Re: [Groff] Musings on the adding of fonts

[Werner LEMBERG]

> the font, you need a dedicated tool to get at it. The best procedure to 
> obtain the needed AFM metrics file from a truetype font is to either use 
> ttf2afm (part of the ttf2pk utilities set) [...]

This is not correct.  ttf2afm is part of pdftex.

> As well, TrueType is highly overrated as a technology, unless you
> consider that superior is a technology that only five highly paid
> engineers in the world really understand and can use it properly
> (and I said engineers, not designers; the only great living type
> designer with a great technical background I am aware of is Charles
> Bigelow --- who holds a professorship at Stanford).  That's why in
> general (and I mean 99.9%) of all fonts out there in TrueType format
> are pieces of bullknit.

This is not correct either.  For printing, using TT fonts at high
resolutions the results are equal to Type 1.  Don't intermix this with
screen fonts!  The TT hinting technology is indeed very complicated,
and only recently proper tools (e.g.Microsoft's VOLT) have appeared to
manage this easily.  But Type 1 fonts often sucks too at very low
resolutions -- all the work is delayed to the rasterizer, and the few
hints in a Type 1 font are by far not sufficient to resolve all
issues.

> >This might not be a big deal, since pfaedit can presumably split
> >the font, and groff handle "virtual" fonts built from pfa-pieces. A
> >pointer on this issue, as well please.
> 
> Amateur mistake: You don't use a font editor to split a font!  It is
> the same as using a chain saw to remove your car axel, just because
> you are too lazy to find a garage where they can lift it and
> dismount it with a good set of pneumatic nut screws.  Or the same as
> pretending that a whisky on ice is whisky.

You haven't apparently seen pfaedit's recent additions: It now
contains a scripting language (using pfaedit as a batch processor
without screen output) for exactly such things.


    Werner