ttfps
<ftp://ftp.dcs.ed.ac.uk/pub/jek/programs/ttfps.tar.gz> to create
the files.
ttfps foo.ttf foo.pfb
There are some gotchas. Sometimes, Star Office might not choose the
screen font you like. It is sometimes worth checking xp3/psstd.fonts
and possibly editing it to make sure that Star Office is really using
the font you had in mind for screen display. Also, Star Office
doesn't handle configuration problems gracefully. If there's
something wrong with your configuration, it's possible that the word
processor will not even start. This is why you should back up your xp3
directory.
7.3.4. Under the Hood
If you wish to install TrueType fonts in Star Office, you may need to
learn how Star Office handles things. When you run spadmin or psetup,
the following happens:
o Star Office makes symbolic links to the pfb outline files in your
xp3/pssoftfonts directory.
o The afm file is copied into the directory xp3/fontmetrics/afm/
o An entry is added to the xp3/psstd.fonts file. This file stores
the names of all the screen fonts used by Star Office ( in
particular, it maps the screen fonts to the outline filenames ).
This is why it's good to simply backup the whole xp3 directory -- it
is the only convenient way to restore Star Office to a clean
configuration.
7.4. Word Perfect
Nothing yet. Rod Smith's webpage <http://www.rodsbooks.com/wpfonts/>
is the definitive resource regarding installing fonts on Word Perfect.
8. Netscape
Perhaps the most notorious application as far as fonts are concerned
is the dreaded Netscape. However, there is a fairly simple procedure
to attack Netscape font ugliness. The main problem is that Netscape
wants to use 75dpi fonts which is typically too small. You can fix
this by specifying the appropriate X resources in your .Xdefaults
file:
Netscape*documentFonts.sizeIncrement: 20
Netscape*documentFonts.xResolution*iso-8859-1: 100
Netscape*documentFonts.yResolution*iso-8859-1: 100
The number 100 can be chosen arbitrarily. For example, if you like
your fonts really large, like I do, then you may want to use 150
instead.
The other essential tip with regard to addressing Netscape font
ugliness is this -- get the Microsoft font pack. These fonts are
widely used and it makes an enormous difference if you have ( or don't
have ) those fonts.
9. TeX / LaTeX
9.1. A Quick Primer on LaTeX/TeX fonts
Adding fonts to TeX and LaTeX is a somewhat complex procedure.
However, like a lot of things, it's easy if you know how to do it.
Some fonts are distributed in metafont format, and some in Type1
format. Usually, the Type1 formats are more easily available.
However, metafont fonts have the distinct advantage that they can
adjust their shape at different sizes, while Type1 and TrueType fonts
at different point sizes are simply magnified or reduced versions of
precisely the same shape. The main reason why this feature is
desirable is that ideally, fonts should be ( relatively ) wider at
smaller sizes and narrower at larger sizes.
For this discussion, we focus on Type1 fonts, since they are more
widely available, and more problematic to install.
Here's a quick primer on LaTeX fonts. LaTeX uses the following
types of font files for handling Type1 fonts:
o .pl -- property list. This is a human readable version of a tex
font metric file.
o .vpl -- virtual property list. Human readable version of a virtual
font file.
o .fd -- font definition. Used to define a family of fonts.
o .tfm -- tex font metric. This is a metric file, as explained in
the glossary. It is completely analogous to the .afm files used by
Type1 fonts. TeX needs the font metrics to properly layout the
page.
o .vf -- virtual font. These files contain encoding details, and act
as interpreters. TeX treats them as fonts. For example, Imagine
that there's some wacky font foobar-exp.pfb which consists of a few
( say 20 ) alternate characters, and there's a virtual font which
uses a few of these alternate characters ( and it gets the rest of
the characters from font foobar.pfb ). Dvips might say ``I want
character 65 of virtual font foo.vf''. Dvips knows that 65 is
always an ``a'' in TeX's scheme. Then the virtual font maps TeX's
request to a request for character 14 of the Type1 font foobar.pfb
( which might be the alternate ``a'' in the Type1 font foobar.pfb
). The virtual font mechanism is very flexible and allows fonts to
be constructed from many different font files. This is useful when
using fonts such as adobe's ``expert'' fonts.
o .pk -- a device dependent bitmap font. These are usually
constructed on an as-needed basis ( they are renderings of Type1
and metafont fonts ). They are typically high resolution ( about
300-1200dpi ), and are intended to be rendered on a printer.
