Re: Font metric files

[Michael Piotrowski]

> Lout, as distributed, uses an ASCII version of the
> font metric files.  Adobe seems to now be using a
> binary representation with a .pfm file extension.
> Can lout use these?  Can they be converted to .AFM
> or ASCII versions?

Yes, you can convert PFM files to AFM files.  Look for the pfm2afm utility; it 
should be available on the CTAN TeX archive servers.  You can also find AFM 
files 
for many fonts at <ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/type/win/all/afmfiles/> (have 
a 
look at <http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/SOLUTIONS/957a.htm> 
for 
more information.

PFM files are not a newer format but are a binary format for Windows which 
contains the information from the AFM and INF files.

Note that Lout needs the character bounding box information (the B entries) in 
an 
AFM file, which is sometimes not there (can be calculated with utilities).  
Note 
also that the kerning information (the KPX entries) must be sorted, which is 
sometimes also not the case.

-- 
Michael Piotrowski                         <address@hidden>
Department of Computational Linguistics --- University of Erlangen, Germany
You know, basically, I'm no good at either linguistics or computer science.
                                                               --Larry Wall