dvips: Making a font available
6.2 Making a PostScript font available
======================================
To make a PostScript font available in a TeX document, you need to
install the font on your system and then define it within the document.
Once you have installed the font, of course, it is available for any
document thereafter and you don't need to reinstall it. You must have
an AFM file for any font you install. Unless the font is built into
your printer, you must also have a PFA or PFB file.
In the following examples, we use the font 'Times-Roman' to
illustrate the process. But you should use the prebuilt fonts for Times
and the other standard fonts, rather than rebuilding them. The prebuilt
fonts are made using a more complicated process than that described
here, to make them work as well as possible with TeX. So following the
steps in this manual will not generate files identical to the
distributed ones. ⇒PostScript font installation, for pointers to
the prebuilt fonts.
Installation of a PostScript font proceeds in three steps. ⇒
Font concepts, for descriptions of the various files involved.
1. Run 'afm2tfm' to create a TFM file for the original font, and the
VPL form of the virtual font:
afm2tfm Times-Roman -v ptmr rptmr
2. Run 'vptovf' to generate a VF and TFM file for the virtual font
from the VPL file:
vptovf ptmr.vpl ptmr.vf ptmr.tfm
3. Insert an entry for the font in 'psfonts.map' (⇒
psfonts.map):
rptmr Times-Roman <ptmr8a.pfa
4. Install the files in the standard locations, as in:
cp ptmr.vf FONTDIR/vf/...
cp *ptmr.tfm FONTDIR/tfm/...
cp ptmr.afm FONTDIR/afm/...
cp ptmr.pf? FONTDIR/type1/...
The simplest invocation of Afm2tfm to make virtual fonts goes
something like this:
afm2tfm Times-Roman -v ptmr rptmr
This reads the file 'Times-Roman.afm', and produces two files as output,
namely the virtual property list'file 'ptmr.vpl', and the "raw" font
metric file 'rptmr.tfm'. To use the font in TeX, you first run
vptovf ptmr.vpl ptmr.vf ptmr.tfm
You should then install the virtual font file 'ptmr.vf' where Dvips will
see it and install 'ptmr.tfm' and 'rptmr.tfm' where TeX and Dvips will
see them.
Using these raw fonts is not recommended; there are no raw fonts in
the prebuilt PostScript fonts distributed along with Dvips. But
nevertheless, that's how Afm2tfm presently operates, so that's what we
document here. The 'r' prefix convention is likewise historical
accident.
You can also make more complex virtual fonts by editing 'ptmr.vpl'
before running 'vptovf'; such editing might add the uppercase Greek
characters in the standard TeX positions, for instance. (This has
already been done for the prebuilt fonts.)
Once the files have been installed, you're all set. You can now do
things like this in TeX:
\font\myfont = ptmr at 12pt
\myfont Hello, I am being typeset in 12-point Times-Roman.
Thus, we have two fonts, one actual ('rptmr', which is analogous to
the font in the printer) and one virtual ('ptmr', which has been
remapped to the standard TeX encoding (almost)), and has typesetting
know-how added. You could also say
\font\raw = rptmr at 10pt
and typeset directly with that, but then you would have no ligatures or
kerning, and you would have to use Adobe character positions for special
letters like the ligature 'AE'. The virtual font 'ptmr' not only has
ligatures and kerning, and most of the standard accent conventions of
TeX, it also has a few additional features not present in the Computer
Modern fonts. For example, it includes all the Adobe characters (such
as the Polish ogonek and the French guillemots). The only things you
lose from ordinary TeX text fonts are the dotless 'j' (which can be
hacked into the VPL file with literal PostScript specials if you have
the patience) and uppercase Greek letters (which just don't exist unless
you buy them separately). ⇒Reencoding with Afm2tfm.
As a final step you need to record information about both the virtual
font and the original font (if you ever might want to use it) in the
'psfonts.map' file (⇒psfonts.map). For our example, you'd insert
the following into 'psfonts.map':
rptmr Times-Roman <ptmr8a.pfa
Of course, 'Times-Roman' is already built in to most every printer, so
there's no need to download any Type 1 file for it. But if you are
actually following these instructions for new fonts, most likely they
are not built in to the printer.
These PostScript fonts can be scaled to any size. Go wild! Using
PostScript fonts, however, does use up a great deal of the printer's
memory and it does take time. You may find downloading bitmap fonts
(possibly compressed, with the 'Z' option) to be faster than using the
built-in PostScript fonts.
Info Catalog
dvips: Font concepts
dvips: PostScript fonts
dvips: Invoking afm2tfm