                               Fonts and FreeBSD

  A Tutorial

  Dave Bodenstab

       <imdave@synet.net>
     

   Revision: 06e7dd44a0

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   Last modified on 2019-03-23 04:50:01 +0000 by Benedict Reuschling.
   Abstract

   This document contains a description of the various font files that may be
   used with FreeBSD and the syscons driver, X11, Ghostscript and Groff.
   Cookbook examples are provided for switching the syscons display to 80x60
   mode, and for using type 1 fonts with the above application programs.

   [ Split HTML / Single HTML ]

     ----------------------------------------------------------------------

   Table of Contents

   1. Introduction

   2. Basic Terminology

   3. What Font Formats Can I Use?

   4. Setting a Virtual Console to 80x60 Line Mode

   5. Using Type 1 Fonts with X11

   6. Using Type 1 Fonts with Ghostscript

   7. Using Type 1 Fonts with Groff

   8. Converting TrueType Fonts to a groff/PostScript Format For groff

   9. Can TrueType Fonts be Used with Other Programs?

   10. Where Can Additional Fonts be Obtained?

   11. Additional Questions

1. Introduction

   There are many sources of fonts available, and one might ask how they
   might be used with FreeBSD. The answer can be found by carefully searching
   the documentation for the component that one would like to use. This is
   very time consuming, so this tutorial is an attempt to provide a shortcut
   for others who might be interested.

2. Basic Terminology

   There are many different font formats and associated font file suffixes. A
   few that will be addressed here are:

   .pfa, .pfb

           PostScript(R) type 1 fonts. The .pfa is the Ascii form and .pfb
           the Binary form.

   .afm

           The font metrics associated with a type 1 font.

   .pfm

           The printer font metrics associated with a type 1 font.

   .ttf

           A TrueType(R) font

   .fot

           An indirect reference to a TrueType font (not an actual font)

   .fon, .fnt

           Bitmapped screen fonts

   The .fot is used by Windows(R) as sort of a symbolic link to the actual
   TrueType(R) font (.ttf) file. The .fon font files are also used by
   Windows. I know of no way to use this font format with FreeBSD.

3. What Font Formats Can I Use?

   Which font file format is useful depends on the application being used.
   FreeBSD by itself uses no fonts. Application programs and/or drivers may
   make use of the font files. Here is a small cross reference of
   application/driver to the font type suffixes:

   Driver

                vt

                        .hex

                syscons

                        .fnt

   Application

                Ghostscript

                        .pfa, .pfb, .ttf

                X11

                        .pfa, .pfb

                Groff

                        .pfa, .afm

                Povray

                        .ttf

   The .fnt suffix is used quite frequently. I suspect that whenever someone
   wanted to create a specialized font file for their application, more often
   than not they chose this suffix. Therefore, it is likely that files with
   this suffix are not all the same format; specifically, the .fnt files used
   by syscons under FreeBSD may not be the same format as a .fnt one
   encounters in the MS-DOS(R)/Windows(R) environment. I have not made any
   attempt at using other .fnt files other than those provided with FreeBSD.

4. Setting a Virtual Console to 80x60 Line Mode

   First, an 8x8 font must be loaded. To do this, /etc/rc.conf should contain
   the line (change the font name to an appropriate one for your locale):

 font8x8="iso-8x8"               # font 8x8 from /usr/share/syscons/fonts/* (or NO).

   The command to actually switch the mode is vidcontrol(1):

 % vidcontrol VGA_80x60

   Various screen-oriented programs, such as vi(1), must be able to determine
   the current screen dimensions. As this is achieved this through ioctl
   calls to the console driver (such as syscons(4)) they will correctly
   determine the new screen dimensions.

   To make this more seamless, one can embed these commands in the startup
   scripts so it takes place when the system boots. To do this is add this
   line to /etc/rc.conf.

 allscreens_flags="VGA_80x60"    # Set this vidcontrol mode for all virtual screens

   References: rc.conf(5), vidcontrol(1).