Because of their high resolution, and the fact that each point size
of each font requires a .pk file, they require a lot of disk space,
so they are cached, but not stored.
o .mf -- metafont files. Metafont is a graphics programming language
widely used for font design ( though it can also be used for
graphics ). It has many advantages over TrueType and Type1
schemes. However, it's main weakness is that it is not as
ubiquitous as TrueType or Type1 ( and it is also not terribly well
suited to WYSIWYG publishing. Of course, this isn't a major
disadvantage when TeX is your typesetting system. )
It's good to know your way around the TeX directory structure. Here
are the main directories you'll need to know about:
o $TEXMF/fonts -- the main font directory
o $TEXMF/fonts/type1 -- the type1 font directory
o $TEXMF/fonts/type1/foundry -- the directory for the shape files in
a given foundry
o $TEXMF/fonts/type1/foundry/fontname -- contains the font called
name. The name is usually plain English, and needn't follow TeX's
cryptic naming scheme for fonts.
o $TEXMF/fonts/afm/foundry/fontname -- the directory containing the
afm files corresponding to the font name belonging to foundry
foundry.
o $TEXMF/fonts/tfm/foundry/fontname -- analogous to the afm
directory, but contains tfm files instead.
o $TEXMF/fonts/vf/foundry/fontname -- similar to the above, but
contains the virtual fonts.
o $TEXMF/fonts/source/foundry/fontname -- similar to the above, but
contains metafont files.
o $TEXMF/dvips/config/psfonts.map -- fontmap file for dvips. This
file is similar in both function and format to ghostscript's
Fontmap file.
o $TEXMF/tex/latex/psnfss -- this is where all the font definition
files go.
9.2. Adding Type1 fonts
9.2.1. Naming the fonts
First, you need to appropriately name your fonts. See the fontinst
documentation on your system for instructions on how to name fonts (
it should be fontinst subdirectory of the directory containing your
tetex documentation ). To make a long story very short, the naming
scheme is FNW{V}E{n} where:
o F is a one-letter abbreviation for the foundry ( m = monotype, p =
adobe, b = bitstream, f = free )
o N is a two letter abbreviation for the font name ( for example, ag
= ``avant garde'' )
o W is the font weight ( r = regular, b = bold, l = light d =
demibold )
o V is an optional slope variant ( i = italic , o = oblique )
o E is an abbreviation for the encoding ( almost always 8a which is
adobe standard encoding ).
o N is an optional width variant ( n = narrow )
For example, the font Adobe Garamond demibold is pgad8a.
9.2.2. Creating the virtual fonts and tex font metrics
Now you can run fontinst as follows:
latex `kpsewhich fontinst.sty`
then you type at the prompt:
\latinfamily{font_name}{}\bye
where font_name is the first three letters of your font file name (
for example, pad for adobe garamond ). Now fontinst will generate a
number of files -- font description files, property list files and
virtual property list files. It also generates a lot of .mtx files.
These are created by fontinst, but you don't need to use them. You
need to convert the property lists and virtual property lists to met-
rics and virtual fonts. This is done using the utilities vptovf and
pltotf.
for X in *.pl; do pltotf $X; done
for X in *.vpl; do vptovf $X; done
Then remove the old vpl, pl and mtx files.
9.2.3. Configure dvips
You will need to edit your dvips config file, psfonts.map. The best
way to explain the format of the file is to give an example.
marr8r ArialMT <8r.enc <farr8a.pfa
marbi8r Arial_BoldItalicMT <8r.enc <farbi8a.pfa
marb8r Arial_BoldMT <8r.enc <farb8a.pfa
marri8r Arial_ItalicMT <8r.enc <farri8a.pfa
marr8rn Arial_Narrow <8r.enc <farr8an.pfa
The 8r.enc is simply there to inform dvips of the encoding scheme used
( in all our examples, it's 8r, because of the way fontinst constructs
the virtual fonts ). The leftmost column is the font name TeX uses.
The second column is the real name of the font, which is hardcoded
into the font file ( this name can be deduced by opening the afm file
in a text editor, and looking for the FontName directive ). The last
column is the filename of the shape file corresponding with the font.
It is not necessary to provide a directory path -- tex knows where to
look.
