Bug#186354: Missing afm files for many fonts

[Billy Biggs <vektor@dumbterm.net>]

Hilmar Preusse (hille42@web.de):

> severity 186354 wishlist
> thanks
> 
> > Package: tetex-extra
> > Version: 2.0-1
> > 
> > The tetex-extra package installs the Blue Sky Computer Modern fonts,
> > but not the associated afm files.  For example, it ships:
> > 
> >   /usr/share/texmf/fonts/type1/bluesky/cm/cmss17.pfb
> > 
> >   But there is no afm for this font to be found. I figured that maybe
> > the information was contained in there somehow, but pf2afm generated an
> > afm which did not include kerning information.
>
> I'm not completely sure, but I guess that the afm-Files are not needed
> by by TeX, cause there are still the tfm-Files, which are read during
> compile time. So I don't understand, why do you want the afm-files to
> be included. I've set your bug to severity wishlist.

  As I said in my bug report: "I was trying to use freetype which
requires an afm file for every pfb to get the kerning table." Freetype
cannot read tfm files, so apps which use freetype to render fonts will
require the afms in order to use the kerning information.  The
xfonts-scalable package provides afm files for all of their pfb fonts.

  I ran 'tftopl' on one of the tfm files to get something human
readable, and confirmed that the tfm files do provide kerning
information.  However, I can't find a utility to convert tfm files into
afm files.  I still think that if you ship the bluesky pfb files, it
would be useful to include the afms, at least for anything based on
freetype which can only use afm files, not tfm.

-- 
Billy Biggs
vektor@dumbterm.net