Re: [Groff] Bitstream vera sans

[John Gardner]

>
> *"FACT: You cannot convert losslessly between different Font formats."*


Please highlight the part of my e-mail which mentions lossless conversion,
because I alluded to no such thing. Conversion from one format to another
usually involves some loss of data; but AFM files, to my understanding,
only record the bounding boxes of each glyph, along with kerning pair
adjustments and ligature info. There's no hinting-related data transferred
whatsoever; it's not even Groff's responsibility to handle font
rasterisation anyway.

*"If you have access to a Windows machine and some money to burn, you can
> buy CrossFont and use it to extract a well formed AFM file from any
> truetype,  PostScript CFF Font (a.k.a .otf) and use that to generate groff
> metric files instead."*


I have access to virtualised Windows setups, and I happen to be familiar
with CrossFont. Buying a license was a total waste of money, and I was
foolish to do so; this was in the years I was less enlightened to FOSS than
I am now.

If there's an issue with FontForge's conversion algorithms that happens to
be dealt with in CrossFont, perhaps you should consider contributing to the
latter project to improve the conversion quality, then? ;-)

*"Mikkel, follow Tadziu's advice and instructions;"*


You've e-mailed me directly, so the rest of the mailing list won't hear you
(assuming you haven't BCCed Mkkel in your reply). I've added the list's
address for you. =)

On 9 August 2017 at 22:49, Pedro A. López-Valencia <address@hidden>
wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 11:15 PM, John Gardner <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>
>> Hey there,
>>
>> If you have FontForge
>> ​...​
>>
>>
>>
> ​Please, please, please, do not help spread such ​ignorant information.
> It's been repeated so many times by now that it is fulfilling Goebbel's
> assertion: "A lie repeated a thousand times becomes truth." [I apologize
> for appealing to Godwin's Law, but it is fitting here].
>
> FACT: You cannot convert losslessly between different Font formats.
>
> Mikkel, follow Tadziu's advice and instructions; it is the correct way to
> use a Truetype Font with groff. And as to why converting a Truetype font to
> Postscript (be it type 1 or CFF) or viceversa is a strategic mistake, read
> this small rant of mine:
>
> https://clamoringinthedesert.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/why-
> is-it-you-cant-convert-a-truetype-font-to-postscript-
> or-the-other-way-around/
>
> If you have access to a Windows machine and some money to burn, you can
> buy CrossFont and use it to extract a well formed AFM file from any
> truetype,  PostScript CFF Font (a.k.a .otf) and use that to generate groff
> metric files instead.
>
>
> --
> Pedro A. López-Valencia
> http://about.me/palopezv/
>