9.2.4. Test the font
Try running latex on a document like this:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\usefont{T1}{pga}{m}{n}\selectfont
\huge
Testing a new font \dots the quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dogs
\end{document}
where you replace pga with the outline of your font. If this works,
you are almost done. All you have to do now is put all the files in
the right directories ( as explained in the primer ), then run
texconfig rehash
so that tex can update the directory lists.
9.2.5. Create a .sty file
You may want to create a .sty file so that you can more easily use
fonts. Use the files in $TEXMF/tex/latex/psnfss as a template.
10. Getting Fonts For Linux
10.1. True Type
10.1.1.
Commercial Software
True type fonts are very easy to come by, and large amounts of them
are typically included in packages like Microsoft Word and Word
Perfect. Getting Word Perfect is an easy way to get an enormous amount
of fonts ( and if you're really cheap, you could buy a legacy version
of Word Perfect for windows. The fonts on the CD are readable. )
10.1.2.
Microsoft's Font Download
Microsoft have also made several TrueType fonts available. The .exe
file is simply an archive, you can extract it using unzip. You can
get them from the download site
<http://www.microsoft.com/truetype/fontpack/win.htm>
10.1.3.
Luc's Webpage
Luc Devroye's webpage
<http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/originalfonts.html> has links to several
sites with free fonts available. What's unique about these fonts is
that a lot of them are really free, they are not ``warez fonts''.
10.1.4.
Web sites with truetype fonts
There are several web sites offering freely available downloadable
fonts. For example, the freeware connection
<http://www.freewareconnection.com/fonts.html> has links to a number
of archives.
10.1.5.
Foundries
Several foundries sell TrueType fonts. However, most of them are quite
expensive, and for the same money, you'd be better of with Type1
fonts. I'll discuss these more in the Type1 fonts section. The one
place that does do sell true type fonts at low prices is buyfonts
<http://www.buyfonts.com>. Please read the section on ethics before
you buy cheap fonts.
10.2. Type 1 Fonts and Metafont
10.2.1. Dealing With Mac and Windows Formats
Many foundries ship fonts with Windows and Mac users in mind. This
can sometimes pose a problem. Typically, the ``Windows fonts'' are
fairly easy to handle, because they are packed in a zip file. The only
work to be done is converting the pfm file to and afm file ( using
pfm2afm ).
Macintosh fonts are more problematic, because they are typically made
available in .sit.bin format -- stuffit archives. Unfortunately,
there is no tool for Linux that can unpack stuffit archives created
with the newer version of stuffit. The only way to do it is run
Executor ( Mac emulator ), or try running stuffit in dosemu or Wine.
Once the sit.bin file is unpacked, the Macintosh files can be
converted using t1unmac which comes with the t1utils package.
Unfortunately, some vendors only ship Type1 fonts in Macintosh format
( stuffit archives ). However, according to font expert Luc Devroye
<http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/>, all major foundries make Type1 fonts
available for Mac and Windows.
10.2.2.
Free Stuff
ctan <http://www.ctan.org> have a number of good fonts, many of which
are free. Most of these are in Metafont format, though some are also
Type1 fonts. Also, see Bluesky <http://www.bluesky.com> who have made
available Type1 versions of the computer modern fonts. ( The computer
modern fonts are of excellent quality -- to purchase anything of
comparable quality and completeness will cost you around $500-. They
are comparable to the premium fonts. )
Luc Devroye's webpage
<http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/originalfonts.html> has links to several
sites with free fonts available. What's unique about these fonts is
that a lot of them are really free, they are not ``warez fonts''.
URW have released the standard postscript fonts resident in most
printers to the public domain. These fonts are quite good.
The Walnut Creek Archive <ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/fonts/> has
several freely available fonts, and shareware fonts. Some of these
are obvious ripoffs ( and not very good ones ). If a font doesn't
come with some kind of license, chances are it's a ripoff. Also
Winsite <http://www.winsite.com/win3/fonts/atm/> have several Type1
fonts ( in the fonts/atm subsection of their windows 3.x software ).
Unfortunately, several of these have afm files which have mistakes and
are missing all kerning pairs ( you can fix the afms by editing the
"FontName" section of the afm files. It should match the fontname
given in the font shape file. Of course, adding kerning pairs is a
topic beyond the scope of this document. )
Luc Devroye's webpage <http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/> includes several
free fonts he designed, as well as a lot of links, and fascinating
discussion on the topic of typography. This site is a ``must-visit''.
