AFM2PL(1)                           afm2pl                           AFM2PL(1)



NAME
       afm2pl - convert AFM font metrics to TeX pl font metrics

SYNOPSIS
       afm2pl [-p encoding_file] [-o] [-e extension_factor] [-s slant_factor]
              [-f font_dimensions] [-k] [-m letter_spacing] [-l ligkern_spec]
              [-L ligkern_spec] [-n] input_file[.afm] [output_file[.pl]]

       afm2pl [--help] | [--version]

DESCRIPTION
       afm2pl converts an afm (Adobe Font Metric) file into a pl (Property
       List) file, which in its turn can be converted to a tfm (TeX Font
       Metric) file. It normally preserves kerns and ligatures, but also
       offers additional control over them.

       afm2pl is meant to be a partial replacement for afm2tfm, on which it is
       based. With afm2tfm, preserving kerns and ligatures is possible only in
       a roundabout way, and handling of them is hard-wired.

       For text fonts, Y&Y's texnansi is a good encoding to be used with
       afm2pl. Its character set includes all the accented characters likely
       to be needed for Western languages, plus many typographic symbols,
       without a need for either virtual fonts or a separate text companion
       font.

       Full LaTeX support for this encoding is available in the form of the
       texnansi package, which is already part of TeX Live and teTeX. These
       distributions also contain the encoding file texnansi.enc.

       The distribution contains uppercased and lowercased versions of
       texnansi, viz. texnanuc and texnanlc, to allow font-based rather than
       macro-based uppercasing and lowercasing, and the familiar old ot1
       encoding plus some variations in PostScript .enc format (I included
       these because they seem to be absent from teTeX/TeX Live). However,
       check your mapfiles if you have old afm2pl-generated fonts using these.

       Return value: 0 if no error; a negative number indicating the number of
       missing glyphs if conversion was otherwise successfull but glyphs are
       missing, and 1 in case of error.

OPTIONS
       -p encoding_file
           The default is the encoding specified in the afm file, which had
           better match the encoding in the fontfile (pfa or pfb). If
           afm2pl-name.enc exists, afm2pl will use this file instead of
           name.enc, unless an option -n is given. The generated mapfile entry
           (see below) instructs pdftex or the dvi driver to reencode the font
           on the fly. On-the-fly reencoding does not require virtual fonts.

       -o
           Use octal for all character codes in the pl file.

       -e extend_factor
           Widen or narrow characters by extend_factor. Default is 1.0
           (natural width). Not recommended[1].

       -s slant_factor
           Oblique (slant) characters by slant_factor. Not recommended either.

       -f font_dimensions
           The value is either the keyword afm2tfm or a comma-separated list
           of up to five integers. The parameters are listed below, with their
           defaults and their value when the afm2tfm keyword is specified.
           'Space' means the width of a space in the target font, except of
           course in the last row. Keep in mind that the design size is 1000,
           and that all numbers must be nonnegative integers.

           +---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
           |Font dimension | Default value       | Afm2tfm value       |
           +---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
           |stretch        | space div 2         | 300 x extend_factor |
           +---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
           |shrink         | space div 3         | 100 x extend_factor |
           +---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
           |extra space    | space div 3         | missing             |
           +---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
           |quad           | 2 x width of '0'    | 1000 x              |
           |               |                     | extend_factor       |
           +---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
           |space          | (space source font) | (space source font) |
           |               | x extend_factor     | x extend_factor     |
           +---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
           For fixed-pitch fonts, different values apply:

           +---------------+---------------------+-----------------+
           |Font dimension | Default value       | Afm2tfm value   |
           +---------------+---------------------+-----------------+
           |stretch        | 0                   | 0               |
           +---------------+---------------------+-----------------+
           |shrink         | 0                   | 0               |
           +---------------+---------------------+-----------------+
           |extra space    | space               | missing         |
           +---------------+---------------------+-----------------+
           |quad           | 2 x character width | 1000 x          |
           |               |                     | extend_factor   |
           +---------------+---------------------+-----------------+
           |space          | character width     | character width |
           +---------------+---------------------+-----------------+
           Specify just a non-default stretch and shrink with e.g.  150,70 and
           just a non-default extra space with ,,10.

       -k
           Keep original ligatures. This option only has effect in combination
           with positive letterspacing; see the section on letterspacing and
           extra ligkern info.

       -m letter_spacing
           Letterspace by letter_spacing/1000 em (integer). This is useful for
           making all-caps typesetting look better. Try a value of e.g. 50 or
           100. But see the section on letterspacing and extra ligkern info
           for details. A better alternative, though, is letting pdftex do the
           letterspacing. The microtype package gives LaTeX users access to
           this feature.

