MFTOBDF 1

Table of contents


MFTOBDF 1

NAME

mftobdf -- translate a metafont-derived font into X-11 BDF format

SYNOPSIS

mftobdf

DESCRIPTION

mftobdf translates a metafont derived font into X11 BDF format; the original font can be in any of PXL, GF or PK format. In addition to converting the font into BDF format, fonts can be optionally shrunk, allowing you to generate screen-resolution fonts from existing printer resolution fonts.

OPTIONS

-scaled
Specify the scale of the font to load, specified as scale e.g., 1500 means scale the font 1.5 times Default is 1000.
-mag
Specify how much the font should be magnified, specified as mag e.g., -mag 333 specifies 1/3 reduction.
-b
Specify the ``blackness'' for font reduction. When reducing an n by n area, a blackess of b means that the reduced pixel is ``on'' is (n * n)/b pixels were on in the original sample. The default is 3.
-show
Show the output of your fonts on your tty.
-dpi
Specify the dots of the fonts you wish to load. Default is 300.
-size
Specify the dvi design size of the fonts. If you ever need to specify this, please tell me why. Defaults to 1000.
-dev
Specify the device for the original fonts; defaults to ``cannon''.

Assume you're viewing a file using texx2, and you've set the magnification level to 500, meaning that you're viewing your document at 1/2 the size that would be actually sent to your 300dpi printer (that is, you're viewing it at 150dpi). If your file calls for font ``cmr10'' scaled 1000 at 300dpi, texx2 will look for the font ``cmr10.150''. The suffix is compute by (dpi * scaled * mag ) / ( 1000 * 1000 ). You can generate this fonts using ``mftobdf''. For this example, you would execute ``mftobdf -scaled 1000 -mag 500 cmr10''. This looks for the font ``cmr10.300'' (the default resolution is 300); this would then be shrunk by 50% to produce ``cmr10.150.bdf'', the output file. mftobdf can only magnify things by 500, 333, 250, 200, ..., 1000/integer, because it does the shrinking in a very silly way. You could also generate this font by using Metafont to build a font ``cmr10.150'' and then saying ``mftobdf -scaled 500 cmr10,'' the result to texx2 are the same; it doesn't care how you produce the font.

texx2 was designed to work with mftobdf and buildfonts (a shell script to automate the installation of the X11 fonts). When texx2 can't find a font, you will get a message in the dialog box, e.g, ``Can't find font: -scaled 1095 -mag 500 cmr11.'' Simply cut the text ``-scaled 1095 -mag 500 cmr11'' from the dialog box and paste it in as the arguments to a buildfonts command.


HINTS

The texx2 distribution also includes a file called build-initial-fonts that purports to build many of your favorite cmr fonts automatically. You should probably look at this an buildfonts if you want to automate the procedure. If you come up with a good solution, please inform the author.


BUGS

You can only shrink by intergral areas. Anti-aliasing should be done. You can only shrink, not magnify fonts.

AUTHOR

Dirk Grunwald (University of Illinois) wrote mftobdf using a DVI-library written by Chris Torek at UMD.