Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Composite fonts
Summary: you can't get there from here...
Message-ID: <1990Oct19.210312.7300@ico.isc.com>
Date: 19 Oct 90 21:03:12 GMT
References: <4d7da3e4.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 36

mandler@apollo.HP.COM (John Mandler) writes:
> I am trying to create a composite font that contains characters I define
> plus outlines from a built in font...

This is inherently Very Difficult (I won't say "impossible" because Woody
probably has a back-door way to it:-) since the outlines in a built-in font
are stored in a protected, encoded form.

However, we can make some progress on the code presented...

> FontDirectory begin /Courier findfont ...

The "FontDirectory begin" is unnecessary; "findfont" searches FontDirectory
(by default).

>... 10000 scalefont ...

This scales to 10000 points (relative to user space), not 10.  Scalefont
works in terms of page coordinates--the internal 1000-units-to-the-em
factor is compensated out.

>... begin CharStrings /b get end end  100 100 moveto stroke
>              
> I expect to get a 10 point lower case b at position 100,100 . 

After the "/b get" you've picked up the value of the CharStrings entry for
the character b, but you haven't done anything with it.  You've got
something on the stack representing a procedure for producing the outline
for the character; however, at this point the problems are:
	- it's only on the stack; it's not in the path yet, so there's
	  nothing to stroke
	- it's not clear how to get it into the path, since the object
	  is in some unspecified (the red book says "proprietary") format
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Never offend with style when you can offend with substance.