On 3/27/2017 11:53 PM, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
On 2017-03-27 at 09:59:34 +0200, Pali Rohár wrote:
Anyway, is there some script or program which can generate any PGC files? Quick look at google does not find anything, even not any specification for that file. I could probably decode it from pdftex source code...
AFAIK the "PDF Font Containers" are not officially maintained. They were introduced in order to support development of pdfTeX itself but never supposed to be used by mortal users.
We added that as an experiment as part of Thanh's thesis work. It permitted injection of shapes generated by metapost.
Instead of using Type3 fonts, you get better results if you create Type1 fonts from the Metafont sources.
http://www.tex.ac.uk/FAQ-textrace.html
textrace first used autotrace, later potrace, in order to create Type1 outlines from high-resolution bitmaps created by Metafont. The disadvantage is that the final outlines are not always perferct. I do not know how much time Vladimir Volovich spent on manual tweaking when he created the CM-Super Type1 fonts. On the other hand, Tigran Aivazian converted Yannis Haralambous' Hebrew fonts using textrace for his Bible project in 2006 and the result was excellent. AFAIK he didn't tweak anything manually.
The main problem with textrace is that I don't know whether this program is available anymore. It's not on CTAN, but if it had ever been there, I could check my old TeX Collection CDs/DVDs.
Maybe the better choice nowadays is MetaType1. The Metafont source files are processed by MetaPost and converted to PostScript. The PostScript files are then converted to high-quality Type1 fonts by a bunch of scripts. I assume that MetaType1 is quite reliable because the Latin Modern fonts were created with MetaType1, presumably without manual interaction. After all, MetaType1 is still maintained.
Type3 fonts can contain arbitrary PostScript code. They are just collections of pictures. However, the Type3 font format allows to assign pictures to characters. Even if glyphs are made up of lines and curves, the quality is quite poor. Type1 fonts contain so-called "hints" which provide additional information used when glyphs are fitted to a grid. The hints make sure that all vertical stems of an "m" have the same width, for example.
fwiw: this matters less on modern displays ... i'm not even sure if the lm / gyre have much hinting in them
dvips (and later pdftex) used the Type3 font format in order to allow bitmaps created with Metafont to be inserted into PostScript or PDF files. This was fine at a time when very few Type1 fonts were available.
But nowadays I don't see any reason to care about Type3 fonts or "PDF Glyph Containers" at all. The best solution is to create Type1 fonts from Metafont sources.
it's still interesting to be able to inject arbitrary shapes (with a bit of packaging in actualtext one can even get cut/paste right)
If you are successful, please upload the Type1 fonts to CTAN.
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