CONVERTING "PUBLISHING PARTNER" FONTS
FOR USE WITH
"PAGESTREAM"
INTRODUCTION
This program, in its present form, is intended for the
conversion of fonts from the "Publishing Partner" format,
into a newer format, as used by "PageStream". Both programs
and this converter are products of Soft-Logik Publishing
Corp. This program may be freely distributed at no charge,
but remains the property of Soft-Logik Publishing Corp.
Later versions of this program will become available, which
will allow the user to design, edit, and create his own
fonts, but for the moment, it is capable only of conversion.
THIS VERSION REQUIRES ONE MEG OR MORE OF MEMORY!!!
That said, let's get on with a conversion...
HOW-TO:
As experience in using this program grows, the user will find
all sorts of 'workarounds' to what is suggested here, but in
the beginning, it's best to follow these simple
recommendations. The first of these would be to begin with a
blank, formatted disk, and to place the FNTCNVT.PRG on that
disk, along with one font-set from "Publishing Partner".
(Note: a "Publishing Partner" font-set consists of two
files, one with an extender of ".FNT", and one with an
extender of ".DMF". Copy BOTH of these to your working
disk.)
Boot the converter program, and you'll see a character table
of all 256 ASCII characters. Move to the "FILE" item on the
menu bar, and you'll see a wide selection of Load and Save
options. The one that you need right now is "Import PP FNT".
Click on this one, and you'll be presented with an Item
Selector box (disk directory), listing any and all fonts on
your disk with an extender of ".FNT". Select your font (it
should be the ONLY one on the disk, at present!), click on
"OK", and you'll next see a dialog box requesting "Font
Metrics Information". This one is going to create a new type
of ".FM" file from information that it finds in the original
file, and this information will be used by the program to
determine how wide a character is expected to be. It is
important that you insert the correct name, as well as the
correct font identification number into the top two spaces.
The name may be anything that you choose, but the font number
has a few specific requirements. At the end of this
documentation, you'll find a list of some fonts, and their
assigned numbers, both old, and new. If you are converting
one of these fonts, it is _strongly_ recommended that you
utilize this numbering system, so as to avoid conflicts in
the future. An example of these number changes would be the
"AvanteGarde" font, which is now numbered 1030, but was
previously numbered as 2000.
The remaining data need not be altered at this time, so click
on "OK", and you are next presented with another Item
Selector, with the name already installed under which it will
be saved, with an ".FM" extender. If this is correct, click
on "OK" yet again, and the next screen will be another dialog
box, this time entitled "Screen Font Information". It is
recommended that you verify the font number as to its
matching that assigned to it in the Font Metrics Information.
That done, click on "OK", and another Item Selector will
appear, listing the font name with an extender of ".12H".
Clicking on "OK" one last time will save the completed screen
font to the disk!
PRINTER TIME!
The process to create a new dot matrix printer font is quite
similar to the preceding. Begin by selecting the "FILE" item
from the main menu bar, and then selecting "Import PP PFT".
This will produce an Item Selector from which to select your
font. Click on the .PFT file, and on "OK", and you'll see a
dialog box requesting information as to font type, "Thick",
"Thin", "Special 128 Character Set", or "Special 256
Character Set". For the present, simply pressing "Return"
will select the default of "Thick". This will then bring up
an Item Selector box listing the ".PFT" files available on
this disk. Choose the one that is on this disk, and you will
receive a dialog box requesting "Dot Matrix Information".
Change the font identification number to match that of the
Font Metrics and screen font, and again click on "OK". The
next Item Selector will come up with an extender of ".DMF"
and may be named and saved with that extender, and the
printer font is now converted!
PostScript TOO?
Yep...now that you've got both ".DMF" and ".FM" files
available, you should load them, if they're not already in
memory (where they will be, if you haven't moved on to a
different font or program after creating them), return to the
FILE header from the main menu bar, and select "Export
PostScript". This will produce a dialog box requesting
PostScript information. The first item of importance is the
"PS Name". This name must match that assigned to it by
Adobe, in the case of built-in fonts, such as Helvetica,
Times, etc., and may NOT contain ANY spaces. The second item
is again, the font number, and should match that of the Font
Metrics, screen font, and .DMF files. Finally, the request
for a "Download Name" may be any name that you choose, so
long as it will fit within the limits imposed by TOS for file
names, and should have an extender of ".PS". Once these
three items have been completed, you should click on "OK",
and an Item Selector will appear, with that name and a ".PSF"
extender. Clicking on "OK" will cause a short file to be
written, and then a second Item Selector will appear,
indicating the Download name that you have entered, complete
with a ".PS" extender. Clicking on "OK" one final time will
cause a larger file to be written to the disk, and the
conversion will be completed!!!