There are also several links to many foundries.
10.2.3. Commercial Fonts
10.2.3.1. Value vs Premium: Why Should I buy Premium Fonts ?
So you're wondering -- why do some fonts cost a lot and others are
cheap ? These fonts are the ``standard postscript fonts'' resident in
most postscript printers. Also the famous Why should I buy the more
expensive ones ? My take on it is that for a casual user, the value
fonts ( such as those on the Bitstream CD ) are just fine. However, if
you're using the fonts for ``real work'', or you're just a hard core
font junkie, then the better quality fonts are a must-have -- and most
of the quality fonts are either free ( for example, Computer Modern ),
or they are upmarket commercial fonts.
The advantage of the cheaper fonts is self evident -- they are
cheaper. The quality fonts also have their advantages though.
o Ethical issues: The cheaper fonts are almost always ripoffs. Type
design takes a long time and and experienced designer. Fonts that
are sold for less than $1- per font were almost certainly not
designed by the vendor. CDs with insane quantities of fonts on the
are almost always ripoffs ( the possible exceptions being
collections from major foundries that cost thousands of dollars ).
Usually, the ripoffs lack the quality of fonts from respectable
founries.
o Completeness: The higher quality fonts ( notably from Adobe ) come
in several variants, with some nice supplements to provide the user
with a more complete font family. There are often bold, italic,
and demibold variants, swash capitals, small caps, old style
figures, and extra ligatures to supplement the font. More recently,
Adobe have a multiple master technology which gives the user (
almost ) infinite variation within one font family.
o Quality: A lot of the freely available fonts or the cheap ripoffs
lack fairly essential features such as kerning pairs and decent
ligatures. They are basically cheap copies. In contrast, reputable
designers take a lot of trouble to study the original design, and
rework it to the best of their ability.
o Authenticity: The person who designed Adobe Garamond ( Robert
Slimbach ) actually studied the original designs of Claude
Garamond. In fact reputable foundries always carefully research
their designs, rather than just swiping something off the net, and
modifying it with Fontographer.
10.2.3.2. Value
o An excellent place to go for a CD packed with several Type1 fonts
of reasonable quality is Bitstream <http://www.bitstream.com>.
Bitstreams more noted products include their 250 font CD
<http://www.bitstream.com/products/world/font_cd/bits_collection.html>
and their 500 font CD
<http://www.bitstream.com/products/world/font_cd/500_cd.html> ( the
latter goes for $50- at the time of writing ). These are fairly
good quality fonts, and are a fairly good starting point for the
casual user. The fonts used in Corel's products are (mostly)
licensed from bitstream.
o Matchfonts <http://www.matchfonts.com/> offer more modestly priced
fonts -- they are distributed in ``packs'' of about 8 fonts for
$30. This includes some nice calligraphic fonts. All fonts seem to
be offered in a usable format ( the windows ATM fonts come in a
.exe file. Don't let the extension fool you -- it's just a zip
archive ). These are not ripoffs as far as I can tell.
o EFF <http://www.buyfonts.com> sell TrueType fonts for $2- per hit.
They also have ``professional range'' postscript and TrueType fonts
for $16- per typeface.
10.2.3.3.
Premium
o Adobe have several high quality, fonts available at Adobe's type
website <http://www.adobe.com/type/>. Some of these are expensive,
but they have several more affordable bundles -- see Adobe Type
Collections <http://www.adobe.com/type/collections.html>. Adobe
have some of the most complete font families on the market, for
example, Garamond <http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/P/P_912.html>,
Caslon <http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/P/P_180.html>, and their
multiple masters <http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/C/C_4e.htm> (
Myriad and Minion, used on their website are among the nicer of
their multiple masters. )
o Berthold Types Limited <http://www.bertholdtypes.com> is a major
foundry, who offer several quality fonts. Some of them are resold
through Adobe, all are directly available from Berthold. Same price
ballpark as Adobe.
o ITC develop several quality fonts ( including some of the ones
Corel ships with their products ) at http://www.itcfonts.com
<http://www.itcfonts.com> They offer family packages for about
$100-180 US. Their fonts, come in both Type1 and TrueType format.
