2.1.1. Bitmap Fonts

A bitmap is a matrix of dots. Bitmap fonts are represented in precisely this way -- as matrices of dots. Because of this, they are device dependent -- they are only useful at a particular resolution. A 75 DPI screen bitmap font is still 75 DPI on your 1200 DPI printer.

There are two types of bitmap fonts -- bitmap printer fonts, such as the pk fonts generated by dvips, and bitmap screen fonts, used by X and the console. The bitmap screen fonts typically have a bdf or pcf extension. Bitmap screen fonts are most useful for terminal windows, consoles and text editors, where the lack of scalability and the fact that they are unprintable is not an issue.

2.1.2. Type 1 Fonts

The Type 1 font standard was devised by Adobe, and Type 1 fonts are supported by Adobe's PostScript standard. Because of this, they are also well supported under linux. They are supported by X and ghostscript. Postscript fonts have traditionally been the choice of font for anything on UNIX that involves printing.

Typically, a UNIX Type 1 font is distributed as an afm ( adobe font metric ) file, and an outline file, which is usually a pfb ( printer font binary ) or pfa ( printer font ascii ) file. The outline file contains all the glyphs, while the metric file contains the metrics.

Type 1 fonts for other platforms may be distributed in different formats. For example, PostScript fonts for windows often use a different format ( pfm ) for the metric file.

2.1.3. Type3 Fonts

These fonts are distributed in a similar manner to Type 1 files -- in groups of afm font metrics, and pfa files. While they are supported by the PostScript standard, they are not supported by X, and hence have limited use.

2.1.4. TrueType Fonts

TrueType fonts were developed by Apple. They made the format available to Microsoft, and succesfully challenged Adobe's grip on the font market. True type fonts store the metric and shape information in a single file ( usually one with a ttf extension ). Recently, font servers have been developed that make TrueType available to X. And PostScript and ghostscript have supported TrueType fonts for some time. Because of this, TrueType fonts are becoming more popular on linux.

2.1.5. Type 42 Fonts

Type42 fonts are actually just TrueType fonts with headers that enable them to be rendered by a PostScript interpreter. Most applications, such as ghostscript and SAMBA handle these fonts transparently. However, if you have a PostScript printer, it may be necessary to explicitly create Type42 font files.

2.1.6. Type 1 vs TrueType -- a comparison

Despite the historical feuding between the proponents to Type 1 and TrueType fonts, both have a lot in common. Both are scalable outline fonts. Type 1 fonts use cubic as opposed to quadratic curves for the glyphs. This is in theory at least a slight advantage since they include all the curves available to TrueType fonts. In practice, it makes very little difference.

TrueType fonts have the apparent advantage that their support for hinting is better ( Type 1 fonts do have hinting functionality, but it is not as extensive as that of TrueType fonts ). However, this is only an issue on low resolution devices, such as screens ( the improved hinting makes no discernable difference on a 600dpi printer, even at small point sizes. ) The other point that makes this apparent advantage somewhat questionable is the fact that well hinted TrueType fonts are rare. This is because software packages that support hinting functionality are out of the budget of most small time designers. Only a few major foundries, such as Monotype make well hinted fonts available.

In conclusion, the main differences between TrueType and Type 1 fonts are in availability and application support. The widespread availability of TrueType fonts for Windows has resulted in webpages designed with the assumption that certain TrueType fonts are available. Also, many users have large numbers of TrueType fonts because they ship with the users Windows applications. However, on Linux, most applications support Type 1 fonts but do not have the same level of support for TrueType. Moreover, most major font foundries still ship most of their fonts in Type 1 format. For example, Adobe ships very few TrueType fonts. My recommendation to users is to use whatever works for your application, and try to avoid converting from one format to another where possible ( because the format conversion is not without loss ).

2.1.7. Metafont

Metafont was developed by Donald E. Knuth as part of the TeX typesetting system. Metafont is a graphics programming language ( like PostScript ) that has applications wider than just fonts. Metafonts exhibit some very desirable qualities. One of the important features is that metafonts can scale very gracefully. The metafont Computer Modern has different shape at 20 point and 10 point. The shape changes with size, because it is desirable for a smaller font to be proportionately wider than a larger font ( this makes the larger fonts more elegant and the smaller fonts more readable ).

