[tex-live] Metafont: DVI and PDF trouble

Zdenek Wagner zdenek.wagner at gmail.com
Thu Mar 12 10:34:23 CET 2009


2009/3/12 Dan Luecking <luecking at uark.edu>:
>
> Dear Thomas:
>
> GFtoDVI makes use (by default) of a font called gray.tfm to
> build each character. Each character in this font is a rectangle
> with some proportion of its pixels on, producing a gray rectangle.
> These gray rectangles are stacked appropriately to produce a very
> large image of each character in the gf file.
>
> In most TeX distributions, the tfm file gray.tfm is produced at 300dpi.
> This includes Tex Live 2008. However, the file gray.mf that would be
> used to creates the PK font file contains
>  if mode=ljfour: input graylj;
>  elseif mode=cx: input graycx;
>  elseif mode=aps: input grayaps;
>  fi
> The default mode on most systems (e.g., when automatically generating
> a PK font file) is ljfour, and that is a 600dpi font. Thus, there
> will almost always be a mismatch between the tfm file and the PK file
> used for display.
>
> This is what I would do (and have done but see caveat at end).
>
> 1. I would determine what the default PK font resolution is for
> various programs. For dviout this is found somewhere in the
> its menu system (I think). For dvips this is found in config.ps. For
> dvipdfm I don't know if this is configurable. For dvipdfmx this is
> found in dvipdfmx.cfg.
>
In pdftex it can be set in the file by \pkresolution. The default MF
mode can be set by texconfig.

> 2. I would then make sure all of them are set to 600dpi and then I
> would copy graylj.mf to gray.mf (in directory
> texmf-dist/fonts/source/public/misc/)
>
> 3. Then I would generate gray.tfm with
>  mf \mode:=ljfour; input gray.mf
> and for good measure a PK file with
>  gftopk gray.600gf
>
> 4. I would then replace the existing
>     texmf-dist/fonts/tfm/public/misc/gray.tfm
>   with the new one and put the gray.600pk in
>     texmf-var/fonts/tfm/public/misc/gray.tfm
>
I would rather put gray.tfm to texmf-local/fonts/tfm/publi/misc/
because files in texmf-dist may be overwritten by tlmgr update. It is
not necessary to create PK manually, they will be generated
automatically and stored somewhere under texmf-var if not found.

> 5. Finally, run texhash.
>
> [If your printer is old and actually has 300dpi resolution, set all the
> config files to that value, keep the existing gray.tfm and copy graycx.mf
> to gray.mf.]
>
> This may not always produce good results when viewed on screen, as
> screens normally have to reduce the size of bitmap fonts by pixel
> averaging. For regular patterns of pixels, such as found in gray.mf,
> this generally produces streaking effects. However, if the dpi matches
> your printer, the printed proof is usually good.
>
> One final configuration step is useful: find modes.mf and edit the last
> line which probably says
>  localfont:=ljfour;
> If 600dpi is your default resolution, do nothing. But if it is 300dpi,
> change this to
>  localfont:=cx; % or some other 300dpi mode like jetiiisi
> Then remake the mf format.
>
> Caveat: At one point I got this all working, but haven't tried it
> in years.
>
>
> Dan
>
> --
> Daniel H. Luecking
> Department of Mathematical Sciences
> University of Arkansas
> Fayetteville, AR 72701
> Daniel H. Luecking
> Department of Mathematical Sciences
> University of Arkansas
> Fayetteville, AR 72701
>
>



-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz


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