It's better to choose the ``Windows'' package, because Mac formats
are difficult to handle on Linux.
o Linotype <http://www.linotypelibrary.com> are a well known foundry
who offer fonts by legendary designers including Herman Zapf. (
yep, the guy ``Zapf Chancery'' is named after. He also designed
Palatino. )
o Monotype <http://www.monotype.com> develop most of the fonts
shipped with Microsoft products. One of the older and well
respected foundries.
o Tiro Typeworks <http://www.portal.ca/~tiro/> sell good quality, if
somewhat expensive typefaces. Their typefaces are very complete,
for example, they include complete sets of ligatures, and
smallcaps, titling fonts, etc. UNIX is listed as one of the OS
options -- which is a welcome surprise after seeing the words
``Windows or Mac'' too many times..
10.2.3.4.
More Links
For links to a bunch of other foundries, see Luc Devroye's page
<http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/>
11. Useful Font Software for Linux
There are several font packages for Linux. Many of them are essential.
o chkfontpath is a utility for manipulating the xfs configuration
file.
o DTM -- the Definitive Type Manager
<http://www.debian.org/~fog/dtm/> is a global font management tool.
This is a developer's release.
o fontinst <http://www.tug.org/applications/fontinst/index.html> is a
LaTeX package designed to simplify the installation of Type1 fonts
into LaTeX.
o Freetype <http://www.freetype.org> is a TrueType library that comes
with most Linux distributions
o Ghostscript <http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/> is the software that
is used for printing on Linux. The version of ghostscript that
ships with Linux is GNU ghostscript. This is one version behind the
latest release of Aladdin ghostscript ( who release their old
versions under the GPL )
o pfm2afm
<http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/font_howto/pfm2afm.tgz> is a
utility for converting windows pfm font metric files into afm
metrics that can be used for Linux. This is based on the original
version available at CTAN, and includes modifications from Rod
Smith to make it compile under Linux.
o mminstance and t1utils <http://www.lcdf.org/~eddietwo/type/> are
two packages for handling Type1 fonts. mminstance is for handling
Adobe's multiple master
<http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/C/C_4e.html> Type1 fonts.
t1utils is a suite of utilities for converting between the
different Type1 formats.
o ttf2pt1 <http://quadrant.netspace.net.au/ttf2pt1/> is a TrueType to
Type1 font converter. It is useful if you have applications that
require Type1 fonts.
o ttfps <ftp://ftp.dcs.ed.ac.uk/pub/jek/programs/ttfps.tar.gz>
converts .ttf TrueType font files into Type42 files.
o ttfutils
<http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/font_howto/ttfutils-0.2.tar.gz>
A package of utilities for handling TrueType fonts. This package
requires ttf2pt1. Useful if not essential.
o type1inst <ftp://ftp.metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/xutils/> is an
essential package for installing Type1 fonts. It greatly simplifies
the installation.
o xfstt <ftp://ftp.metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts/> is a
TrueType font server for Linux. It's useful, but xfs is probably a
better choice.
o xfsft <http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/jec/programs/xfsft/> The xfsft
font server. Note that this is included in xfs.
o x-tt <http://hawk.ise.chuo-u.ac.jp/student/person/tshiozak/x-tt/>
is a font server designed to handle Korean and Japanese fonts.
12. Ethics and Licensing Issues Related to Type
Font licensing is a very contentious issue. While it is true that
there is a wealth of freely available fonts, the chances are that the
fonts are ``ripoffs'' in some sense, unless they come with a license
indicating otherwise. The issue is made more confusing by
intellectual property laws regarding typefaces. Basically, in the USA,
font files are protected by copyright, but font renderings are not.
In other words, it's illegal to redistribute fonts, but it's perfectly
legal to ``reverse-engineer'' them by printing them out on graph paper
and designing the curves to match the printout. Reverse engineered
fonts are typically cheap and freely available, but of poor quality.
These fonts, as well as pirated fonts are often distributed on very
cheap CDs containing huge amounts of fonts. So it's not always easy
to tell if a font is reverse engineered, or simply pirated. This
situation creates an enormous headache for anyone hoping to package
free fonts for Linux.
Perhaps one of the most offensive things about the nature of font
piracy is that it artificially debases the value of the work that type
designers do. Pirated fonts invariably are bundled en masse onto these
one zillion font CDs, with no due credit given to the original
designers. In contrast, what is commendable about several legitimate
font foundries is that they credit their designers.
