DESCRIPTION

afm2pl is meant to be a partial replacement for afm2tfm, on which it
is based. Its default action is to convert an afm file to a tfm
file, with preservation of kerns and ligatures (with afm2tfm,
preserving kerns and ligatures is possible only in a roundabout
way).

For PostScript text fonts, Y&Y's texnansi is the recommended
encoding to be used with afm2pl.  This gives you a good character
set with all the more important accented characters and many
typographic symbols available as single characters, without a need
for either virtual fonts or a separate text companion font.

Full LaTeX support for this encoding is available in the form of the
texnansi package, which is already part of TeX Live and teTeX.

The distribution also contains uppercased and lowercased versions of
texnansi, [afm2pl-]texnanuc.enc and [afm2pl-]texnanlc.enc, to allow
font-based rather than macro-based uppercasing and
lowercasing. LaTeX macro support for this, in the context of
LaTeX2e's font handling, is not hard; the key is to treat
all-uppercase and all-lowercase as new shapes.

USAGE

This is the help message printed by afm2pl:

  Usage: afm2pl [OPTIONS]... FILE[.afm] [FILE[.pl]]
  Convert an Adobe font metric file to a TeX font property list.

  -p ENCFILE          Read/download ENCFILE for the PostScript encoding
  -o                  Use octal for all character codes in the pl file
  -e REAL             Widen (extend) characters by a factor of REAL
  -s REAL             Oblique (slant) characters by REAL, generally <<1
  -m INTEGER          Letterspace by INTEGER/1000 em
  -V                  Verbose output; i.e. report on missing glyphs
  --help              Print this message and exit.
  --version           Print version number and exit.

  See the man page for full documentation.


  Email bug reports to ntg-afm2pl@ntg.nl


INSTALLATION FROM SOURCE

Afm2pl is part of the TeX Live source tree. Standalone compilation
may still work, but is no longer supported.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Problem: the fonts appear to be missing or I get the wrong characters.

Solution: check your mapfiles. Starting TeX Live 2009, the
afm2pl-specific .enc files got `afm2pl-' prepended to their
names. Although you don't have to add this prefix to the
command-line, the prefix is necessary in the mapfile. You may have
to edit your mapfiles accordingly.

Also, afm2pl-ot1tt.enc is brought in conformance with the monospaced
version of OT1, and ot1csc.enc has been removed altogether.

Problem: I get warnings

  I had to round some heights by 10.0000000 units.
  I had to round some depths by 2.0000000 units.

Solution: This is not a problem. afm2pl uses units of 1/1000 times
the design size, so these rounding errors are really quite small.

Problem: Characters are missing. I am using T1 encoding.

T1 encoding requires virtual fonts, since it encodes many accented
characters which aren't available as single characters in commercial
Type 1 fonts. Afm2pl doesn't create virtual fonts. By using texnansi
instead, you force TeX to compose these missing characters from an
accent and the base character.

Problem: Letterspacing doesn't work

Explanation: In this version, letterspacing is implemented with
kerns. However, the tfm format accomodates only about half the
amount of kerning pairs needed for full letterspacing. I have tried
hard to create a set which falls within these boundaries but still
contains all kerning pairs which are likely to matter. If you use a
different encoding, you might exceed these boundaries and as a
consequence lose all glyphs and kerns.

Consider using the tracking option of the microtype package instead.

June 21 2009

Siep Kroonenberg
ntg-afm2pl@ntg.nl
http://tex.aanhet.net/afm2pl/
