Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!rutgers!njin!princeton!notecnirp!sarantos
From: sarantos@notecnirp.Princeton.EDU (Sarantos Kapidakis)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: qms800 bug ?
Keywords: Font Bug Reencode
Message-ID: <15604@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 14 Mar 89 15:16:08 GMT
Sender: news@princeton.Princeton.EDU
Reply-To: sarantos@princeton.Princeton.EDU (Sarantos Kapidakis)
Organization: Princeton University CS Dept
Lines: 30

I think I have run into a postscript bug, on the QMS-PS 800 II,
running postscript version 47.0, release 3:
I try to make a new font, which combines characters from the Courier
and Symbol fonts.
In that simple case, my function works.
As a next step, I want to use some of the unencoded characters on the
Courier font.  The only way I know how to do that, is by reencoding this
font.
When I use reencoded fonts, the new font does not work, and produces
the "invalidfont" error on a "stringwidth" command.
But the individual reencoded fonts do work.
When I run the same program on a NeXT machine, it works.
Any ideas ? Any known bugs in this area ?
The similar known problem I have find is mentioned on the red book,
on page 309 writes for known problems on the LaserWriter version 1.0,
running postscript version 23.0:
More than two levels of recursion in calls to BuildChar procedures
may cause the LaserWriter to crash.  A user-defined font's BuildChar
procedure may execute a show using a built-in-font.  But it is unsafe for
that user defined font to be invoked from the BuildChar procedure of
yet another user-deffined font.
But I don't think this is the case, since reencoded fonts are just
considered built-in (they have the same FontType as before).
Any facts or ideas ?  Everything is welcome.
thanks
						sarantos

PS:  By the way, if there is any way to use unencoded characters in
a font (when called from another font), except by reencoding, let me
know, this may solve my problem for the time being.