Notes: T1lib

Building

To install the T1lib one first executes @configure in the toplevel directory of the source tree. This analyzes the system and creates make.com scripts for the library as well as the Xglyph and type1afm applications. All of them are then simply build by executing the master make.com again in the toplevel directory of T1lib.
To use the Xglyph application one needs an installed copy of the Xaw library. Configure.com checks for the location of the library in the following places:

1. x11_root:[xaw]
2. x11:[xaw]
3. [-.x11.xaw]

Installation

To use the T1lib one should define the following logicals

T1_FONT_DIR

This should point to the directory where you intent to keep your configuration file (t1lib.config) for t1lib applications. I personally consider it convenient to use this as the root for the font/afm/encoding directories too, since this keeps everything in one place.

T1LIB_CONFIG

This one is used by Xglyph to determine the config-file to use for this particular application (if not defined it will look for t1lib.config in the current working directory)

Example Configuration file

Here is the configuration file I currently use:

This is a configuration file for t1lib

FONTDATABASE=public$root:[util.fonts]fontdatabase
ENCODING=public$root:[util.Fonts.enc];sys$disk:[]
AFM=public$root:[util.Fonts.afm];sys$disk:[]
TYPE1=public$root:[util.Fonts.type1];sys$common:[sysfont.decw.type1];sys$disk:[]

General remark: Since OpenVMS directory specifications tend to contain the colon as a valid part of their name this can't really be used as the separation character for the paths given in the config file (as it is in the Unix version of t1lib). To keep changes to a minimum the semicolon was adopted as the separation character, since this was already used for this purpose in the OS/2 version of the code.

Fontdatabase

This is a simple textfile containing one line with the name of the AFM file for each font to be used by the application. The first line contains the number of fonts declared afterwards. In case you have Type1 fonts without the corresponding AFM file you can create the missing information using the type1afm program, which is part of T1lib.

Encoding

Searchlist where T1lib tries to locate files describing the character encodings used by the fonts. Encodings that are provided with T1lib are IsoLatin 1 and 2.

AFM

Searchlist where T1lib tries to locate the AFM (Adobe Font Metric) files for the fonts used. Information kept in these files concerns character sizes, ligatures, kerning etc.

Type1

Searchlist where T1lib tries to locate the actual font files. If you have DECwindows installed on your system you even get some fonts delivered by DEC (Courier and Utopia), which can be used after one has created the necessary AFM files.

Applications

T1lib comes with two applications:

Xglyph

This one allows you to experiment with various settings for the display of characters and to examine the effects of e.g. using anti-aliasing, tilting etc.

type1afm

This application allows to create the AFM file if you have the font file.

Usage: type1afm [-l] <fontfile1> [<fontfile2> ...]

Generate afm-file from Adobe Type 1 font file!
Options: -l        Write a log-file t1lib.log

Linking with t1lib

In principle this works as expected. One thing to be aware of is that t1lib is built on OpenVMS Alpha using the IEEE floating point format. So you might need to compile applications using t1lib with this option too.

Applications that use t1lib

Xpdf

PDF-Viewer for X11. Building with T1lib support enables it to display rotated text on OpenVMS systems.

User Notes

Notes Entry

Comments to: Martin P.J. Zinser
Last modified: 20000109