Re: Computer Modern in Lout

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Rolando Abarca <address@hidden> writes:

> - $ lout -o test.ps -c test test.lout
> lout file "/usr/local/lout.lib/data/fontdefs.ld" (from "report" line
> 471, from "test.lout" line 1):
>   1057,16: ignoring unencoded ligature character ff in font file
> /usr/local/lout.lib/font/cmr10.afm (line 128)
>   1057,16: fatal error: kerning pair k a appears twice in font file
> /usr/local/lout.lib/font/cmr10.afm (line 288)

This warning messages are ``normal'': Lout is currently unable to handle
ligatures with ``unencoded'' characters.  See, for instance, [0] for
details.

> - after a few iterations removing the repeated pairs, I finally got
> the ps, but with a really ugly font... :-S
>
> What's the "good" way to add CM fonts to lout?

Basically, you need to include the fonts in question in the resulting
PostScript file so that the PostScript interpreters can use the right
font.  This can be done by running the `includeres' script from the
PSUtils [1] package on the Lout-generated PS file; this will yield a
second PS file that includes the fonts.

In order to actually do this, you must first have installed an ASCII
version of the printer font files for CM (that is, `.pfa' files).  It
turns out that CM is distributed only with binary printer font files
(`.pfb' files) so you need to convert them to `.pfa' first, e.g., using
`t1ascii' from the `t1utils' package.

You must then put those `.pfa' files in the right directory (typically
`/usr/lib/psutils'), under the right name, so that `includeres' will
find them and include them.  `includeres' expects those files to be
named after the standard full name of the font (look for `/FullName' in
the `.pfa' file), optionally suffixed with `.pfa'.  For example, for CM
Roman 10, you should create a file named `/usr/lib/psutils/CMR10'.

I set up a small web page that roughly describes these steps [3].
Ideally, in Debian, we could arrange to automate all these things...

Hope this helps,
Ludovic.

[0] http://lists.planix.com/pipermail/lout-users/2005q1/003894.html
[1] http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~ajcd/psutils/index.html
[2] http://www.lcdf.org/type/
[3] http://www.laas.fr/~lcourtes/ludo-2.html#subsection247