[tex-live] PK fonts characters left blank by "dvips -P pdf" on windows

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 17 November 2010 Khaled Hosny wrote:

 > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 09:07:55PM +0100, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
 > > On 17 November 2010 Khaled Hosny wrote:
 > > 
 > >  > I extracted the pfb files (with associated afm, pfm), wrote a map file
 > >  > and it seems to work, but y&y fonts lack 17, 12, 9 and 8 points, so the
 > >  > map file now looks like:
 > >  > 
 > >  > bbold17 BBOLD17 <bbold10.pfb
 > >  > bbold12 BBOLD12 <bbold10.pfb
 > >  > bbold10 BBOLD10 <bbold10.pfb
 > >  > bbold9 BBOLD9 <bbold10.pfb
 > >  > bbold8 BBOLD8 <bbold7.pfb
 > >  > bbold7 BBOLD7 <bbold7.pfb
 > >  > bbold5 BBOLD5 <bbold5.pfb
 > >  > 
 > >  > Is this right, or should I leave the missing sizes out so that bitmap
 > >  > fonts are used there?
 > > 
 > > Hi Khaled,
 > > thanks for working on it.  However, it looks a bit odd to me.  As far
 > > as I understand, a metric file always has to match the actual font.
 > 
 > Right, I didn't think about metrics issue, but I was sure this is a
 > wrong approach, that is why I asked.
 > 
 > (skipping some great information)
 > 
 > > For further questions I recommend
 > > 
 > >   http://mail.math.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/tex-fonts
 > > 
 > > because there are the experts.
 > 
 > I just wanted to do a single one time job to make these outline fonts
 > available since they already exist. So I think I'll just provide the
 > existing fonts as is, and it'll fallback to bitmap for the missing sizes
 > (which is not worse than current situation).
 > 
 > PS. I'd try to use mfpt1 to make type1 files for the 3 missing sizes,
 > though still not optimal is not worse than what we already have.

This sounds reasonable.  They are metric compatible with the Metafont
version then.  If they are not optimal, maybe Jacko can be persuaded
to provide improved ones later.  Do you have FontForge installed?
Then mf2pt1 will autohint the fonts, which significantly improves
their quality.

The advantage of this approach is compatibility.  Only the missing
.pfb files and a map file is needed.


On 18 November 2010 Cezary Śliwa wrote:

 > There are bbold.sty and Ubbold.fd in yytex-read-only/fonts/other/tex 
 > (see also the readme.txt in this directory). I am not sure if they 
 > satisfy all the above requirements, however.

Ubbold.fd provided by Alan Jeffrey looks fine.  However, I fear that
files have to be renamed because metrics of scaled fonts are
different.  Hence I find Khaled's approach less cumbersome and LaTeX
users are not bothered with one more package.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
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