=================================================== Outline Fonts and Font Metrics Manipulation Package =================================================== reviewed by: David J. Birnbaum A Review that appeared in `TEXT Technology -- The Journal of Computer Text Processing' Volume 5, No. 1, pg 65--69, Spring 1995. published by College of Liberal Arts, Dakota State University The Y&Y Font Manipulation Package is a suite of over thirty command-line MSDOS programs designed to modify font files and convert among different font formats. These programs do everything one could imagine doing to a font except for editing character outlines, and they greatly simplify what would otherwise be complex operations on existing font files. Conversion Utilities Font files are an alphabet soup of abbreviations. As an example, PostScript fonts normally consist of two files, one with the outline data and the other with metrics (width, kerning, etc.) information. The outline data may be encoded as either a PFB (Printer font Binary) file for Microsoft Windows and OS/2, a PFA (Printer Font ASCII) file for UNIX/NeXT, or a special Macintosh format font file. The metrics data may be encoded as an AFM (Adobe Font Metrics) file used by Microsoft Windows, or a special Macintosh screen font format. Additionally, TeX, a popular typesetting Program with excellent support for representing typographically complex mathematical formulae, uses its own TFM (TeX Font Metrics) files. TeX was originally designed to work with a particular set of bitmapped fonts, but implementations that support PostScript fonts are available, including Y&Y's own `bitmap-free TeX packages.' The Y&Y utilities include programs to convert from any one of these outline file formats to any other, and from any one of the metrics file formats to any other. Wherever possible, these conversions are exact; for example, the PFA, PFB and macintosh outline formats contain exactly the same information, and even hinting is preserved during conversion. In other cases exact conversion is impossible; for example, AFM files contain more data than PFM and TFM, and the user may need to supply additional information when converting from one of these latter formats into AFM. The Y&Y utilities are not designed for manipulating True Type fonts. Modifications The conversion utilities are probably the most useful, but the Y&Y package also includes a series of programs for modifying system-wide information in existing fonts. Specialized programs can be used to reencode PostScript outline fonts according to a user-specified vector (mapping files for common assignments are included), rename characters, modify widths and sidebearings, manipulate composite characters, merge the characters from two fonts into one, perform simple geometric transformations (slant, condense, or expand characters), and modify the encoding of accented characters to work around a bug in Adobe Type Manager for Windows. As is noted above, PFB and PFA files contain the same PostScript outline information, but the PFB file is in a compressed binary format that cannot be edited directly. For this reason, the font modification programs described here are used on PFA files, and those who work with PFB files (OS/2 or Microsoft Windows) can use the accompanying conversion programs to translate their PFB files to PFA, modify them as needed, and then convert the new version back to PFB. AFM files are plain text and can be edited by hand, but doing so runs the risk of introducing incompatibilities between and AFM file and its associated PFA file. The Y&Y Utilities provide an encode batch file that is designed to reencode outline fonts and all associated metrics files simultaneously, thereby ensuring that the same encoding vector is maintained throughout. An accompanying decode batch file can be used to verify whether a set of outline and metrics files for a single font implement the same encoding. Miscellaneous Finally the Y&Y utilities include a handful of other tools, some of which do not manipulate fonts directly, but can nonetheless be useful when working with PostScript printers. These include: MODEX can set serial port baud rates as high as 57600. DOWNLOAD can download fonts, reset the printer, and request a font list from the printer, SERIAL provides facilities for communicating with a printer over a serial Line. NAMECASE changes the case of font names in PostScript files. MACANAL show fork information for a Macintosh file. EHANDLER.PS is an improved PostScript error handler that can be downloaded to the printer. Documentation The printed and on-line documentation is brief but comprehensive, and full of hints and suggestions not only about the accompanying utilities, but about font encoding in general. However, it also presumes a general understanding of font encoding issues, such as those outlined in the accompanying sidebar, and users who are not familiar with font encoding vectors or the way Windows remaps AdobeStandardEncoding fonts to Windows ANSI may have trouble grasping some of the details. This is unimportant for simple conversions, but understanding these issues is crucial to deriving full benefit from several of the modification utilities. Users are expecially encouraged to read the on-line morass.txt file, which provides a good introduction to font encoding issues in the guise of what the documentation describes as `a diatribe about the font encoding problem' and how to deal with it. Conclusion The Y&Y Outline Fonts and Font Metrics Manipulation Package is an exceptional suite of tools, thoughtfully designed to provide access to just about any part of a font file that a user might want to change except individual character outlines. It overlaps somewhat in function with Fontographer (both programs can reset character widths, for example), but users will find that certain operations are more easily performed at the command line with the Y&Y utilities, while others are more easily performed in Fontographer's graphical environment. Some degree of knowledge about font architecture is required to use the utilities successfully, but much of this available in the accompanying documentation. Name of Program: Outline Font and Font Metrics Manipulation Package. Version Reviewed: 1.3 Company Name: Y&Y, Inc. Address: 45 Walden Street, Concord, MA 01742 Phone: 800-742-4059, 978-371-3286 Fax: 978-371-2004 List Price: $95 (ed.) $145 (non ed.) System Requirements: DOS compatible computer. The system used for this review was a 50MHz 80486DX with XGA graphics, 16MB RAM, and 256k SRAM cache, running 0S/2, 2.11. Printer Manuals: 29 page guide to the programs. On-Line Help: Plain text documentation for each program. David J. Birnbaum is Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Slavic linguist whose research interests include the use of computers to edit and analyze medieval Slavic manuscripts. He can be reached at djbpitt+@pitt.edu or DJBPITT@PITTVMS.BITNET