126 lines
6.5 KiB
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126 lines
6.5 KiB
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<TITLE>The teTeX HOWTO: The Linux-teTeX Local Guide: Using Postscript fonts. </TITLE>
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<H2><A NAME="postscript-fonts"></A> <A NAME="s7">7. Using Postscript fonts. </A></H2>
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<P>
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<P>It used to be that public domain, Type 1 fonts were much poorer
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quality than Computer Modern bit mapped fonts. This situation has
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improved in the last several years, though, but matching the fonts is
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up to you. Having several different font systems on one machine can
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seem redundant and an unnecessary waste of disk space. And the
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Computer Modern fonts can seem, well, a little too <EM>formal</EM> to
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be suitable for everyday use. It reminds me sometimes of bringing out
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the good China to feed the dog. At least you don't need to spend a
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bundle on professional quality fonts any longer.
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<P>One of the major improvements of LaTeX2e over its predecessor was the
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inclusion of the New Font Selection Scheme. (It's now called PSNFSS.)
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Formerly, TeX authors would specify fonts with commands like
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<PRE>
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\font=bodyroman = cmr10 scaled \magstep 1
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</PRE>
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<P>which provides precision but requires the skills of a type designer
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and mathematician to make good use of. Also, it's not very portable.
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If another system didn't have the font <CODE>cmr10</CODE> (this is TeX
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nomenclature for Computer Modern Roman, 10 point, with the default
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medium stroke weight), somebody would have to re-code the fonts
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specifications for the entire document. PSNFSS, however, allows you
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specify fonts by family (Computer Modern, URW Nimbus, Helvetica,
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Utopia, and so forth), weight (light, medium, bold), orientation
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(upright or oblique), face (Roman, Italic), and base point size. (See
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the section
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<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-4.html#characters">Characters and type styles</A> for a
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description of the commands to specify typefaces.) Many fonts are
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packaged as families. For example, a Roman-type font may come
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packaged with a sans serif font, like Helvetica, and a monospaced
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font, like Courier. You, as the author of a LaTeX document, can
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specify an entire font family with one command.
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<P>There are, as I said, several high-quality font sets available in the
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public domain. One of them is Adobe Utopia. Another is Bitstream
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Charter. Both are commercial quality fonts which have been donated to
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the public domain.
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<P>These happen to be two of my favorites. If you look around one of the
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CTAN sites, you will find these and other fonts archived there. There
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are enough fonts around that you'll be able to design documents the
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way you want them to look, and not just English text, either. TeX was
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originally designed for mathematical typesetting, so there is a full
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range of mathematical fonts available, as well as Cyrillic, Greek,
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Kana, and other alphabets too numerous to mention.
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<P>The important thing to look for is files which have either the
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<CODE>.pfa</CODE> or <CODE>.pfb</CODE> extension. They indicate that these
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are the scalable fonts themselves, not simply the metrics files. Type
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1 fonts use <CODE>.pfm</CODE> metric files, as opposed to the
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<CODE>.tfm</CODE> metric files which bit mapped fonts use. The two font
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sets I mentioned above are included in teTeX distributions, as well as
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separately.
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<P>What I said above, concerning the ease of font selection under PSNFSS,
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is true in this instance. If we want to use the Charter fonts in our
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document instead of Computer Modern bit mapped, all that is necessary
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is include the LaTeX statement
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<PRE>
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\renewcommand{\familydefault}{bch}
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</PRE>
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in the document preamble, where ``bch'' is the common designation for
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Bitstream Charter. The Charter fonts reside in the directory
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<PRE>
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/usr/lib/teTeX/texmf/fonts/type1/bitstrea/charter
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</PRE>
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<P>There you'll see the <CODE>.pfb</CODE> files of the Charter fonts:
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<CODE>bchb8a.pfb</CODE> for Charter Bold, <CODE>bchr8a.pfb</CODE> for Charter
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Roman, <CODE>bchbi8a.pfb</CODE> for Charter Bold Italic. The ``8a'' in
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the font names indicates the character encoding. At this point you
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shouldn't need to worry much about them, because the encodings mostly
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differ for 8-bit characters, which have numeric values above 128
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decimal. They mostly define accents and non-English characters. The
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Type 1 font encodings generally work well for Western alphabets
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because they conform to the ISO 8859 standards for international
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character sets, so this is an added benefit of using them.
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<P>To typeset a document which has Charter fonts selected, you would give
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the command
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<PRE>
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pslatex document.tex
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</PRE>
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<CODE>pslatex</CODE> is a variant of teTeX's standard <CODE>latex</CODE>
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command which defines the directories where the Type 1 fonts are, as
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well as some additional LaTeX code to load. You'll see the notice
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screen for <CODE>pslatex</CODE> followed by the status output of the TeX
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job itself. In a moment, you'll have a <CODE>.dvi</CODE> file which
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includes the Charter font requests. You can then print the file with
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<CODE>dvips</CODE>, and <CODE>gs</CODE> if necessary.
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<P>Installing a Type 1 font set is not difficult, as long as you follow a
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few basic steps. You should unpack the fonts in a subdirectory of the
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<CODE>/usr/lib/teTeX/texmf/fonts/type1</CODE> directory, where your other
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Type 1 fonts are located, and then run <CODE>texhash</CODE> to let the
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directory search routines know that the fonts have been added. Then
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you need to add the font descriptions to the file <CODE>psfonts.map</CODE>
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so <CODE>dvips</CODE> knows they're on the system. The format of the
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<CODE>psfonts.map</CODE> file is covered in a couple different places in
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the references mentioned above. Again, remember to run the
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<CODE>texhash</CODE> program to update the teTeX directory database.
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<P>It is definitely an advantage to use the X Windows System with teTeX---
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XFree86 under Linux---because it allows for superior document
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previewing. It's not required, but in general, anything that allows
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for easier screen previewing is going to benefit your work, in terms
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of the quality of the output. However, there is a tradeoff with speed
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of editing, which is much quicker on character-mode displays.
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<P>
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<HR>
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<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-8.html">Next</A>
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