5. Using Type 1 Fonts with X11

   X11 can use either the .pfa or the .pfb format fonts. The X11 fonts are
   located in various subdirectories under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts. Each
   font file is cross referenced to its X11 name by the contents of fonts.dir
   in each directory.

   There is already a directory named Type1. The most straight forward way to
   add a new font is to put it into this directory. A better way is to keep
   all new fonts in a separate directory and use a symbolic link to the
   additional font. This allows one to more easily keep track of ones fonts
   without confusing them with the fonts that were originally provided. For
   example:

 Create a directory to contain the font files
 % mkdir -p /usr/local/share/fonts/type1
 % cd /usr/local/share/fonts/type1

 Place the .pfa, .pfb and .afm files here
 One might want to keep readme files, and other documentation
 for the fonts here also
 % cp /cdrom/fonts/atm/showboat/showboat.pfb .
 % cp /cdrom/fonts/atm/showboat/showboat.afm .

 Maintain an index to cross reference the fonts
 % echo showboat - InfoMagic CICA, Dec 1994, /fonts/atm/showboat >>INDEX

   Now, to use a new font with X11, one must make the font file available and
   update the font name files. The X11 font names look like:

 -bitstream-charter-medium-r-normal-xxx-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
      |        |      |    |   |     |  | | | | | |    \    \
      |        |      |    |   |     \  \ \ \ \ \ \     +----+- character set
      |        |      |    |   \      \  \ \ \ \ \ +- average width
      |        |      |    |    \      \  \ \ \ \ +- spacing
      |        |      |    \     \      \  \ \ \ +- vertical res.
      |        |      |     \     \      \  \ \ +- horizontal res.
      |        |      |      \     \      \  \ +- points
      |        |      |       \     \      \  +- pixels
      |        |      |        \     \      \
   foundry  family  weight   slant  width  additional style

   A new name needs to be created for each new font. If you have some
   information from the documentation that accompanied the font, then it
   could serve as the basis for creating the name. If there is no
   information, then you can get some idea by using strings(1) on the font
   file. For example:

 % strings showboat.pfb | more
 %!FontType1-1.0: Showboat 001.001
 %%CreationDate: 1/15/91 5:16:03 PM
 %%VMusage: 1024 45747
 % Generated by Fontographer 3.1
 % Showboat
  1991 by David Rakowski.  Alle Rechte Vorbehalten.
 FontDirectory/Showboat known{/Showboat findfont dup/UniqueID known{dup
 /UniqueID get 4962377 eq exch/FontType get 1 eq and}{pop false}ifelse
 {save true}{false}ifelse}{false}ifelse
 12 dict begin
 /FontInfo 9 dict dup begin
  /version (001.001) readonly def
  /FullName (Showboat) readonly def
  /FamilyName (Showboat) readonly def
  /Weight (Medium) readonly def
  /ItalicAngle 0 def
  /isFixedPitch false def
  /UnderlinePosition -106 def
  /UnderlineThickness 16 def
  /Notice (Showboat
  1991 by David Rakowski.  Alle Rechte Vorbehalten.) readonly def
 end readonly def
 /FontName /Showboat def
 --stdin--

   Using this information, a possible name might be:

 -type1-Showboat-medium-r-normal-decorative-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1

   The components of our name are:

   Foundry

           Lets just name all the new fonts type1.

   Family

           The name of the font.

   Weight

           Normal, bold, medium, semibold, etc. From the strings(1) output
           above, it appears that this font has a weight of medium.

   Slant

           roman, italic, oblique, etc. Since the ItalicAngle is zero, roman
           will be used.

   Width

           Normal, wide, condensed, extended, etc. Until it can be examined,
           the assumption will be normal.

   Additional style

           Usually omitted, but this will indicate that the font contains
           decorative capital letters.

   Spacing

           proportional or monospaced. Proportional is used since
           isFixedPitch is false.