Metafonts typically have a mf extension. They are rendered to device dependent bitmap fonts. The rendering is slow, so they are of excellent quality, but are not well suited to WYSIWYG publishing.

3.1.1. Fixed versus variable width

There are several classifications of typefaces. Firstly, there are fixed width fonts, and variable width fonts. The fixed width fonts look like typewriter text, because each character is the same width. This quality is desirable for something like a text editor or a computer console, but not desirable for the body text of a long document. The other class is variable width. Most of the fonts you will use are variable width, though fixed width can be useful also ( for example, all the example shell commands in this document are illustrated with a fixed width font ). The most well known fixed width font is Courier.

3.1.2. To serif or not to serif ?

Serifs are little hooks on the ends of characters. For example, the letter i in a font such as Times Roman has serifs protruding from the base of the i and the head of the i. Serif fonts are usually considered more readable than fonts without serifs. There are many different types of serif fonts.

Sans serif fonts do not have these little hooks, so they have a starker appearance. One usually does not write a long book using a sans serif font for the body text. There are sans serif fonts that are readable enough to be well suited to documents that are supposed to be browsed / skimmed ( web pages, catalogues, marketing brochures ). Another application that sans serif fonts have is as display fonts on computer screens, especially at small sizes. The lack of detail in the font can provide it with more clarity. For example, Microsoft touts Verdana as being readable at very small sizes on screen.

Notable sans serif fonts include Lucida Sans, MS Comic Sans, Verdana, Myriad, Avant Garde, Arial, Century Gothic and Helvetica. By the way, Helvetica is considered harmful by typographers. It is somewhat overused, and many books by typographers plead users to stay away from it.

3.1.3. The old and the new -- different types of Serif fonts

3.1.4. The Sans Serif Revolution

Surprisingly, the rise of sans serif fonts is a fairly recent phenomenon. The first well known sans serif fonts were designed in the 19th early 20th century. The earlier designs include Futura, Grotesque and Gill Sans. These fonts represent respectively the ``geometric'', ``grotesque'' and ``humanist'' classes of sans serif fonts.

3.1.5. Compatible Typefaces

Grouping typefaces is not easy, so it pays to avoid using too many on the one page. A logical choice of two typefaces consists of a serif and a sans serif. Monotype's Typography 101 page provides a category-matchup. They conclude that the moderns and geometrics form good pairs, while the old styles and humanists also go together well. The transitionals are also paired with the humanists. The slab serifs are paired with the grotesques, and some variants of the slab serifs are also said to match the geometrics or humanists.

From reading this, one gets the impression that their philosophy is essentially to match the more conservative serifs with the more moderate sans serifs, and pair the wilder modern serifs with the avant garde looking ( pun unavoidable ) geometrics.

3.2.1. Ligatures

Properly spacing fonts brings with it all sorts of issues. For example, to properly typeset the letters ``fi'', the i should be very close to the f. The problem is that this causes the dot on the i to collide with the f, and the serif on the head of the i to collide with the horizontal stroke of the f. To deal with this problem, font collections include ligatures. For example, the ``fi'' ligature character is a single character that one can substitute for the two character string ``fi''. Most fonts contain fi and fl ligatures. Expert fonts discussed later often include extra ligatures, such as ffl, ffi, and a dotless i character.

3.2.2. Small caps fonts

Small caps fonts are fonts that have reduced size upper case letters in place of the lower case letters. These are useful for writing headings that require emphasis ( and they are often used in LaTeX ). Typically, when one writes a heading in small caps, they use a large cap for the beginning of each word, and small capitals for the rest of the word ( ``title case'' ). The advantage of this over using all caps is that you get something that is much more readable ( using all caps is a big typographic sin ).

3.2.3. Expert fonts

Expert fonts consist of several extras designed to supplement a typeface. These include things like ligatures, ornaments ( much like a mini-dingbats collection designed to go with the typeface ), small caps fonts, and swash capitals ( fancy, calligraphic letters ).

