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From: gm@wsrcc.com (Greg McGary)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Why not change METAFONT to produce pk fonts?
Message-ID: <1990Nov25.194312.16829@wsrcc.com>
Date: 25 Nov 90 19:43:12 GMT
References: <527@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca>
Organization: Organization? Ha!
Lines: 19

jtc@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca (J.T. Conklin) writes:
>Has anyone considered changing METAFONT's output font format from gf
>to pk fonts?  What are the drawbacks of doing this?

GF format contains "specials" in addition to the raster.  Specials are
not included in the PK format, since only the raster is typically used
by DVI drivers for document production.  So, PK is *not* a substitue for
GF.  The question now becomes: Has anyone considered changing the GF
format to use the compression techniques employed by the PK format?  At
this late date in the evolution of METAFONT, I imagine that Knuth (and
the rest of the TeX/MF community) is more concerned about preserving
stable, standard interfaces, than saving the CPU cycles it takes to
convert GF to PK.  I also doubt that anyone is eager to rewrite
GFtoDVI, GFtype, or any of the other MFware tools that understand the
GF format.  Again, stability of standard interfaces is a higher
priority than micro-efficiencies.
-- 
Greg McGary		gm@wsrcc.com -or- uunet!wsrcc!gm
(703) 318-8698		10310 Main Street, #109, Fairfax, Virginia  22030