   All of these names are arbitrary, but one should strive to be compatible
   with the existing conventions. A font is referenced by name with possible
   wild cards by an X11 program, so the name chosen should make some sense.
   One might begin by simply using

 ...-normal-r-normal-...-p-...

   as the name, and then use xfontsel(1) to examine it and adjust the name
   based on the appearance of the font.

   So, to complete our example:

 Make the font accessible to X11
 % cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1
 % ln -s /usr/local/share/fonts/type1/showboat.pfb .

 Edit fonts.dir and fonts.scale, adding the line describing the font
 and incrementing the number of fonts which is found on the first line.
 % ex fonts.dir
 :1p
 25
 :1c
 26
 .
 :$a
 showboat.pfb -type1-showboat-medium-r-normal-decorative-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
 .
 :wq

 fonts.scale seems to be identical to fonts.dir...
 % cp fonts.dir fonts.scale

 Tell X11 that things have changed
 % xset fp rehash

 Examine the new font
 % xfontsel -pattern -type1-*

   References: xfontsel(1), xset(1), The X Windows System in a Nutshell,
   O'Reilly & Associates.

6. Using Type 1 Fonts with Ghostscript

   Ghostscript references a font via its Fontmap. This must be modified in a
   similar way to the X11 fonts.dir. Ghostscript can use either the .pfa or
   the .pfb format fonts. Using the font from the previous example, here is
   how to use it with Ghostscript:

 Put the font in Ghostscript's font directory
 % cd /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts
 % ln -s /usr/local/share/fonts/type1/showboat.pfb .

 Edit Fontmap so Ghostscript knows about the font
 % cd /usr/local/share/ghostscript/4.01
 % ex Fontmap
 :$a
 /Showboat        (showboat.pfb) ; % From CICA /fonts/atm/showboat
 .
 :wq

 Use Ghostscript to examine the font
 % gs prfont.ps
 Aladdin Ghostscript 4.01 (1996-7-10)
 Copyright (C) 1996 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA.  All rights
 reserved.
 This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
 Loading Times-Roman font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/tir_____.pfb...
  /1899520 581354 1300084 13826 0 done.
 GS>Showboat DoFont
 Loading Showboat font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/showboat.pfb...
  1939688 565415 1300084 16901 0 done.
 >>showpage, press <return> to continue<<
 >>showpage, press <return> to continue<<
 >>showpage, press <return> to continue<<
 GS>quit

   References: fonts.txt in the Ghostscript 4.01 distribution

7. Using Type 1 Fonts with Groff

   Now that the new font can be used by both X11 and Ghostscript, how can one
   use the new font with groff? First of all, since we are dealing with type
   1 PostScript(R) fonts, the groff device that is applicable is the ps
   device. A font file must be created for each font that groff can use. A
   groff font name is just a file in /usr/share/groff_font/devps. With our
   example, the font file could be /usr/share/groff_font/devps/SHOWBOAT. The
   file must be created using tools provided by groff.

   The first tool is afmtodit. This is not normally installed, so it must be
   retrieved from the source distribution. I found I had to change the first
   line of the file, so I did:

 % cp /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/groff/afmtodit/afmtodit.pl /tmp
 % ex /tmp/afmtodit.pl
 :1c
 #!/usr/bin/perl -P-
 .
 :wq

   This tool will create the groff font file from the metrics file (.afm
   suffix.) Continuing with our example:

 Many .afm files are in Mac format... ^M delimited lines
 We need to convert them to UNIX(R) style ^J delimited lines
 % cd /tmp
 % cat /usr/local/share/fonts/type1/showboat.afm |
         tr '\015' '\012' >showboat.afm

 Now create the groff font file
 % cd /usr/share/groff_font/devps
 % /tmp/afmtodit.pl -d DESC -e text.enc /tmp/showboat.afm generate/textmap SHOWBOAT

   The font can now be referenced with the name SHOWBOAT.

