1AFM2PL(1) afm2pl AFM2PL(1)
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6 afm2pl - convert AFM font metrics to TeX pl font metrics
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9 afm2pl [-p encoding_file] [-o] [-e extension_factor] [-s slant_factor]
10 [-f font_dimensions] [-k] [-m letter_spacing] [-l ligkern_spec]
11 [-L ligkern_spec] [-n] input_file[.afm] [output_file[.pl]]
12 afm2pl [--help] | [--version]
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16 afm2pl converts an afm (Adobe Font Metric) file into a pl (Property
17 List) file, which in its turn can be converted to a tfm (TeX Font
18 Metric) file. It normally preserves kerns and ligatures, but also
19 offers additional control over them.
20 afm2pl is meant to be a partial replacement for afm2tfm, on which it is
22 based. With afm2tfm, preserving kerns and ligatures is possible only in
23 a roundabout way, and handling of them is hard-wired.
24 For text fonts, Y&Y´s texnansi is a good encoding to be used with
26 afm2pl. Its character set includes all the accented characters likely
27 to be needed for Western languages, plus many typographic symbols,
28 without a need for either virtual fonts or a separate text companion
29 font.
30 Full LaTeX support for this encoding is available in the form of the
32 texnansi package, which is already part of TeX Live and teTeX. These
33 distributions also contain the encoding file texnansi.enc.
34 The distribution contains uppercased and lowercased versions of
36 texnansi, viz. texnanuc and texnanlc, to allow font-based rather than
37 macro-based uppercasing and lowercasing, and the familiar old ot1
38 encoding plus some variations in PostScript .enc format (I included
39 these because they seem to be absent from teTeX/TeX Live). However,
40 check your mapfiles if you have old afm2pl-generated fonts using these.
41 Return value: 0 if no error; a negative number indicating the number of
43 missing glyphs if conversion was otherwise successful but glyphs are
44 missing, and 1 in case of error.
45
47 -p encoding_file
48 The default is the encoding specified in the afm file, which had
49 better match the encoding in the fontfile (pfa or pfb). If
50 afm2pl-name.enc exists, afm2pl will use this file instead of
51 name.enc, unless an option -n is given. The generated mapfile entry
52 (see below) instructs pdftex or the dvi driver to re-encode the
53 font on the fly. On-the-fly reencoding does not require virtual
54 fonts.
55 -o
57 Use octal for all character codes in the pl file.
58 -e extend_factor
60 Widen or narrow characters by extend_factor. Default is 1.0
61 (natural width). Not recommended[1].
62 -s slant_factor
64 Oblique (slant) characters by slant_factor. Not recommended either.
65 -f font_dimensions
67 The value is either the keyword afm2tfm or a comma-separated list
68 of up to five integers. The parameters are listed below, with their
69 defaults and their value when the afm2tfm keyword is specified.
70 ‘Space’ means the width of a space in the target font, except of
71 course in the last row. Keep in mind that the design size is 1000,
72 and that all numbers must be nonnegative integers.
73 ┌───────────────┬─────────────────────┬─────────────────────┐
75 │Font dimension │ Default value │ Afm2tfm value │
76 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
77 │stretch │ space div 2 │ 300 × extend_factor │
78 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
79 │shrink │ space div 3 │ 100 × extend_factor │
80 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
81 │extra space │ space div 3 │ missing │
82 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
83 │quad │ 2 × width of ‘0’ │ 1000 × │
84 │ │ │ extend_factor │
85 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
86 │space │ (space source font) │ (space source font) │
87 │ │ × extend_factor │ × extend_factor │
88 └───────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────────────────┘
89 For fixed-pitch fonts, different values apply:
90 ┌───────────────┬─────────────────────┬─────────────────┐
92 │Font dimension │ Default value │ Afm2tfm value │
93 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
94 │stretch │ 0 │ 0 │
95 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
96 │shrink │ 0 │ 0 │
97 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
98 │extra space │ space │ missing │
99 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
100 │quad │ 2 × character width │ 1000 × │
101 │ │ │ extend_factor │
102 ├───────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
103 │space │ character width │ character width │
104 └───────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────────────┘
105 Specify just a non-default stretch and shrink with e.g. 150,70 and
106 just a non-default extra space with ,,10.
107 -k
109 Keep original ligatures. This option only has effect in combination
110 with positive letterspacing; see the section on letterspacing and
111 extra ligkern info.
112 -m letter_spacing
114 Letterspace by letter_spacing/1000 em (integer). This is useful for
115 making all-caps typesetting look better. Try a value of e.g. 50 or
116 100. But see the section on letterspacing and extra ligkern info
117 for details. A better alternative, though, is letting pdftex do the
118 letterspacing. The microtype package gives LaTeX users access to
119 this feature.