The preceding documentation has been rather cursory, and was
intended only to assist the user in making quick conversions
of his previous "Publishing Partner" fonts, so that they may
be used in "PageStream". If creation or editing of fonts is
desired, it is best, for the present, to utilize "Font Design
Partner" for the creation of Type I ("Publishing Partner")
fonts, and then to convert them. Many editing capabilities
already exist in this converter, and the remainder will be
implemented for release as a full-blown editor soon. Once
this editor becomes available, original files will be written
in Type II format ("PageStream"), and the capabilities will
increase dramatically.
FONT IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION:
Sans-Serif
Helvetica 1000 (1000) Helv
Helvetica Bold 1005 (7011) HlvB
Helvetica Narrow 1010 (3010) HlvN
Helvetica Condensed 1020 (3020) HlvC
AvanteGarde 1030 (2000) Avnt
Ltr-Goth 1040 ( 912)
Chicago 1060 ( 300)
Wilkes-Bares 1070 ( 914)
Lucida-Sans 1080
Futura-XBold 1090 (4501)
Perfect 1100 ( )
Script
Unv-Rmn 3000 (7000)
Devoll 3010 (6020)
Chancery 3020 (3000)
Trent 3030 (6100)
Missive 3040 (6110)
Thames 3050 (6040)
Caligraphy 3060 ( 0)
Elegance 3070 (8030)
Script 3080 ( 0)
Gothic 3090 ( )
Block-Serif
Courier 4000 (1010) Cour
Bold Egypt 4010 (7010)
Lubalin-Graph 4020 (5111)
Serif
Times 5000 (5000) Tyme
Bookman 5010 (2010) Book
Palantino 5020 (4000) Pala
Bold Pala 5025 (7012)
Schoolbook 5030 (4010) Schl
Colombia 5040 (6050)
Roman-Bookface 5050 (6030)
Lucida 5060
Display
Saturn 7000 (6000)
Spokane 7010 (6010)
TomHudson 7020 (6030)
WestSide 7030 (1710)
Artistic 7040 ( 0)
Creative 7050 ( 0)
Oriental 7060 ( 0)
Binner 7070 (7198)
Fut-Blk 7080 ( 0)
Stop 7090 (3398)
Misc
16-Bit 8000 ( 110)
8-Bit 8010 ( 140)
Computer 8020 ( 130)
Symbols
Dingbats 9000 (9000)
Symbol 9020 (9020)
Keyboard 9030 (4590)
Other Languages
Cyrillic 9500 (1066)
attribute bit value
BOLD 0 1
ITALICS 1 2
SHADOW 2 4
OUTLINE 3 8
BACKSLANT 4 16
LIGHT 5 32
REVERSE 6 64
MIRROR 7 128
UPSIDE 8 256
UNDERLINE 9 512
WORD UNDERLINE 10 (unimplemented)
CHARACTER UNDERLINE 11 (unimplemented)
DOUBLE UNDERLINE 12 4048
STRIKE THROUGH 13 8096
14-15 (unused)
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Here's my first shot at a Publishing Partner to PageStream
file converter. Should be straight forward. Just run it
and it will prompt for files to convert and names to save
the coverted file as. One limitation, you must use a
destination file that is different than the source.
Limitations
-----------
Because of MAJOR differences of the handling of routed
columns of text, any routed columns will convert to
unrouted columns. The text will be in the correct columns,
but they will not automatically flow back and forth.
All you need do is set the routing manually.
Tall and Wide do not get translated.
There is a text file called "PPCNVT.TXT".
This text file contains the translations from PP font file
names, to PageStream font numbers. I have included in comments
the font numbers for the fonts we have included so far.
Once we have documentation for the font converters, it will
contain font numbers for all fonts. The numbers have meanings,
and new font numbers will need to be registered with Soft-Logik
to prevent overlap.