PostScript font info and metrics

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Software & Tools

This package contains a couple of modules to get information for and from PostScript fonts and associated metrics files. Also included is a program to make font samples, and programs to handle the conversion of font data to PostScript binary (.pfb) and ASCII (.pfa) formats. An example program shows how basic typesetting can be obtained.

PostScript::Resources -- a module that fetches PostScript font related information from Unix PostScript Resource (.UPR) files.
PostScript::Font -- a module that returns info about PostScript font files (.PFB, .PFA and .TTF files).
Info includes: font name, type, version, but also encoding vector and list of all glyphs.
PostScript::FontMetrics -- a module that analyses Adobe Font Metrics (.AFM) files;
Info includes: font name, type, version, encoding vector and width, bounding box and kerning tables.
PostScript::FontInfo -- a module that analyses Microsoft FontInfo (.INF) files;
PostScript::PrinterMetrics -- a module that analyses Windows printer metrics (.PFM) files.
PostScript::TTFtoType42 -- a module that analyses TrueType fonts and wraps them in PostScript Type42 format.
fontsampler -- a tool to print sample pages of PostScript fonts.
font2pfa -- a tool to convert a font (.PFB file) to ASCII encoded format (.PFA file).
font2pfa -- and vice versa.

fontsampler makes sample pages of PostScript fonts. It can run in one of two modes: overview (default) or detailed mode. In overview mode, it generated quick access sample pages of PostScript fonts by printing the font name and a selection of characters. Each font gets one line of information, allowing for some 40 or more font samples per page.

In detailed mode, every font gets one page (or more) width details about every glyph in the font, with name and width information.

The program takes, as command line arguments, a series of font files. Each file should contain a font in one of the formats that PostScript::Font can deal with.

Each font is defined within its own environment, and flushed from memory after it is used. This allows the results to be printed on most PostScript printers, even if this involves several fonts.

The package also contains an experimental module PostScript::BasicTypeSetter for basic typesetting of texts, including kerning, flushing and filling.

Current version: 1.09
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