Some hints to install fonts for UNIX

• Convert font outlines pfb to pfa
• Source of font metrics
• Real font name
• Table of Type1 font names

Convert font outlines PFB to PFA

• On the PC Adobe Type1 fonts have the .pfb extension and are binary files.
• On UNIX the font outlines are plain ascii files and use .pfa extension.

Normally you will have two methods available to create the PFA files: on the PC or on the UNIX system:

Method 1 (on UNIX)

On UNIX use the program fmAdobePCFont from the applications directory (e.g. when you have installed FramMaker on UNIX). Here the first step is to upload the *.pfb files to the UNIX system.

     fmAdobePCFont inputfile outputfile
e.g. fmAdobePCFont por_____.pfb Palatino-Roman.pfa

In this method you can define outputfile as the required real PostScript name.

Method 2 (on the PC)

On the PC execute the DOS program t1ascii . You may get it from my site here:

     t1ascii inputfile outputfile
e.g. t1ascii por_____.pfb por_____.pfa

With this method Inputfile and outputfile can only be DOS 8.3 names. Hence the real PostScript name of the font can not be applied in this step.

No wildcarding is possible with this program. However, since this is DOS stuff, you may set up a batch file with an editor for multiple conversions.

Afterwards you need to copy the file from the PC to the UNIX system (which is an easy task in a network...).

Source: Thomas Merz, "Die PostScript & Acrobat Bibel", 1996 (chapter Font Conversions), ISBN 3-9804943-0-6.

Sources of font metric files

• On the PC the font metric files are text files with the .pfm extension
• On UNIX the font metric files are also text files, but use the .afm extension

Whether these files have really the same contents, is not checked yet.

The best source for both types of files is the CD-ROM "Type On Call" from Adobe, which lists also the Windows- and Mac menu names of the fonts when installed on these systems.

On this CD-ROM you find the *.afm files in directories such as \data\common\psfonts\351_400\357\owb_____.afm The font files are located in the subdirectory with the font package name (e.g. \357). These subdirectories are grouped together (e.g. in subdirectory \351_400). To get the number of the relevant font package, see the table of font names.

Real font name (PostScript Name)

For various purposes, e.g. the definition of fonts for FrameMaker under UNIX, the true font name is needed. This is noted in the font metric files, which start with the following information:

StartFontMetrics 2.0
FontName MetaPlusNormal-Roman
FullName MetaPlusNormal-Roman
FamilyName MetaPlusNormal-
Weight Medium
Notice Copr.1993 Erik Spiekermann
EncodingScheme    FontSpecific
ItalicAngle 0
UnderlinePosition -142
UnderlineThickness 20
FontBBox    -136 -208 1138 925
StartCharMetrics 223
C 32 ; WX 225 ; N space ; B 0 0 0 0    ; 

Also the family name might be of use for these definitions.

Table of font names

Adobe provides a table of font names (end of 1997: approx 500 kB for about 100 pages). It looks like this:

Pkg	PostScript Name	Macintosh Menu Name	Windows Menu Name, Style Link	Prefix
038	Univers-CondensedLight	Univers 47 CondenedLight	Univers 47 CondensedLight	UVCL_
038	Univers-CondensedBold	Univers 67 CondensedBold	Univers 47 CondensedLight, Bold	UVCB_
038	Univers-CondensedLightOblique	Univers 47 CondensedLightObl	Univers 47 CondensedLight, Italic	UVCLO

Pkg

Adobe Type Package number. When you purchase fonts, they are packaged (some variations put together).

Prefix

The prefix of the 8.3 DOS font name. The rest of characters in the 8 wide name are underscores. Hence a DOS font file name may be uvcl____.pfm

Note: Neither the 67 versus 47 nore the "CondensedLightObl" are typing errors.

The table is sorted by font package - not by font name. Find the desired information by activating the Acrobat menu Tools > Find and enter a significant part of the font name. Be aware that extensive font collections may spread across various packages. So you need to repeat your find action until the end of the file.

The table can be found on these places: