fontdefs files

[Robert Valliant]

This past weekend I decided to make fontdefs files for the fonts I
have around the house (Bitstream, MagicGarden, Corel).

During the process I came across several anomalies I would like to ask
about.

1. Spacing - is the spacing (16, 16, 30, 16, 16, 9) in the fontdefs
   file critical? For example, I took the family and font names and
   weights from the .afm files. The longest fontname I could find was
   truncated at 30 characters. But some of the family names are longer
   than 16: AlternateGothicNo.2, BernhardBoldCondensed,
   BitstreamIowanOldStyle.

2. Can there be spaces in family or face names? According to DSC 3,
   there can be no spaces in font names. But what about lout family
   and face names? I chose to remove the spaces.

3. Does lout look for any particular face names? Several I found
   include normal, normalitalic, thin, medium, etc.

4. About recoding. I had the program scan the .afm file and examine
   the 'C nnn' entries. If it found anything over 128, it set "recode".
   I am not sure if this is correct or not. I note that in the
   standard fontdefs file, neither symbol nor dingbats is recoded. Yet
   in the PI and symbol .afms on the Bitstream CD, both have chars
   above 128. Am I missing something here?

If anyone is interested I would be happy to donate the results of all
of this to the group. Of course, without the .pfa or .pfb files it would
be useless, but it might save someone else from having to do the work.

I checked the Bitstream website, but didn't find any indication that
they give away the .afm files that lout needs. The 500 font CD is
listed. I got mine several years ago for about US$30. Many of these
are also on Corel CDs if you have those. Windows fonts work fine on
unix/linux.

-- 
Robert Valliant
Center for Russia in Asia, University of Hawaii at Manoa
www.hawaii.edu/shaps/russia
address@hidden Fax: 808.956.2682 Tel: 808.956.7814