   If Ghostscript is used to drive the printers on the system, then nothing
   more needs to be done. However, if true PostScript(R) printers are used,
   then the font must be downloaded to the printer in order for the font to
   be used (unless the printer happens to have the showboat font built in or
   on an accessible font disk.) The final step is to create a downloadable
   font. The pfbtops tool is used to create the .pfa format of the font, and
   download is modified to reference the new font. The download must
   reference the internal name of the font. This can easily be determined
   from the groff font file as illustrated:

 Create the .pfa font file
 % pfbtops /usr/local/share/fonts/type1/showboat.pfb >showboat.pfa

   Of course, if .pfa is already available, just use a symbolic link to
   reference it.

 Get the internal font name
 % fgrep internalname SHOWBOAT
 internalname Showboat

 Tell groff that the font must be downloaded
 % ex download
 :$a
 Showboat      showboat.pfa
 .
 :wq

   To test the font:

 % cd /tmp
 % cat >example.t <<EOF
 .sp 5
 .ps 16
 This is an example of the Showboat font:
 .br
 .ps 48
 .vs (\n(.s+2)p
 .sp
 .ft SHOWBOAT
 ABCDEFGHI
 .br
 JKLMNOPQR
 .br
 STUVWXYZ
 .sp
 .ps 16
 .vs (\n(.s+2)p
 .fp 5 SHOWBOAT
 .ft R
 To use it for the first letter of a paragraph, it will look like:
 .sp 50p
 \s(48\f5H\s0\fRere is the first sentence of a paragraph that uses the
 showboat font as its first letter.
 Additional vertical space must be used to allow room for the larger
 letter.
 EOF
 % groff -Tps example.t >example.ps

 To use ghostscript/ghostview
 % ghostview example.ps

 To print it
 % lpr -Ppostscript example.ps

   References: /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/groff/afmtodit/afmtodit.man,
   groff_font(5), groff_char(7), pfbtops(1).

8. Converting TrueType Fonts to a groff/PostScript Format For groff

   This potentially requires a bit of work, simply because it depends on some
   utilities that are not installed as part of the base system. They are:

   ttf2pf

           TrueType to PostScript conversion utilities. This allows
           conversion of a TrueType font to an ascii font metric (.afm) file.

           Currently available at
           http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/GUST/contrib/BachoTeX98/ttf2pf/.
           Note: These files are PostScript programs and must be downloaded
           to disk by holding down Shift when clicking on the link.
           Otherwise, your browser may try to launch ghostview to view them.

           The files of interest are:

              * GS_TTF.PS

              * PF2AFM.PS

              * ttf2pf.ps

           The funny upper/lower case is due to their being intended also for
           DOS shells. ttf2pf.ps makes use of the others as upper case, so
           any renaming must be consistent with this. (Actually, GS_TTF.PS
           and PFS2AFM.PS are supposedly part of the Ghostscript
           distribution, but it is just as easy to use these as an isolated
           utility. FreeBSD does not seem to include the latter.) You also
           may want to have these installed to
           /usr/local/share/groff_font/devps(?).

   afmtodit

           Creates font files for use with groff from ascii font metrics
           file. This usually resides in the directory,
           /usr/src/contrib/groff/afmtodit, and requires some work to get
           going.

  Note:

           If you are paranoid about working in the /usr/src tree, simply
           copy the contents of the above directory to a work location.

           In the work area, you will need to make the utility. Just type:

 # make -f Makefile.sub afmtodit

           You may also need to copy
           /usr/contrib/groff/devps/generate/textmap to
           /usr/share/groff_font/devps/generate if it does not already exist.

   Once all these utilities are in place, you are ready to commence:

    1. Create .afm by typing:

 % gs -dNODISPLAY -q -- ttf2pf.ps TTF_name PS_font_name AFM_name

       Where, TTF_name is your TrueType font file, PS_font_name is the file
       name for .pfa, AFM_name is the name you wish for .afm. If you do not
       specify output file names for the .pfa or .afm files, then default
       names will be generated from the TrueType font file name.

