font installation in Windows 2000

[Christina Thiele]

LMS journals writes:
>
> Dear All
>
> I've been watching the recent comments on font installation, having at last
> had a chance to come back to "housekeeping" (as distinct from
> "firefighting"...), and also now trying to use JUST the 2K machine, and not
> my steam-driven '95.

Hi Sue! Nice to see you -- well, I mean, you know ;-) Not that it's
for a problem but still ... ;-))

> Last week I needed MSAM8 and MSAM9, also MSBM5, MSBM8 and MSBM9 for a paper.
> I have fetched the PFM and PFB files, and installed the fonts using the
> "Control panel" route (i.e., not just drag-and drop).  The "installing
> fonts" progress bar worked fine.

What's the diff. between Control Panel and drag-and-drop? I thought
they were the same on Win2000/XP machines. Because the bloody smaller
manual (p.5) says to do precisely that -- drag and drop the .pfm
file(s) into the \fonts folder (which for you is c:\windows\fonts
... Sue, why does your message say (further down) that the fonts are
in c:\winnt\fonts? I thought that was the folder for NT machines,
while Win2000/XP machines had a c:\windows\fonts path ... Anyways, the
instructions don't say anything about installing PFM files -- I
wonder, does that get done automagically when a PFB file is installed?
And thus takes care of upper/lowercase differences?

> I have also put TFM files for the fonts in the directory where my other AMS
> fonts TFM files are (c:\yandy\fonts\tfm\nontext\tfm-ams). They have the same
> date-stamp as the TFMs for my existing AMS fonts (including other sizes of
> the same fonts). I couldn't, however, find any AFM files for the new font
> sizes on the CTAN site.

But surely you have to generate the .tfm files from within Y&YTeX, not
just use .tfms from elsewhere, no? Or do you mean .tfms from your old
machine?

I'm wondering if all of this is what might get sorted out if you did a
re-install, as Herb's suggested.

> The new fonts now show up in c:\winnt\fonts, with all the rest (only
> difference is that their names are in lower-case; the fonts that are "happy"
> are in upper-case; I tried renaming them in case something was
> case-specific, but wasn't allowed to do it by Windows).
> I have got "Ignorebadinstall=1" in my .ini file.
> I have run "setupttf".

On p.5 of the larger manual, there's another utility mentioned --
DECODE. Section 2.5.7 `Using DECODE to analyse reencoding problems'
may provide you with additional info on its use and what the heck its
reports actually mean ;-) It looks like DECODE would like to have an
AFM file, if only to confirm that info in it matches that in the
pertinent PFB file.

> The new fonts do NOT show up on the list of fonts in dviwindo, so I can't
> use  "Write AFM". I get a Courier substitute on-screen in DVIWindo, and

You don't need AFM files, as far as I can see, for general usage. P.5
of the larger manual (the Technical Addendum) says that DVIWindo users
the PFB and PFM files. DVIPSONE uses the PFB files. It's TeX that
needs the TFMs. Section 2.5.1, `Additional font-file details', may
give more info on things.

> constant "pings" if I switch on "Complain missing fonts". BUT they print out
> fine!!!  I get a warning message "no ATMREG.ATM" (which I always get, and
> was told at some point earlier not to worry about because of having 2K --
> see below), and an error message for each of the new fonts: "expecting
> number not `dup'". Nevertheless, the printing goes through.
>
> Which is a relief when it comes to sending author proofs and pubishing the
> papers, but a massive bind for editing/proofreading...

So printing's ok but on-screen is hell. In the FAQ on Font Topics,
question 17 is about ok printing but problems on-screen. It talks
about checking that the .ini file has a line for VECPATH leading to
all the .vec files. Have you checked that? And as an aside: Q19 is
about using DECODE, although it's specifically about ATM.

But you know, ATM is just a tool (albeit an older one) to get the
fonts to behave; Win2000/XP have its rasterising mechanism
internalised so that font installation is indeed supposed to just be
via drag-and-drop of the PFB files. Anyways, my point is that all
these ATM-related descriptions may well still be useful, at least
where they concern effects or results of problematic rasterising.

> I don't have any sort of version of ATM -- my understanding was that it is
> not needed for 2K.

It isn't. At least, it shouldn't be _active_ when installing fonts.

> The difference from the successful installation of xypic a couple of months
> ago seems to be the AFM files, which I managed to find in that case -- or is
> there something else I'm missing here???

Did you by chance also reinstall the fonts, after you'd fetched those
AFM files? Which might mean that it was the reinstall, not the
presence of AFM files, which was the key ...

> ??????????
>
> All the best
>
> Sue
>
>
>

Ch.