4.2.1. Run Type1inst

The easiest way to make Type 1 fonts available to X is with the help of the Type1inst utility. This is a perlscript that automatically creates the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files that you need for X to use the fonts. Simply CD to the directory, and run type1inst. cd directory type1inst

4.2.2. If You Have the xfs Package

Now you need to add the fonts to your font path. If you already have the stand-alone Section 4.4 running, you do this by editing your xfs configuration file. RedHat users can just use chkfontpath. the format is chkfontpath --add directory

Your fonts will be available to X after you restart xfs, or tell it to reload by sending a SIGHUP. You may need to run xset fp rehash as well.

Your fonts should now be available to X. Now you just run xset fp rehash and X will be able to find the new fonts.

4.2.3. If You Don't Have The xfs Package

In this case, you need to add the directory containing your new fonts to the font path, as described previously.

4.3.1. xfstt

To set up xfstt, just download it and install it. Once you install it, you need to do the following:

1. install fonts into the appropriate directory ( read the documentation that comes with the package ).

2. cd to that directory and run xfstt --sync. This causes it to look for the fonts and create the fonts.dir file.

3. Now add unix/:7100 to your font path.

	/usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt --sync
	/usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt &

4.4.1. The xfs Path

As a font server, xfs has it's own font path. One might wonder where this fits into the picture. It works like this: you can place the xfs font server in XFree86's font path, by adding unix/:port to the XFree86 font path. Once you do this, any font in the xfs font path automatically becomes available to XFree86.

The xfs font path is determined by the xfs configuration file, which is /etc/X11/fs/config on Redhat, and /etc/X11/xfs/config on Debian. Redhat users do not need to explicitly edit this file, they can use the chkfontpath utility. The syntax is simple:

chkfontpath --add directory

Users of other distributions can edit the configuration file as follows:

catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled, ... /usr/share/fonts/my_new_fonts/, ... /usr/share/fonts/some_other_directory # in 12 points, decipoints default-point-size = 120 ...

The above would add /usr/share/fonts/my_new_fonts/ to the xfs font path. Note that the last line of the list of directories doesn't have a comma at the end. For these modifications to the font path to become effective, xfs must be told to reload by running /etc/init.d/xfs reload or sending it a SIGHUP with "kill -HUP [pid]" or "killall -HUP xfs". Alternately you can just re-start xfs, though if you do that it would be a good idea to re-start your X session too.

4.4.2. Installing a Font Into xfs

To prepare a font for xfs, you need to follow the following steps:

• If you don't have xfs installed, you need to install it.

• Put the new fonts in a directory.

• If you are installing Type 1 fonts, prepare the new directory for the server by running type1inst in the directory.

• If you are installing TrueType fonts, ( remember, not all distributions can do TrueType via xfs ! ), prepare the new directory for the server by running ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale mkfontdir in the directory containing your new fonts. If you created a new directory for the fonts you may need to copy fonts.scale to fonts.dir or create a symbolic link. ttmkfdir is part of the freetype package.

• Now you can add the new directory to your xfs search path. Users of Redhat-like distributions can do this with the chkfontpath utility: Other users can do this by editing their xfs configuration file.

• if xfs is already installed on your system, you should see which port it is running on. You can do this as follows:

  ps ax|grep xfs

• Then check your XFree86 font path. xset -q

• If your font path includes something like unix:/port_number were port_number is the port which the server is running on, then you already have xfs set up properly. Otherwise, you should add it to your XFree86 font path. xset fp+ unix/:port_number xset fp rehash You can add it permanently by editing your .xinitrc as explained previously. To add it system wide, edit your XF86Config file ( probably either /etc/X11/XF86Config, /etc/XF86Config or /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config ), by adding a line FontPath "unix:/port_number" in the Files section. Here's an example:

  ... Section "Files" ... FontPath "unix/:-1" ... EndSection ...

• If xfs is already properly installed, then you can tell it to reload, as described above, or restart it like this:

  /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart

• After restarting xfs, it's a good idea to restart your X-session.

