rendering Postscript fonts
I could use some remedial instruction on how Postscript fonts are rendered.
I am submitting a grant proposal to Grants.gov, and the only serifed fonts
they allow are Palatino-Linotype and Georgia. Neither of these is supported
by the typesetter I use, groff 1.18. It does support Palatino, but not
Palatino-Linotype, strictly speaking. By changing the "internalname" in
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1/font/devps/PR (and PB, PI, PBI), I can get the PS
file to list "Palatino-Linotype" everywhere instead of "Palatino". This may
be necessary if they have a really stupid bot checking for font compliance.
Groff makes the PS, and then I use gs to make a PDF. What I believe is that
people reading this document (likely on Windows) will call up their local
font definitions when they view this. These definitions are used to draw the
characters, but the spacing is all defined by the PDF. Is that correct?
I'm less sure how a font is selected for rendering. On Debian, for example,
I use gv to look at the PS file. It presumably uses files in
/usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts, but none of these show a FontName that is
Palatino. I can't find where the rule is specified that tells what gsfont to
use for a PS file that lists Palatino.
On XP, the PS displays correctly in Acrobat even if the PS asks for
"Palatino" instead of "Palatino-Linotype". Supposedly I only have the second
of those on XP, so it must silently subtitute "Palatino-Linotype" for
"Palatino".
As another test, I typeset a paragraph in XP and then again with groff, each
using its Palatino at 11 point. The line breaks were not all at the same
places, showing that the XP and groff implementations are different. Again,
I suspect that the characters may be drawn identically but that the spacing
may differ. Spacing, I hope, is fixed in the PDF, assuring that a reviewer
will see the layout I intend.
Finally, I tried integrating an XP TrueType font (pala.ttf) into groff as
described at:
http://www.sfr-fresh.com/unix/misc/groff-1.19.2.tar.gz:a/groff-1.19.2/contrib/mom/momdoc/appendices.html#FONTS
This got too messy because of definition conflicts (e.g. sfthyphen instead of
hyphen).
Thanks.
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