Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Bitmap font standard
Message-ID: <21661@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 14 Apr 88 15:06:55 GMT
References: <736@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <8633@sol.ARPA>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 28
In-reply-to: ken@cs.rochester.edu's message of 14 Apr 88 04:34:21 GMT



From Ken Yap
>There is a vfont to bdf converter on the X11R2 tape and I also wrote
>one. I have:
>
>	vfont -> bdf
>	bdf -> vfont
>	bdf -> gf
>	mac -> bdf
>
>and I know of the existence of gf -> bdf. Actually I even have the
>code.

GFTO should be in the X11R2 distribution (it was in mine.) GFTO was
intended to be a generalized program to go from gf to other formats.

It currently translates to BDF and "char dump" (asterisks for looking
at the fonts on a dumb output device.) Adding new output formats isn't
much more than adding a flag and a subroutine call and writing the
subroutine loop to dump the gf file back out (GFTO reads in the gf
file and presents it to you as an array, that ain't trivial!)  For
example, vfont output should probably be about an hour's work or less.
Postscript is harder for various reasons, a weekend perhaps if you
understand the issues.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University

P.S. Yes, I am the author of GFTO.