Re: Installing MinionMM for LaTeX

[Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>]

Professor Wei-Chau Xie writes:
 > 1. The MinionMM font that I purchased from Adobe (downloaded from
 > internet) came with only two pfb files and some pfm and pss files
 > (instance files). There are no afm files contrary to that noted in "The
 > LaTeX Graphics Companion" (p.406, "Multiple Master fonts comes with a
 > set of master afm files called AMFM). I think the product I obtained

it does seem that Adobe no longer ship the AMFM files. You *can* get
these for download from Adobe (if you can locate them), but its very
annoying that they fail to give the stuff by default

 > 2. I have no access to UNIX system and a C++ compiler. I would not be
 > able to use mmafm or mmpfb tools.

there are free C++ compilers for whatever system you are on

 > As mentioned in the previous posting, the instance files created by
 > Adobe Type Manager are one pfm and one pss files.
 > With the pfm and pss files on hand, it seems to me that it is not
 > possible to generate pfb files even using the Y&Y Font Manipulation
 > Tools (in the list of the utilities on p.389 of "The LaTeX Graphics
 > Companion", there is no route that would take pfm or pss to pfb).

you send the .pss *and* the .pfb. so looking at one of my map files, I 
see

zmnmi8x72 zmnmi8x72  <MinionMM-ItEp.pfb <zmnmi8x72.pss 
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                        the font           the instance

once the main font is loaded, the .pss file can refer to it

 > since the end result is an afm file and the right fragment of PostScript
 > code (a "stub") to download with the font itself."  What is a "stub" and
 > how to download?  The pss files are shown as "PostScript Printer Stub"
 > on my Windows 95 system, but there is no mention of the pss files
yes, the .pss files are what we meant by "stub". sorry, we wrote that
book in isolation from Windows terminology.

 > book. Furthermore, the Adobe Type Manager did not create any afm files.
 > Am I missing some points or not using the Adobe Type Manager correctly.
Probably my misunderstanding of ATM at the time. it made the pfm file, 
at least

 > procedure,..."  If I purchase the Y&Y TeX system, would I be able to use
 > MinionMM font as I do with Microsoft Word without all these setup and
 > file type conversions? Is this what the authors meant?

yes. indeed.

so either
 a) find the AMFM files at Adobe, and follow the manual route
 b) take the ATM stuff you have done, and simple convert the pfm to
    tfm for TeX (Y&Y sell font manipulation tools which should do
    this)
 c) use the entire Y&Y system which takes care of the details for you

to be honest, if you don't want to be a power TeX-font-guru, and have
couple of hundred dollars in your departmental budget, I'd advise
(c).  Y&Y ship a very good TeX system, well supported. Thats not to
say that the other commercial Windows TeX vendors don't also have good 
systems, but I don't _think_ they offer the same easy ways of creating 
metrics for new fonts.

Sebastian