Bug#250216: More about TrueType support of dvips
From: Juhapekka Tolvanen <juhtolv@cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: Bug#250216: More about TrueType support of dvips
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 19:12:18 +0300
> called pstricks comes to my mind: Pages 28-29 of file
> /usr/share/doc/texmf/pdftex/base/pdftexman.pdf.gz say:
>
> "The inclusion of raw PostScript commands --a technique utilized
> by for instance the pstricks package-- cannot be supported.
> Although pdf is a direct descendant of PostScript, it lacks any
> programming language commands, and cannot deal with arbitrary
> PostScript."
>
> Hence, having True Type-fonts and pstricks-package in same document is
> awful situation as long dvips don't have good support for True Type
> fons.
>From the very sentence you cited, I've an impression that
it might be impossible to embed TrueType fonts in PS files
directly and, form the sentence at the bottom, one need to
convert TrueType fonts to, for example, Type42 fonts to embed
them in PS files. Am I right or not?
> 4) If dvips do not have good support for True Type-fonts, it won't do
> well in competition with pdfTeX; People will consider it inferior and
> obsolete.
My understanding is simple; dvips is a DVI to PS converter
and its counter part is dvipdfm which is a DVI to PDF converter.
> At least aforementioned arguments 1, 4 and 5 still apply. Let's see, what
> its documentation says. Aha! Page 20 of
> /usr/share/doc/texmf/programs/dvipdfm.pdf.gz say:
>
> "The raw PostScript "ps:" special supported by dvips and other
> drivers. Only a few PostScript operators are supported; dvipdfm
> does not include a complete PostScript interpreter. Complex
> PostScript code, such as that embedded by the PSTricks package,
> is not supported."
My understanding is, \special is very driver dependent
in its nature so "The raw PostScript "ps:" special" is
supported by dvips but not supported by dvipdfm is not
so surprising.
From: Juhapekka Tolvanen <juhtolv@cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: Bug#250216: More about TrueType support of dvips
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 01:57:25 +0300
> I knew it: Type 42 is really a PostScript-wrapper over True Type-format.
> Hence, conversion from TrueType to Type 42 can be really losless. And
> maybe those Type 42-fonts can be embedded to PostScript-files.
>
> But how is Type 42-support in dvips? If fonts are already converted from
> True Type to Type 42 and those fonts and all their fontmaps and font
> metrics are in right places, can dvips use them?
Then your request is dvips should be able to embed Type42
fonts?
I'm not sure and have not enough time to test Type42 fonts
at present so if someone has confirmed that dvips didn't
support Type42 fonts then I suspect it might be good to report
this to the upstream.
Regards, 2004-5-24(Mon)
--
Debian Developer & Debian JP Developer - much more I18N of Debian
Atsuhito Kohda <kohda@debian.org>
Department of Math., Univ. of Tokushima
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