       -l ligkern_spec, -L ligkern_spec
           See the section on extra ligkern info for details.

       -n
           No prefix. For .enc- and .lig files, the program normally first
           prefixes the name with `afm2pl-'. Only if the prefixed filename is
           not found, will it search for the original filename. This option
           prevents searching for the prefixed filename.

       -V
           Verbose. If turned on, it reports the number of missing glyphs to
           stderr and their names to stdout.

       --help
           Display a short usage message.

       --version
           Display the version number of afm2pl.

MAPFILE ENTRIES
       afm2pl writes a mapfile entry to a file with the same basename as the
       pl output file, but with extension .map. It can be used for the dvips
       mapfile and for the pdftex mapfile. It is assumed that the pfb file has
       the same basename as the afm file and must be downloaded.  You may have
       to hand-edit this entry.

       You can configure dvips and pdftex to read this additional mapfile or
       otherwise add the entry to an existing mapfile.

       Check your mapfiles!  To reduce the likelihood of name conflicts, the
       .enc- files which are part of afm2pl (ot1, ot1csc, ot1ital, ot1tt,
       texnanlc and texnanuc) have now been prepended with afm2pl-. The .enc
       files are referenced in mapfiles. If you have old afm2pl-generated .tfm
       files using these, then you should update their mapfile fragments and
       rerun updmap or updmap-sys. Or you can copy the relevant enc files to
       your personal or local texmf tree under their previous non-prefixed
       names.

EXTRA LIGKERN INFO
       Most users are well-advised to leave this mess alone and to accept the
       default behavior.

       The ligatures and kerns present in the afm file can be modified in
       various ways. Default, the encoding file is scanned for extra ligkern
       specifications, whose format will be described below. If there are no
       ligkern specifications in the encoding file, then extra ligkern
       specifications will be read from a file [afm2pl-]default.lig. A value
       of 0 for ligkern_spec means that the ligatures and kerns from the afm
       file won't be tampered with and a value of 1 specifies default
       behavior. One can also specify a comma-separated list of files with
       extra ligkerns specs.

       If afm2pl is compiled with the kpathsea library, then these files will
       be searched for under $TEXMF/fonts/lig.

       Note that ligatures and kerns are hints for the typesetting
       application; there is no need to download this information to the
       printer or to make it available to a dvi driver.

       The parser for ligkern info has been inherited from afm2tfm virtually
       without change. A ligkern specification can have one of the following
       forms:

           glyph_name1 glyph_name2 lig_op glyph_name3 ;

       This specifies a ligature. Possible values for lig_op are =:, |=:,
       |=:>, =:|, =:|>, |=:|, |=:|> and |=:|>>. These correspond to LIG, /LIG,
       /LIG>, LIG/, LIG/>, /LIG/, /LIG/>, /LIG/>> in .pl syntax; see the
       pltotf documentation and the .lig files in the distribution.

           glyph_name1 <> glyph_name2 ;

       Kern glyph_name1 as glyph_name2.

           glyph_name1 {} glyph_name2 ;

       Remove the kern between glyph_name1 and glyph_name2. A value of * for
       either glyph name is interpreted as a wildcard.

           || = glyph ;

       Set the (right) boundary character to glyph.  glyph may be either a
       glyphname or a slot in the encoding vector. Choosing a glyph which
       doesn't occur in the output encoding is equivalent to not specifying a
       boundarychar at all. It is ok to pick an encoded glyphname which does
       not occur in the afm. In fact, this is what default.lig does: || = cwm
       ;.

       You can copy the kerns of an unencoded character to the boundarychar.
       Below, space is the unencoded character:

           || <> space ;

       This ligkern specification should occur before the one that deletes
       space kerns.

       A ligkern specification should be contained within one line. One line
       may contain several ligkern specifications, separated by spaces. Note
       that ; (space followed by semicolon) is considered part of the ligkern
       specification. See the lig files included in this distribution.
       Example:

           one {} * ; * {} one ; two {} * ; * {} two ;

       Lines with ligkern specifications inside an encoding file should start
       with % LIGKERN. Ligkern specifications in a lig file may optionally
       start this way.

LETTERSPACING AND EXTRA LIGKERN INFO
       Letterspacing has various side-effects for ligkern info. Instead of
       simply applying the extra ligkern info (see previous section), the
       following is done:


       1.     In case of positive letterspacing, native ligatures are removed,
              unless the -k option is specified.


       2.     Extra ligkern info is applied as usual, except that in case of
              positive letterspacing different defaults apply: -l 0 is quietly
              ignored, ligkern comments in the encoding file are ignored, and
              defpre.lig is read instead of default.lig.


