Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!amdcad!decwrl!karlton
From: karlton@decwrl.dec.com (Philip Karlton)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: more fonts
Message-ID: <365@bacchus.DEC.COM>
Date: 11 Apr 88 19:06:28 GMT
References: <8804042317.AA18670@marlin.nosc.mil> <8804051226.AA01348@LYRE.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: karlton@decwrl.UUCP (Philip Karlton)
Organization: DEC Western Software Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 24

In article <8804051226.AA01348@LYRE.MIT.EDU> swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick) writes:
>Fonts are available commercially from several sources in the BDF format.
>Project Athena purchased several sets from Adobe; the ones you mention
>are among these.
>
>BTW, 2 years ago when we purchased the Adobe fonts, they were putting
>character metrics in a separate (AFM) file, which you had to remember to
>request along with the BDF file (we didn't remember...).  I've no idea
>if this is still Adobe's practice.


Adobe does not actually support the BDF format. They distribute their bitmap
fonts in 2.0 (usually called Adobe Screen Format). ASF files, to a certain
extent, cannot stand alone. They depend upon the AFM files to hold the bulk of
the font metrics and other interesting things found in font dictionaires.

The BDF format was developed with Adobe's permission explicitly to support the
needs of the X Window System: to have a single file hold all of the relevant
information about a single set of bitmap glyphs. The BDF format is not much of
extension of the ASF format.

The information in an AFM file for any font is generally available in any
PostScript(R) printer that supports that font.

PK