120 -l ligkern_spec, -L ligkern_spec
122 See the section on extra ligkern info for details.
123 -n
125 No prefix. For .enc- and .lig files, the program normally first
126 prefixes the name with `afm2pl-´. Only if the prefixed filename is
127 not found, will it search for the original filename. This option
128 prevents searching for the prefixed filename.
129 -V
131 Verbose. If turned on, it reports the number of missing glyphs to
132 stderr and their names to stdout.
133 --help
135 Display a short usage message.
136 --version
138 Display the version number of afm2pl.
139
141 afm2pl writes a mapfile entry to a file with the same basename as the
142 pl output file, but with extension .map. It can be used for the dvips
143 mapfile and for the pdftex mapfile. It is assumed that the pfb file has
144 the same basename as the afm file and must be downloaded. You may have
145 to hand-edit this entry.
146 You can configure dvips and pdftex to read this additional mapfile or
148 otherwise add the entry to an existing mapfile.
149 Check your mapfiles! To reduce the likelihood of name conflicts, the
151 .enc- files which are part of afm2pl (ot1, ot1csc, ot1ital, ot1tt,
152 texnanlc and texnanuc) have now been prepended with afm2pl-. The .enc
153 files are referenced in mapfiles. If you have old afm2pl-generated .tfm
154 files using these, then you should update their mapfile fragments and
155 rerun updmap or updmap-sys. Or you can copy the relevant enc files to
156 your personal or local texmf tree under their previous non-prefixed
157 names.
158
160 Most users are well-advised to leave this mess alone and to accept the
161 default behavior.
162 The ligatures and kerns present in the afm file can be modified in
164 various ways. Default, the encoding file is scanned for extra ligkern
165 specifications, whose format will be described below. If there are no
166 ligkern specifications in the encoding file, then extra ligkern
167 specifications will be read from a file [afm2pl-]default.lig. A value
168 of 0 for ligkern_spec means that the ligatures and kerns from the afm
169 file won´t be tampered with and a value of 1 specifies default
170 behavior. One can also specify a comma-separated list of files with
171 extra ligkerns specs.
172 If afm2pl is compiled with the kpathsea library, then these files will
174 be searched for under $TEXMF/fonts/lig.
175 Note that ligatures and kerns are hints for the typesetting
177 application; there is no need to download this information to the
178 printer or to make it available to a dvi driver.
179 The parser for ligkern info has been inherited from afm2tfm virtually
181 without change. A ligkern specification can have one of the following
182 forms:
183 glyph_name1 glyph_name2 lig_op glyph_name3 ;
185 This specifies a ligature. Possible values for lig_op are =:, |=:,
187 |=:>, =:|, =:|>, |=:|, |=:|> and |=:|>>. These correspond to LIG, /LIG,
188 /LIG>, LIG/, LIG/>, /LIG/, /LIG/>, /LIG/>> in .pl syntax; see the
189 pltotf documentation and the .lig files in the distribution.
190 glyph_name1 <> glyph_name2 ;
192 Kern glyph_name1 as glyph_name2.
194 glyph_name1 {} glyph_name2 ;
196 Remove the kern between glyph_name1 and glyph_name2. A value of * for
198 either glyph name is interpreted as a wildcard.
199 || = glyph ;
201 Set the (right) boundary character to glyph. glyph may be either a
203 glyphname or a slot in the encoding vector. Choosing a glyph which
204 doesn´t occur in the output encoding is equivalent to not specifying a
205 boundarychar at all. It is ok to pick an encoded glyphname which does
206 not occur in the afm. In fact, this is what default.lig does: || = cwm
207 ;.
208 You can copy the kerns of an unencoded character to the boundarychar.
210 Below, space is the unencoded character:
211 || <> space ;
213 This ligkern specification should occur before the one that deletes
215 space kerns.
216 A ligkern specification should be contained within one line. One line
218 may contain several ligkern specifications, separated by spaces. Note
219 that ; (space followed by semicolon) is considered part of the ligkern
220 specification. See the lig files included in this distribution.
221 Example:
222 one {} * ; * {} one ; two {} * ; * {} two ;
224 Lines with ligkern specifications inside an encoding file should start
226 with % LIGKERN. Ligkern specifications in a lig file may optionally
227 start this way.
228
230 Letterspacing has various side-effects for ligkern info. Instead of
231 simply applying the extra ligkern info (see previous section), the
232 following is done:
233 1. In case of positive letterspacing, native ligatures are removed,
236 unless the -k option is specified.
237 2. Extra ligkern info is applied as usual, except that in case of
240 positive letterspacing different defaults apply: -l 0 is quietly
241 ignored, ligkern comments in the encoding file are ignored, and
242 defpre.lig is read instead of default.lig.