       This also produces a .pfa, the ascii PostScript font metrics file
       (.pfb is for the binary form). This will not be needed, but could (I
       think) be useful for a fontserver.

       For example, to convert the 30f9 Barcode font using the default file
       names, use the following command:

 % gs -dNODISPLAY -- ttf2pf.ps 3of9.ttf
 Aladdin Ghostscript 5.10 (1997-11-23)
 Copyright (C) 1997 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA.  All rights reserved.
 This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
 Converting 3of9.ttf to 3of9.pfa and 3of9.afm.

       If you want the converted fonts to be stored in A.pfa and B.afm, then
       use this command:

 % gs -dNODISPLAY -- ttf2pf.ps 3of9.ttf A B
 Aladdin Ghostscript 5.10 (1997-11-23)
 Copyright (C) 1997 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA.  All rights reserved.
 This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
 Converting 3of9.ttf to A.pfa and B.afm.

    2. Create the groff PostScript file:

       Change directories to /usr/share/groff_font/devps so as to make the
       following command easier to execute. You will probably need root
       privileges for this. (Or, if you are paranoid about working there,
       make sure you reference the files DESC, text.enc and generate/textmap
       as being in this directory.)

 % afmtodit -d DESC -e text.enc file.afm generate/textmap PS_font_name

       Where, file.afm is the AFM_name created by ttf2pf.ps above, and
       PS_font_name is the font name used from that command, as well as the
       name that groff(1) will use for references to this font. For example,
       assuming you used the first tiff2pf.ps above, then the 3of9 Barcode
       font can be created using the command:

 % afmtodit -d DESC -e text.enc 3of9.afm generate/textmap 3of9

       Ensure that the resulting PS_font_name file (e.g., 3of9 in the example
       above) is located in the directory /usr/share/groff_font/devps by
       copying or moving it there.

       Note that if ttf2pf.ps assigns a font name using the one it finds in
       the TrueType font file and you want to use a different name, you must
       edit the .afm prior to running afmtodit. This name must also match the
       one used in the Fontmap file if you wish to pipe groff(1) into gs(1).

9. Can TrueType Fonts be Used with Other Programs?

   The TrueType font format is used by Windows, Windows 95, and Mac's. It is
   quite popular and there are a great number of fonts available in this
   format.

   Unfortunately, there are few applications that I am aware of that can use
   this format: Ghostscript and Povray come to mind. Ghostscript's support,
   according to the documentation, is rudimentary and the results are likely
   to be inferior to type 1 fonts. Povray version 3 also has the ability to
   use TrueType fonts, but I rather doubt many people will be creating
   documents as a series of raytraced pages :-).

   This rather dismal situation may soon change. The FreeType Project is
   currently developing a useful set of FreeType tools:

     * The xfsft font server for X11 can serve TrueType fonts in addition to
       regular fonts. Though currently in beta, it is said to be quite
       usable. See Juliusz Chroboczek's page for further information. Porting
       instructions for FreeBSD can be found at Stephen Montgomery's software
       page.

     * xfstt is another font server for X11, available under
       ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts/.

     * A program called ttf2bdf can produce BDF files suitable for use in an
       X environment from TrueType files. Linux binaries are said to be
       available from ftp://crl.nmsu.edu/CLR/multiling/General/.

     * and others ...

10. Where Can Additional Fonts be Obtained?

   Many fonts are available on the Internet. They are either entirely free,
   or are share-ware. In addition many fonts are available in the x11-fonts/
   category in the ports collection

11. Additional Questions

     * What use are the .pfm files?

     * Can one generate the .afm from a .pfa or .pfb?

     * How to generate the groff character mapping files for PostScript fonts
       with non-standard character names?

     * Can xditview and devX?? devices be set up to access all the new fonts?

     * It would be good to have examples of using TrueType fonts with Povray
       and Ghostscript.