7.2.1. FontTastic

Using FontTastic is the easy way to do it. To install new fonts like this, simply do the following:

1. Run Applixware as root

2. Click on the tools menu.

3. Choose ``Font Installer''

4. Check ``OK'' in the popup dialog

5. Click the ``Catalogs'' menu and choose ``create''

6. Fill in the catalog name box. It doesn't matter what you put there. For the rest of this example, we'll assume it's called ``foobar''

7. Select your foobar catalog from the catalog manipulations list.

8. From the ``Services'' menu, select ``install fonts into -> FontTastic font server''

9. Make sure catalog foobar is selected in the catalogs list, then press the ``select files'' button.

10. Use the select files dialog to select the fonts you want to install. Press ``OK'' when you've selected the files. For example, if you want to select arial.ttf in the directory /usr/share/fonts/ttfonts/, you would type /usr/share/fonts/ttfonts in the ``Current Directory'' dialog, then select arial.ttf from the files dialog box, then click ``OK''. Note that you can select multiple files, but they all must come from the same directory.

11. You can edit your list by checking on the different fonts in the list box and possibly removing or renaming them.

12. When you're ready, click the ``install fonts'' button. Then click ``OK''.

13. Go to the ``services'' menu and choose ``update''. Check ``OK'' on the annoying modal dialog, then choose exit from the services menu. Exit applix.

14. Congrats, you're done ! The new fonts will be available when you restart Applix.

7.2.2. Using System Wide Fonts With Applixware

This method is more involved, but produces better results. I recommend that this method is used for fonts that are really important, and that you use a lot. There are a few steps to this:

7.3.1. Backup Your Configuration Before you Start !

It's good to make a backup in case you inadvertantly hose your configuration. Modifying fonts will impact several files in the xp3. You should definitely backup the file xp3/psstd.fonts. I recommend going further and backing up the whole xp3 directory. You can do this by cd-ing to your Star Office directory, then using

tar cvzf xp3.tgz xp3

to create a backup. To restore a backup, delete the xp3 directory and unpack the archive

rm -rf xp3 tar xvzf xp3.tgz

7.3.2. Adding Type 1 Fonts to Star Office

Adding Type 1 fonts to Star Office is relatively simple. If you want to use your TrueType fonts with Star Office 5.0, the best thing to do is convert them to Type 1 fonts, and then follow the procedure outlined here. If you have Star Office 5.1, you might wish to use the proceedure for installing TrueType fonts instead ( though it is somewhat more difficult ). Firstly, do the usual thing -- make the font available to both X and ghostscript. Once this is done, the font can be installed into Star Office using the psetup tool. The procedure is as follows:

1. As root, run psetup ( or spadmin if you have Star Office 5.1 )

2. Press the ``add fonts'' button.

3. The easiest thing to do after this is press the ``initialize font paths'' button. This puts a list of all fonts in your X font path in the list box.

4. Choose the directory containing the font you wish to install ( it should be in the box ), and then press ``OK''.

5. Click the ``convert all font metrics button''.

7.3.3. Adding TrueType Fonts to Star Office

Adding TrueType fonts to Star Office is nontrivial, but possible. After some hard work, and long hours stareing at John McLaughlin's page page, I finally got them working in Star Office 5.1. Note that this does not work with version 5.0. The following steps are appropriate it you are printing through ghostscript:

• Make the fonts available to X.

• Make the fonts available to ghostscript.

• You need to have afm files for the fonts you wish to add. Use

  ttf2pt1 -A foo.ttf - > foo.afm

  to create the afm files. Alternatively, you can get the

• ttfutils package and use ttf2afm The advantage of this is you can handle several at a time, eg

  ttf2afm *.ttf

• Star Office needs pfb files corresponding to each ttf file. You can create them with the command

  touch foo.pfb

  Actually, Star Office only uses these files for printing purposes. And by enterring the font in the PPD, thus duping Star Office into thinking the fonts are inside your printer ( when they're actually inside ghostscript's rendering system ), you get around needing to use these files. Star Office just seems to require that the pfb file exists to install the font.

• Now you can run spadmin and install the font(s).

