                           Fonts and FreeBSD

A Tutorial

  Dave Bodenstab

       <imdave@synet.net>
     

   Wed Aug 7, 1996

   FreeBSD is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.

   Adobe, Acrobat, Acrobat Reader, and PostScript are either
   registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated
   in the United States and/or other countries.

   Apple, AirPort, FireWire, Mac, Macintosh, Mac OS, Quicktime, and
   TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the
   United States and other countries.

   Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

   Microsoft, IntelliMouse, MS-DOS, Outlook, Windows, Windows Media
   and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
   Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

   Motif, OSF/1, and UNIX are registered trademarks and IT DialTone
   and The Open Group are trademarks of The Open Group in the United
   States and other countries.

   Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to
   distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those
   designations appear in this document, and the FreeBSD Project was
   aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed
   by the "(TM)" or the "(R)" symbol.

   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.

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

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 file is used by Windows(R) as sort of a symbolic link to
   the actual TrueType 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

                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 file one
   encounters in the MS-DOS(R)/Windows 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 the fonts.dir file 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 file. This must be
   modified in a similar way to the X11 fonts.dir file. 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 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
   printers are used, then the font must be down loaded 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 down loadable font. The
   pfbtops tool is used to create the .pfa format of the font, and
   the download file is modified to reference the new font. The
   download file 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 the .pfa file 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 down loaded
 % 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 the Shift key 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 the .afm file 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 the .pfa file, AFM_name is the name you wish
       for the .afm file. 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 file, 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
       command 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 file 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 freetype module is included with XFree86 4.x. For more
       information please see the FreeBSD Handbook or the XFree86
       4.0.2 Fonts page.

     * 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, there are many inexpensive
   CDROMs available that contain many fonts. Some Internet locations
   (as of August 1996) are:

     * http://www.simtel.net/

     * http://www.freshmeat.net/

     * Checkout the fonts that come with the Ports Collection in
       x11-fonts/

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

11 Additional questions

     * What use are the .pfm files?

     * Can one generate the .afm file 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.

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