There are many differing opinions on this issue. See typeright
<http://www.typeright.org> for an explanation of the case in favour of
intellectual property rights. Also, see Southern Software, Inc
<http://www.ssifonts.com/> for another opinion -- but don't buy any of
their fonts! Their Type1 fonts ( poorly reverse-engineered Adobe fonts
) do not have AFMs, and are thus unusable.
The comp.fonts FAQ <http://www.faqs.org/faqs/fonts-faq/part2/> also
discusses the issues of fonts and intellectual property, as does Luc
Devroye's homepage <http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/>. These references
are somewhat less extreme in their views.
13. References
13.1. Font Information
o Rod Smith's homepage <http://www.rodsbooks.com/> contains a wealth
of information about using fonts and printers with Applixware and
Word Perfect.
o John McLaughlin's page
<http://www.mindspring.com/~john_mcl/adding_fonts.html> discusses
setting up fonts with Star Office
o Jim Land's homepage
<http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/5682/postscript.html>
contains a lot of links to sites on postscript and fonts.
o The comp.fonts FAQ <http://www.faqs.org/faqs/fonts-faq/> is the
definitive font FAQ.
o Luc Devroye's homepage <http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/> Contains
enough information about fonts and other things to sink a ship.
This guy designed a bunch of free fonts, and his homepage has a lot
of interesting links, information and commentary.
o The Font Deuglification HOWTO
<http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/FDU.html> discusses TrueType
fonts under Linux. This is the clear winner of the ``TrueType''
HOWTOs. An excellent source of information.
o TrueType Fonts in Debian mini-HOWTO
<http://www.dimensional.com/~bgiles/debian-tt.html> discusses
installing TrueType in Debian. A must-read for Debian users. Also
worth reading if you have any distribution that doesn't have the
version of xfs with TrueType support.
o The (preliminary) True Type HOWTO
<http://www.moisty.org/~brion/linux/TrueType-HOWTO.html> -- an
incomplete HOWTO dated June 1998. Included in this list for
completeness.
o TrueType for XFree86 Mini-HOWTO
<http://www.sfu.ca/~yzhang/linux/truetype/> -- a slightly dated
HOWTO. Only applicable to Redhat 5.x
13.2. Postscript and Printing Information
o Adobe's Postscript page
<http://www.adobe.com/print/postscript/main.html> is the definitive
site on the postscript standard.
o Ghostscript's home page <http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/> has a lot
of information, and all the latest printer drivers.
o Jim Land's homepage
<http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/5682/postscript.html>
contains a lot of links to sites on postscript and fonts.
o Christopher Browne's Printing FAQ
<http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/printing.html>
14. Glossary
o afm Stands for Adobe Font Metric. These files store information
about the width and spacing associated with the font, as opposed to
information about the font shape.
o anti-aliasing also referred to as font smoothing is a technique
used to render fonts on low resolution devices ( such as a monitor
). The problem with rendering fonts is that the fonts consist of
outlines, but the device renders in dots. The obvious way to render
a font is to color black any pixel inside the outline, and leave
all other dots. The problem with this is that it doesn't
adequately address the pixels that are on the outline. A smarter
algorithm would be to color the boundary pixels gray. Anti-aliasing
essentially involves doing this.
o bdf fonts are a variety of bit-mapped fonts that may be used with
X.
o bitmap fonts These fonts are simply a collection of dots. Each
character of the font is stored as a dot matrix. Because of this,
bitmap fonts are device dependent, so you can't use the same bitmap
fonts on a screen and a printer. Examples of bitmap screen fonts
include .pcf and .bdf fonts used by X. Examples of printer bitmap
fonts include TeX's PK fonts.
o didone see modern.
o DPI Dots Per Inch. Monitors typically display at 75-100 DPI, while
modern printers vary from 300-1200 DPI
o expert fonts are collections of additional characters that
supplement a font. They include small caps fonts, ornaments, extra
ligatures, and variable width digits. Many of Adobe's fonts have
expert fonts available.
o font server a background program that makes fonts available to
XFree86.
o glyph A glyph is a fancy word for a shape. It is a component that
makes up an outline font. For example, the dot on the letter ``i''
is a glyph, as is the vertical line, as are the serifs. Glyphs
determine the shape of the font.
o kerning In variable width fonts, different pairs of characters are
spaced differently. The font metric files store information
regarding spacing between pairs of characters, called kerning
pairs.