• Now add the fonts to the PPD file corresponding to your printer configuration. The name you use for the font should be the same name Star Office uses for it, not the ghostscript font name. For example, if the font is foobar.ttf and the corresponding afm file is foobar.afm, you use the name ``foobar'' for the font in the PPD file. The entry should look something like this:

  *Font cloistrk: Standard "(001.002)" Standard ROM

On the other hand, if you are not printing from ghostscript, you have different issues to deal with. In this case, tricking Star Office into thinking that your printer has the fonts is a bad idea, because your printer does not have the fonts in the ROM, so while gv will display the PostScript files nicely, your printer will not be able to print them. If you have a PostScript printer, the main differences are as follows:

• Do not edit the PPD file.

• Instead of using touch foo.pfb to create empty pfb files, you need the pfb files to be Type42 PostScript fonts. A Type42 font is really a ``printer TrueType font''. You don't really notice Type42 fonts even when you use them, because most applications handle them transparently. To create Type42 fonts, you use ttfps to create the files.

  ttfps foo.ttf foo.pfb

There are some gotchas. Sometimes, Star Office might not choose the screen font you like. It is sometimes worth checking xp3/psstd.fonts and possibly editing it to make sure that Star Office is really using the font you had in mind for screen display. Also, Star Office doesn't handle configuration problems gracefully. If there's something wrong with your configuration, it's possible that the word processor will not even start. This is why you should back up your xp3 directory.

7.3.4. Under the Hood

If you wish to install TrueType fonts in Star Office, you may need to learn how Star Office handles things. When you run spadmin or psetup, the following happens:

• Star Office makes symbolic links to the pfb outline files in your xp3/pssoftfonts directory.

• The afm file is copied into the directory xp3/fontmetrics/afm/

• An entry is added to the xp3/psstd.fonts file. This file stores the names of all the screen fonts used by Star Office ( in particular, it maps the screen fonts to the outline filenames ).

9.2.1. Naming the fonts

First, you need to appropriately name your fonts. See the fontinst documentation on your system for instructions on how to name fonts ( it should be fontinst subdirectory of the directory containing your tetex documentation ). To make a long story very short, the naming scheme is FNW{V}E{n} where:

• F is a one-letter abbreviation for the foundry ( m = monotype, p = adobe, b = bitstream, f = free )

• N is a two letter abbreviation for the font name ( for example, ag = ``avant garde'' )

• W is the font weight ( r = regular, b = bold, l = light d = demibold )

• V is an optional slope variant ( i = italic , o = oblique )

• E is an abbreviation for the encoding ( almost always 8a which is adobe standard encoding ).

• N is an optional width variant ( n = narrow )

9.2.2. Creating the virtual fonts and tex font metrics

Now you can run fontinst as follows: latex `kpsewhich fontinst.sty` then you type at the prompt: \latinfamily{font_name}{}\bye where font_name is the first three letters of your font file name ( for example, pad for adobe garamond ). Now fontinst will generate a number of files -- font description files, property list files and virtual property list files. It also generates a lot of .mtx files. These are created by fontinst, but you don't need to use them. You need to convert the property lists and virtual property lists to metrics and virtual fonts. This is done using the utilities vptovf and pltotf. for X in *.pl; do pltotf $X; done for X in *.vpl; do vptovf $X; done Then remove the old vpl, pl and mtx files.

9.2.3. Configure dvips

You will need to edit your dvips config file, psfonts.map. The best way to explain the format of the file is to give an example.

marr8r ArialMT <8r.enc <farr8a.pfa marbi8r Arial_BoldItalicMT <8r.enc <farbi8a.pfa marb8r Arial_BoldMT <8r.enc <farb8a.pfa marri8r Arial_ItalicMT <8r.enc <farri8a.pfa marr8rn Arial_Narrow <8r.enc <farr8an.pfa

The 8r.enc is simply there to inform dvips of the encoding scheme used ( in all our examples, it's 8r, because of the way fontinst constructs the virtual fonts ). The leftmost column is the font name TeX uses. The second column is the real name of the font, which is hardcoded into the font file ( this name can be deduced by opening the afm file in a text editor, and looking for the FontName directive ). The last column is the filename of the shape file corresponding with the font. It is not necessary to provide a directory path -- tex knows where to look.

