Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Monospaced symbol font wanted
Summary: possible, but ugly as last week's roadkill
Message-ID: <1991Mar16.000514.16611@ico.isc.com>
Date: 16 Mar 91 00:05:14 GMT
References: <27447@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 39

greg@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Greg O'Rear) writes:
> Does anyone know of a monospaced symbol font?...

That's by far the more useful half of what you're asking for--if you need a
monospaced symbol font, you need a font designed that way.  (Don't know
of one; sorry.)  Actually, I wanted to comment on the wider question:

> In general, is there some quick way to convert any PostScript font to mono-
> spacing?  PostScript pseudo-code follows:
> 
> For this font,
>   find the widest character
>   make all characters that width (by padding with white space).

Yes, it's possible to convert any PostScript font to monospacing--but trust
me, you *won't* like the results!  The problem is that fonts are designed
with particular spacing in mind.  Monospace fonts have fat characters arti-
ficially narrowed and skinny ones artificially widened to fit the design
width (in PS fonts, 0.6 of the design size) better.  A proportional font
can be adjusted, but you end up with both wide gaps between narrow letters
and overlaps when wide letters adjoin...it looks like a malfunctioning
printer.  If you adapt to the widest character, you'll have extreme
letterspace most of the time; moreover, I'd be surprised if your word-
processing program would adapt readily to that width:height relationship.

The technique for doing the adjustment is to clone the font and add a
Metrics dictionary entry.  If you do this, you'll want to give Metrics
values with both a new width and a new left side bearing, so as to center
the character in the new cell.  Do this by adjusting by half the difference
between new and old width (which difference may be negative!).  BTW, don't
just replace the side bearing; modify it.

If you're more desperate for the font than concerned about esthetics, you
can also twiddle the font scaling--for example, to avoid overlapping char-
acters, study the .afm file for the widths of the characters you need, and
squeeze the font in the x direction a little.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Relax...don't worry...have a homebrew.