Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!nott-cs!clan!cczdao
From: cczdao@clan.clan.nott.ac.uk (David Osborne)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: TeX,InitTeX,TFM files
Keywords: TeX,InitTeX,TFM files
Message-ID: <8289@robin.cs.nott.ac.uk>
Date: 7 Oct 89 10:29:42 GMT
References: <251D440F.1E2C@marob.masa.com> <2538@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <8001@robin.cs.nott.ac.uk> <19816@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Sender: root@cs.nott.ac.uk
Reply-To: cczdao@clan.nott.ac.uk (David Osborne)
Organization: Cripps Computing Centre, University of Nottingham, UK
Lines: 44

In article <19816@unix.cis.pitt.edu> jbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Jingbai  Wang) writes:
>In article <8001@robin.cs.nott.ac.uk> cczdao@clan.UUCP (David Osborne) writes:
>>Brian says he only has the TeXbook to work from.  if he were to have
>>the METAFONTbook (also by Don Knuth, also publ. Addison-Wesley), all
>>would be revealed.
>>...
>
>Wait a moment. How old are you guys? If you are 30 years old now, then you
>will be 45-50 years by the time you understand all TeX and MetaFont stuffs
>by reading Don Knuth 4 books, i.e., TeXbook, MetaFontbook, TeX programmer's
>book and MeTaFont Programmer's book.

...you missed out Volume E, `Computer Modern Typefaces'!

>One thing is these books are all thick
>in Elian language and logicals, the other thing is that they do not tell you
>a thing about system setup's and details of GFtoPK and such.

the original question was about how to generate a TFM file,
and the writer was wondering if he needed to use INITEX to do this.
my point about mentioning the METAFONTbook is that its appendices
describe TFM files and that you use METAFONT to generate them.
whether or not you need to use GFtoPK does really depend on your
device drivers: some can use METAFONT's GF files directly, others
can't use PK format (though these are, admittedly, few).
how to set up a TeX/METAFONT system will depend on the machine in
question.

>There is another quick solution, though, from june.cs.washington.edu under
>~/tmp and ~/tex there is a TeX/LaTeX document package called TeXGuide.tar.Z
>of which I am the author.

your guide does sound useful, though... i'll certainly get hold of a copy
(and put it in the UK's Aston archive, if it's not there already).

dave osborne
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David Osborne