[tex-live] Bug report, font files with wrong suffix

[George N. White III]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Pander <pander at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Here is a minor bug report regarding font files with wrong suffix. they
> have the suffix .pfb (Printer File Binary) are sometimes ASCII version
> and should be called .pfa (Printer File ASCII).
>
> One can find them like this
> $ cd /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/fonts/type1
> $ find . -name '*.pfb' -exec file {} \;|grep -v '1 font program data'
>
> All the files with file type:
>  PostScript document text
> should be renamed to .pfa
>
> The ones I found are:
>  ./public/archaic/givbc10.pfb: PostScript document text
>  ./public/archaic/etr10.pfb: PostScript document text
>
> All the files with file type:
>  8086 relocatable (Microsoft)
> should be recognised as:
>  PostScript Type 1 font program data
> this might be a bug in the 'file' application or something is wrong
> within file (perhaps the details of the magic string).
>
> I hope these bugs can be fixed.

Does this cause any real problems in using the fonts?  At one
time some printer drivers would convert binary fonts to
to ascii, so I can imagine possibilities for breakage.

The "file" command on Ubuntu 9.04 gives somewhat different
strings:

$ cd /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/archaic
$ file *.pfb
aram10.pfb:   PostScript Type 1 font program data
copsn10.pfb:  PostScript Type 1 font program data
cugar10.pfb:  PostScript Type 1 font program data
cypr10.pfb:   PostScript Type 1 font program data
etr10.pfb:    PostScript document text
fut10.pfb:    PostScript Type 1 font program data
givbc10.pfb:  PostScript document text
gvibc10.pfb:  PostScript Type 1 font program data
linb10.pfb:   PostScript Type 1 font program data
nab10.pfb:    PostScript Type 1 font program data
oandsi10.pfb: PostScript Type 1 font program data
oandsu10.pfb: PostScript Type 1 font program data
phnc10.pfb:   PostScript Type 1 font program data
pmhg.pfb:     PostScript Type 1 font program data
proto10.pfb:  PostScript Type 1 font program data
sarab10.pfb:  PostScript Type 1 font program data

It would probably be best to contact the authors of the
archaic package (see "texdoc archaic" or CTAN for
email address) to ask them to fix the problem "upstream",
as others who don't use TeX Live would also get
the mis-named fonts.


-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia