[xep-support] Font questions

[Nikolai Grigoriev]

Hi Gustaf,

> 1. Adobe seem to move torwards OpenType fonts. I know XEP 
> can't embed these fonts, and I wonder if this is a limitation 
> in XEP or in OpenType?

Let's define the terms. OpenType is a specification encompassing
TrueType and CFF (Compact Font Format): it uses TrueType-style
font header but lets you specify outlines either as TrueType or as CFF.
XEP has no problems to embed TrueType-based OpenType fonts;
we do have problems with CFF-encoded OpenTypes. However, their
use looks pretty limited: the only example known to me (and the reason
why we parse them at all) are  CJK font packs for Adobe Acrobat.
Setting up the whole machinery for parsing yet another font format
(Adobe CFF) looks unjustified - handling them as non-embedded
covers most of the needs.

> 2. I've encountered fonts with PFM (Printer Font Metric) files instead of
> AFM. Can XEP handle these files now, or is it on the todo list? Is there a
> tool for converting between them? What results can be expected from that
> conversion?

No, XEP cannot parse PFMs. To get an AFM, there is a script in
GhostScript that generates AFM from PFB and (optional) PFM;
the command is

 pf2afm  foo

in the directory where both foo.pfb and foo.pfm shall reside. I never 
tried to convert PFM to AFM,  so I cannot make any judgment about 
its reliability; but it looks like PFB+PFM provides a full set of metrics
data, so I believe that the resulting AFM should be quite reliable.
However, you should better ask to some PostScript expert forums -
we're not gurus in PostScript.

Regards,
Nikolai

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