Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!csrd.uiuc.edu!s41.csrd.uiuc.edu!eijkhout From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: The plethora of Font formats- please please clarify Message-ID: <1991Feb28.235540.8377@csrd.uiuc.edu> Date: 28 Feb 91 23:55:40 GMT References: Sender: news@csrd.uiuc.edu (news) Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development Lines: 29 jmn@power.berkeley.edu (J. Mark Noworolski) writes: >Just off the top of my head I can think of tfm, gf, pk, pxl, and vf >(and afm- but I guess that's a printer thing). What are all these? >Why so many? Two classes: the metrics and the bitmap class. Bitmaps: gf is delivered by Metafont pk is translation of gf to a packed format pxl is translation of gf to pure bitmap your previewer/printer driver understands one the pair pk/pxl, and it is best if that is pk, because those take less space. Metrics: afm stands for 'almost font metrics', very old version of tfm tfm stands for 'TeX font metrics', these files contain size data for the Computer Modern fonts, afm contains similar data for Almost Modern Fonts. afm also stands for Adobe Font Metrics, probably some proprietary format. The only thing you need to know is that there is a translation program to tfm, so that TeX can use the fonts described in them vf probably stands for 'virtual font', but I haven't toyed around with those. A virtual font appears as one tfm file, but it contains data from several tfms. Victor.