non-integer numbers support in afm files

Melissa O'Neill oneill@cs.sfu.ca
Wed, 30 Sep 1998 02:21:12 -0700


Vladimir writes:
> are there plans [for fontinst] to support non-integers in afm files

Sometime back, the opinion was that this is too awkward to do. Since
we're talking about fractions of thousandths points, the error involved
in rounding the AFM file is pretty small.

Once, long ago, I wrote a quick Perl script to take an AFM file and
round all the floating point numbers that fontinst can't handle. If
anyone is interested I could look around for it and perhaps post it.

    Melissa.

P.S. However, this deficiency was among several in fontinst that lead
me to write my own font installation tools in Perl (called FontKit).
Sadly, I've only found time to finish my code to the point where I could
use it (it handles on-the-fly instance generation for a multiple master
font), rather than to a point where I was prepared release it. (Basically,
I'd like to have better VF support; as things stand it supports remapping
but not fakery.). Sorry if mentioning FontKit here counts as heresy. ;o)