243 3. Letterspacing is applied. This adds a lot of kerns, and modifies
246 existing kerns.
247 4. The extra ligkern info specified with -L is applied. The only
250 ligkern specs which are allowed here, are removals of kerning
251 pairs (with the {} operator). Values 0 and 1 have a similar
252 meaning as for the -l parameter. The tfm format has room for
253 only about 180x180 ligatures and kerning pairs. This is enough
254 for OT1 encoding, but for texnansi encoding quite a few ligkern
255 specifications have to be removed. The pltotf program will
256 remove all ligkern info if too many ligatures and kerns remain.
257 The default lig file is defpost.lig. This file throws out
258 kerning pairs which are unlikely to be involved in
259 letterspacing, such as kerns involving accents or kerns with a
260 punctuation character or right bracket at the left. It does not
261 add letterspacing kerns involving boundarychars. Instead,
262 fontspace is increased by twice the letterspacing. defpost.lig
263 throws out enough kerns in case of texnansi encoding. With other
264 encodings, you may have to throw out additional kerning pairs.
265
268 The distribution includes encoding vectors texnanuc.enc and
269 texnanlc.enc which produce all-uppercase and all-lowercase fonts
270 The principal uses for an all-uppercase font are page headers and
272 section heads. If these contain math, then macro-based uppercasing
273 would create unpleasant complications. Example:
274 afm2pl -p texnanuc ptmr8a ptmup8y
276 pltotf ptmup8y
277 For best results, you should add some letterspacing. In LaTeX, this is
279 best done with the microtype package; see the documentation of that
280 package. But it can also be done with afm2pl:
281 afm2pl -p texnanuc -m 100 ptmr8a ptmup8y
283 This requires caution; see above.
285 You can use this new font within the context of LaTeX font selection as
287 follows:
288 <preamble commands>
291 \makeatletter
292 {\nfss@catcodes
293 \DeclareFontShape{LY1}{ptm}{m}{upp}{<-> ptmup8y}{}}
294 \makeatother
295 ...
296 \begin{document}
297 ...
298 {\fontshape{upp}\selectfont uppercase text}
299 Note that upp is simply a newly made-up shape name.
302 The sz ligature ß
304 Note that the texnanuc encoding provides no glyph for the sz ligature
305 ß; you´ll either have to substitute ss or provide a macro-based
306 solution. The following code uses either the usual glyph or substitutes
307 the letters ss, depending on whether the glyph exists in the current
308 font:
309 \def\ss{%
312 \setbox0\hbox{\char25}%
313 \ifnum\wd0=0 ss\else\box0\fi
314 }
315 In LaTeX, this code appears to work well enough, although on occasion
318 you may need to insert \protect. A better solution might involve the
319 sixth parameter of the \DeclareFontShape macro, but I failed to get
320 that to work.
321
323 Afm2pl doesn´t do virtual fonts. That means that for things such as
324 artificial smallcaps you have to turn elsewhere, e.g. to the fontinst
325 package, which is part of any mainstream TeX distribution.
326 Look under texmf/tex/fontinst for fontinst support files, which allow
328 you to generate a smallcaps font (tfm and vf files) from an
329 afm2pl-generated tfm file. This package only supports texnansi
330 encoding.
331 There should be no real problem in doing the same for OT1 encoding.
333 However, there are several variations of the OT1 encoding to take care
334 of. Also, there are as far as I know no officially sanctioned
335 PostScript names for all the variations of the OT1 encoding; the
336 fontinst names contain spaces and are therefore not useable as
337 PostScript names.
338
340 In order to avoid name conflicts, the .enc- and .lig files distributed
341 with afm2pl got afm2pl- prepended to their name. The program itself now
342 first searches for the thus prepended name. If the .enc- or .lig file
343 is not found it will look for the original filename. The renaming of
344 the afm2pl .enc files may require modification of some mapfiles.
345
347 The afm2pl homepage is http://tex.aanhet.net/afm2pl/.
348 The paper Font installation the shallow way[2] (EuroTeX 2006
350 Proceedings, published as TUGboat[3] issue 27.1) illustrates the use of
351 afm2pl.
352
354 1. Except that arguably a narrowed Courier is less jarring than a
355 full-width Courier, when used in combination with a normal
356 proportional font. For Courier, choose .833 to match the width of
357 cmtt. Better yet, don't use Courier at all; most TeX distributions
358 offer various good replacements.
359 2. Font installation the shallow way
361 https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-1/tb86kroonenberg-fonts.pdf
362 afm2pl is maintained as part of TeX Live.
363 30 August 2022 AFM2PL(1)