Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Path: utzoo!sq!lee From: lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) Subject: Re: The plethora of Font formats- please please clarify Message-ID: <1991Mar20.020145.14290@sq.sq.com> Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada References: Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 02:01:45 GMT Lines: 53 >Just off the top of my head I can think of tfm, gf, pk, pxl, and [mf] >(and afm- but I guess that's a printer thing). What are all these? tfm TeX Font Metrics this is where TeX stores information about the width of each character, kerning, and so forth. gf This is a simple graphis format that unfortunately is not very space-efficient. pxl for PiXeL fonts -- obsolete. Archive and delete. After a decade, delete the archive. After 10 years and 2 weeks, wish you hadn't :-) pk PacKed format -- like gf, but very space efficent. In fact, gftopk font10.300pk produces a smaller file than compress font10.300pk and has the added advantage that all of the TeX drivers these days understand pk fonts...! mf A .mf file is a program which, when interpreted by Metafont, will produce (if it is correct..., and if this is its intent...) a bitmap font in gf format. Metafont will also produce the tfm file. Turn the gf file into a pk file, and copy the pk file and the tfm file into your TeX fonts directory, updating "fontdesc" if you're using Chris Torek's "mctex" package. afm Adobe Font metrics -- for PostScript fonts only. Contains widths, encoding info and kerning. Keep these, since there are programs that will make a .tfm file from them. Moral: If you have metafont working, you should keep tfm, afm, pk and mf. Do not keep gf files lying around. Turn them into pk ones with "gftopk". If you don't have mefatont, you can archive the .mf files, but you still should not keep gf files around. >Can I get xdvi to generate the fonts it wants from tfm's? Maybe by using >MakeTeXPK (from dvips547). No, you need the .mf files, and then it can generate (if you have the latest version) the .pk and .tfm files from that. But TeX will need the .tfm file in order to create the dvi file... Hope this helps. Lee -- Liam R. E. Quin, lee@sq.com, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, +1 (416) 963-8337 `A wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended' Ursula K. Le Guin, in _Tehanu_