[metapost] glyph operator and font map files

[Laurent Méhats]

Taco Hoekwater a écrit :
> Laurent Méhats wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm trying to use the glyph operator and I'd like (a lot !) not to
>> have to
>> bother about font names and font map files. Regarding font names, the
>> fontpart operator works just time. But I don't know how to deal with font
>> map files (and I'm totally ignorant about them). Would it be possible
>> that
> 
> Reading the metapost manual should help with that, but in short: For
> PostScript fonts, conceptually there is a metric file (tfm), an official
> postscript font name, a type1 font implementation file (pfb), and
> sometimes also an encoding file (enc), which also has an official name.
> 
> The map glues these all together, for example:
> 
>   fontmapline "msbm10 MSBM10 <msbm10.pfb";
> 
> to the left is the tfm metric name, that is what you would use in the
> glyph operator. in the middle is the postscript font name, and to the
> right is the pfb file name.  The less than sign before the pfb name
> indicates that the font should be subsetted in the output (if it is
> missing the font characters are not included at all because the fonts
> are assumed to be known by the system already, and two less-thans next
> to each other indicate full pfb inclusion without any subsetting).
> No encoding is used in this example.
> 
> When an encoding file is used, it is added before the pfb name,
> and its name plus a code word (ReEncodeFont) is in quotes before
> that. (The pdfmapline itself is also a bit more complicated due to
> the need to quote the embedded " characters by using 'ditto' and
> concatenation).
> 
>   fontmapline "rpxpplr TeXGyrePagella-Regular "&ditto&
>        "encq8r ReEncodeFont"&ditto&" <q-8r.enc <qplr.pfb";
> 
> 
> But usually, you don't have to concern yourself with this because
> the fonts that are known by your tex installations will all be
> added to the file pdftex.map automatically, and that file is
> then automatically read by mpost.
> 
>> I create a local mpost.map or pdftex.map so that the following code will
>> work ? And if so ... how should I proceed ?
> 
> So why did this fail?
> 
> That is because glyph only works on actual postscript fonts. xccsy10 is
> metafont bitmap font, and that cannot work at all (neither do truetype
> or opentype fonts).

Thanks a lot for these very clear explanations, I understand the problem now.

> If you absolutely want that font, you will have to convert it to a
> PostScript Type1 font first. Using a large resolution pk file and
> fontforge to autotrace it, probably, but if this sentence did not make
> any sense to you, than perhaps you can find someone to do the conversion
> for you.  The process is too involved to describe in a short email
> message.

The sentence did not make sense to me but I don't need to use xccsy10 at
all (I was a just testing a piece of code intended to use arrow-heads from
the math fonts available on my system). Thanks anyway.

Best regards,
Laurent Méhats