o ligature A ligature is a special character that is used to
represent a sequence of characters. This is best explained by
example -- when the letter fi are rendered, the dot on the ``i''
collides with the ``f'', and the serif on the top left of the i can
also collide with the horizontal stroke of the f. The fi ligature
is a single character that can be used in the place of a single f
followed by a single i. There are also ligatures for fl, ffi, and
ffl. Most fonts only include the fi and fl ligatures. The other
ligatures may be made available in an expert font.
o metafont A graphics language used for creating fonts. Metafont has
a lot of nice features, the main one being that fonts created with
metafont need not just scale linearly. That is, a 17 point computer
modern font generated by metafont is not the same as a magnified 10
point computer modern font. Prior to Adobe's multiple master
technology, metafont was unique with respect to having this
feature. Metafonts main advantage is that it produces high quality
fonts. The disadvantage is that generating bitmaps from the
outline fonts is slow, so they aren't feasible for WYSIWYG
publishing.
o metric this stores information about how much space a font takes
up. A font metric is like a box that one can embed the font in.
Font metrics are essential for the purpose of laying out fonts on a
page, while the font shape itself is not. So typically, variable
width fonts have metric information as well as shape information.
The metric also includes kerning information.
o modern fonts are fonts based on designs developed in the 19th
century or later. The moderns have a solid appearance due to their
vertical stress. They tend to have more ``character'' or
``attitude'' than the old styles and transitionals, but still carry
a certain amount of dignity and formality. They are not suited for
writing long passages, but they are useful for adding character to
a piece of writing. Bodoni is a notable modern typeface.
o old style fonts are a traditional class of typeface. The old style
fonts are based on designs from as far back as the late 15th
century. Old style fonts are great for writing long documents (
such as books ). While the old style fonts are designed in the
tradition of the earlier designers, some of them were designed
quite recently. Notably, the face Goudy Old Style was designed by
Goudy in the early 20th century. Notable old style faces include
Goudy Old Style, Garamond, and Caslon.
o pcf fonts are bit-mapped fonts used by X.
o postscript is a programming language designed for page description.
Postscript was a trademark of it's inventor, adobe. However, it is
also an ISO standard. Postscript needs an interpreter to render it.
This can be done via a program on the computer, such as
ghostscript, or it can be interpreted by some printers.
o serif fonts are fonts with little hooks ( called serifs ) on the
ends of the font. the serifs usually help make the font more
readable. However, serifs are quite difficult to render on low
resolution devices, especially at small font sizes ( because they
are a fine detail ), so it is often true that at small sizes on low
resolution devices, sans serif fonts ( such as Microsoft's Verdana
) prove more readable. Another issue is that there are sans serif
fonts ( like the moderns ) that are not designed for writing long
documents.
o sans serif fonts are fonts without serifs ( sans is French for
``without'' ). These fonts have a stark appearance, and are well
suited for writing headlines. While textbook typography mandates
that serif fonts be used just for headlines, they can have other
uses. There are sans serif fonts designed for readability as
opposed to impact. Short punchy documents that are skimmed ( such
as catalogues and marketting brochures ) may use them, and
recently, Microsoft have made available the Verdana font which is
designed for readability at small sizes on low resolution devices.
Well known sans serif fonts include Lucida Sans, MS Comic Sans,
Avant Garde, Arial, Verdana, Century Gothic.
o slab serif fonts are a certain class of font whose serifs look like
slabs ( eg flat lines or blocks ) and not hooks. Slab serif fonts
are often, but not always very readable. Because the serifs are
simple and strong, they give one the feeling that they have been
punched into the page. Well known examples of slab serifs are
Clarendon, New Century Schoolbook, and Memphis.
o transitional fonts are fonts that are based on more recent designs
than the old style fonts. many of the transitional fonts have good
readability. Notable transitionals include Baskerville, and Times
Roman.
o Type1 is a type of font designed by Adobe. These fonts are well
supported by almost all linux applications, because they have been
supported by the X server architecture and the postscript standard
for a long time. Postscript fonts are distributed in many different
formats. Typically, a UNIX postscript font is distributed as an afm
( adobe font metric ) file, and an outline file, which is usually a
.pfb ( printer font binary ) or .pfa ( printer font ascii ) file.
The outline file contains all the glyphs, while the metric file
contains the metrics.
o type3 fonts are similar to Type1. The file extensions are similar
to Type1 fonts ( they are distributed as pfa and afm files ), but
they are not supported by X, and because of this, there are not
very many linux applications which support them.