9.2.4. Test the font

Try running latex on a document like this: \documentclass{article} \begin{document} \usefont{T1}{pga}{m}{n}\selectfont \huge Testing a new font \dots the quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dogs \end{document} where you replace pga with the outline of your font. If this works, you are almost done. All you have to do now is put all the files in the right directories ( as explained in the primer ), then run texconfig rehash so that tex can update the directory lists.

9.2.5. Create a .sty file

You may want to create a .sty file so that you can more easily use fonts. Use the files in $TEXMF/tex/latex/psnfss as a template.

10.1.1. Commercial Software

True type fonts are very easy to come by, and large amounts of them are typically included in packages like Microsoft Word and Word Perfect. Getting Word Perfect is an easy way to get an enormous amount of fonts ( and if you're really cheap, you could buy a legacy version of Word Perfect for windows. The fonts on the CD are readable. )

10.1.2. Microsoft's Font Download

Microsoft have also made several TrueType fonts available. The .exe file is simply an archive, you can extract it using unzip. You can get them from the download site

10.1.3. Luc's Webpage

Luc Devroye's webpage has links to several sites with free fonts available. What's unique about these fonts is that a lot of them are really free, they are not ``warez fonts''.

10.1.4. Web sites with truetype fonts

There are several web sites offering freely available downloadable fonts. For example, the freeware connection has links to a number of archives.

10.1.5. Foundries

Several foundries sell TrueType fonts. However, most of them are quite expensive, and for the same money, you'd be better of with Type 1 fonts. I'll discuss these more in the Type 1 fonts section. The one place that does do sell true type fonts at low prices is buyfonts. Please read the section on ethics before you buy cheap fonts.

10.2.1. Dealing With Mac and Windows Formats

Many foundries ship fonts with Windows and Mac users in mind. This can sometimes pose a problem. Typically, the ``Windows fonts'' are fairly easy to handle, because they are packed in a zip file. The only work to be done is converting the pfm file to and afm file ( using pfm2afm ).

Macintosh fonts are more problematic, because they are typically made available in .sit.bin format -- stuffit archives. Unfortunately, there is no tool for Linux that can unpack stuffit archives created with the newer version of stuffit. The only way to do it is run Executor ( Mac emulator ), or try running stuffit in dosemu or Wine. Once the sit.bin file is unpacked, the Macintosh files can be converted using t1unmac which comes with the t1utils package.

Unfortunately, some vendors only ship Type 1 fonts in Macintosh format ( stuffit archives ). However, according to font expert Luc Devroye, all major foundries make Type 1 fonts available for Mac and Windows.

10.2.2. Free Stuff

ctan have a number of good fonts, many of which are free. Most of these are in Metafont format, though some are also Type 1 fonts. Also, see Bluesky who have made available Type 1 versions of the computer modern fonts. ( The computer modern fonts are of excellent quality -- to purchase anything of comparable quality and completeness will cost you around $500-. They are comparable to the premium fonts. )

Luc Devroye's webpage has links to several sites with free fonts available. What's unique about these fonts is that a lot of them are really free, they are not ``warez fonts''.

URW have released the standard PostScript fonts resident in most printers to the public domain. These fonts are quite good.

The Walnut Creek Archive has several freely available fonts, and shareware fonts. Some of these are obvious ripoffs ( and not very good ones ). If a font doesn't come with some kind of license, chances are it's a ripoff. Also Winsite have several Type 1 fonts ( in the fonts/atm subsection of their windows 3.x software ). Unfortunately, several of these have afm files which have mistakes and are missing all kerning pairs ( you can fix the afms by editing the "FontName" section of the afm files. It should match the fontname given in the font shape file. Of course, adding kerning pairs is a topic beyond the scope of this document. )

Luc Devroye's webpage includes several free fonts he designed, as well as a lot of links, and fascinating discussion on the topic of typography. This site is a ``must-visit''. There are also several links to many foundries.

10.2.3. Commercial Fonts