       3.     Letterspacing is applied. This adds a lot of kerns, and modifies
              existing kerns.


       4.     The extra ligkern info specified with -L is applied. The only
              ligkern specs which are allowed here, are removals of kerning
              pairs (with the {} operator). Values 0 and 1 have a similar
              meaning as for the -l parameter.  The tfm format has room for
              only about 180x180 ligatures and kerning pairs.  This is enough
              for OT1 encoding, but for texnansi encoding quite a few ligkern
              specifications have to be removed. The pltotf program will
              remove all ligkern info if too many ligatures and kerns remain.
              The default lig file is defpost.lig. This file throws out
              kerning pairs which are unlikely to be involved in
              letterspacing, such as kerns involving accents or kerns with a
              punctuation character or right bracket at the left. It does not
              add letterspacing kerns involving boundarychars. Instead,
              fontspace is increased by twice the letterspacing. defpost.lig
              throws out enough kerns in case of texnansi encoding. With other
              encodings, you may have to throw out additional kerning pairs.


FONT-BASED UPPER- AND LOWERCASING
       The distribution includes encoding vectors texnanuc.enc and
       texnanlc.enc which produce all-uppercase and all-lowercase fonts

       The principal uses for an all-uppercase font are page headers and
       section heads. If these contain math, then macro-based uppercasing
       would create unpleasant complications. Example:

           afm2pl -p texnanuc ptmr8a ptmup8y
           pltotf ptmup8y

       For best results, you should add some letterspacing. In LaTeX, this is
       best done with the microtype package; see the documentation of that
       package. But it can also be done with afm2pl:

           afm2pl -p texnanuc -m 100 ptmr8a ptmup8y

       This requires caution; see above.

       You can use this new font within the context of LaTeX font selection as
       follows:


           <preamble commands>
           \makeatletter
           {\nfss@catcodes
           \DeclareFontShape{LY1}{ptm}{m}{upp}{<-> ptmup8y}{}}
           \makeatother
           ...
           \begin{document}
           ...
           {\fontshape{upp}\selectfont uppercase text}


       Note that upp is simply a newly made-up shape name.

   The sz ligature
       Note that the texnanuc encoding provides no glyph for the sz ligature ;
       you'll either have to substitute ss or provide a macro-based solution.
       The following code uses either the usual glyph or substitutes the
       letters ss, depending on whether the glyph exists in the current font:


           \def\ss{%
             \setbox0\hbox{\char25}%
             \ifnum\wd0=0 ss\else\box0\fi
           }


       In LaTeX, this code appears to work well enough, although on occasion
       you may need to insert \protect. A better solution might involve the
       sixth parameter of the \DeclareFontShape macro, but I failed to get
       that to work.

AFM2PL, FONTINST AND ARTIFICIAL SMALLCAPS
       Afm2pl doesn't do virtual fonts. That means that for things such as
       artificial smallcaps you have to turn elsewhere, e.g. to the fontinst
       package, which is part of any mainstream TeX distribution.

       Look under texmf/tex/fontinst for fontinst support files, which allow
       you to generate a smallcaps font (tfm and vf files) from an
       afm2pl-generated tfm file. This package only supports texnansi
       encoding.

       There should be no real problem in doing the same for OT1 encoding.
       However, there are several variations of the OT1 encoding to take care
       of. Also, there are as far as I know no officially sanctioned
       PostScript names for all the variations of the OT1 encoding; the
       fontinst names contain spaces and are therefore not useable as
       PostScript names.

CHANGED IN VERSION 0.7.1
       In order to avoid name conflicts, the .enc- and .lig files distributed
       with afm2pl got afm2pl- prepended to their name. The program itself now
       first searches for the thus prepended name. If the .enc- or .lig file
       is not found it will look for the original filename. The renaming of
       the afm2pl .enc files may require modification of some mapfiles.

URLS
       The afm2pl homepage is http://tex.aanhet.net/afm2pl/.

       The paper Font installation the shallow way[2] (EuroTeX 2006
       Proceedings, published as TUGboat[3] issue 27.1) illustrates the use of
       afm2pl.

NOTES
        1. Except that arguably a narrowed Courier is less jarring than a
           full-width Courier, when used in combination with a normal
           proportional font. For Courier, choose .833 to match the width of
           cmtt. Better yet, don't use Courier at all; most TeX distributions
           offer various good replacements.

        2. Font installation the shallow way
           http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb27-1/tb86kroonenberg-fonts.pdf

        3. TUGboat
           http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/



                                   May 2009                          AFM2PL(1)
