[Fontinst] a question about installing "Webdings.ttf"

[Peter Scott]

Dear readers:

I have been working on translating a truetype
dingbat font (e.g. Webdings.ttf --- a microsoft font
available for free from the webpagepublicity site)
for use as a font in TeX.  (I am a plain TeX person,
eschewing LaTeX.)  While I have succeeded (see the
steps below), the \latinfamily macro seems to
provide too much for the job, since I run into the
weeds using it, as described below.

I follow Philipp Lehman's basic initial steps,
described in the initial 15 pages or so of his
"fontinstallationguide.pdf" version 2.14.  (His
excellent "ttf2tex" script, which works like a
charm for other truetype fonts, would not work for
either "Webdings.ttf" or "Wingdings.ttf".)

I am rather ignorant about the details of font
design and construction.

Here are my steps:

0. I grabbed the fontinst tree from
   ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/utilities/
   and put it in $HOME/texmf/tex
   and did texhash so all the files in that tree are
   available (kpsexpand \$TEXMF yields 
   {/home/drip/texmf,!!/usr/local/share/texmf,!!/usr/share/texmf}
   where "/home/drip" is $HOME).

1. In an otherwise empty directory, rename
   Webdings.ttf to fwdr8a.ttf.

2. ttf2type1 fwdr8a.ttf (or ttf2pt1 -a -b fwdr8a.ttf fwdr8a),
   which produces fwdr8a.afm and fwdr8a.pfb.

3. afm2tfm fwdr8a.afm, which produces fwdr8a.tfm.

4. in file.tex, I put:

   \input fontinst.sty
   \needsfontinstversion{1.928}
   \recordtransforms{fwd-rec.tex}
   \latinfamily{fwd}{}
   \endrecordtransforms
   \bye

and then give the command

   tex file

which chokes with a typical undecipherable tex error message:

=========================================================
...

Virtual font written on fwdr8t.vpl.
INFO> run \installfont <fwdr8c><fwdr8r,textcomp><TS1><TS1><fwd><m><n>
(./fwdr8r.mtx) (/home/drip/texmf/tex/fontinst/inputs/smblmtx/textcomp.mtx
! Missing number, treated as zero.
<to be read again> 
                   \x_relax 
\x_resetint ...etsomething_global \ifnum \result <
                                                  \max_mathchardef \ifnum 0>...

\setint ...ifx {i-#1}\x_relax \x_resetint {#1}{#2}
                                                  \fi 
l.93 \setint{xheight}{\height{x}}
=========================================================

so seeing that "fwdr8t.vpl" is written (that's what
I need of course), I push "x" to quit the script.
(If I push "r" so as to run the rest without
stopping I get many more files, none of which are
useful since this is not an ordinary font.)

5. Then (continuing to follow Lehman's guide):
  
   for file in *.pl;  do pltotf $file; done
   for file in *.vpl; do vptovf $file; done

6. Then tex testfont
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.4.5)
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/plain/base/testfont.tex 
Name of the font to test = fwdr8a
Now type a test command (\help for help):)
*\table\bye
[1]
Output written on testfont.dvi (1 page, 10920 bytes).
Transcript written on testfont.log.

7. Then xdvi testfont shows me the nice font table.

MY QUESTIONS:

Are there alternative commands I could put in
"file.tex" (step 4 above) so that the "tex file"
command will complete nicely?

Is there a better way to transform this font for use
in TeX?

I am doing all this on fedora core 1.
Any guidance would be most appreciated.

-- Peter Scott