Uwe Koloska wrote:
> Sorry, but you are wrong! Type3 fonts can be vector outlines and/or
> bitmaps. In opposite to Type1 fonts that cannot not have some postscript
> commands, glyphs for Type3 fonts can contain full postscript programs. For
> example with a Type3 font you can create colorful pictures for each glyph.
>
> The other difference between Type1 and Type3 is only a historic one: The
> format of Type3 was published, the one for Type1 closed and only available
> for Adobe and its fonts ..
And hints, speed, etc. Furthermore there are other differences and restriction
on the outlines, like paths, direction of paths, and so on, avoid overlapping and so
on,
that in Type 3 you don't have.
You can download the specific for Type 1 format at Adobe site as PDF
document.
>
> But back to the topic:
> Metapost can produce one postscript file per glyph. And since Type3 fonts
> can contain normal postscript commands -- voila, there is your postscript
> font. But this isn't as easy at it may look, cause Metapost isn't able to
> process most of the metafont fonts _and_ the result (if there is one) needs
> a lot of postprocessing ...
When I was talking about Type3 fonts, I was not referring to bitmap
fonts, but the font you obtain with standard stroke commands. And with the
purpose to obtain precise vector paths. Of course in
this way to obtain the outlines (and the outlines only in T1 mode) you need to
calculate, evaluate all
the intersection between paths (and probably it is what MetaFOG does), restrict
to beziérs, etc.; certainly such thing is not possible if the font/glyph is ANY
PostScript program (unless probably to operate at PostScript interpreter level),
but maybe possible if the set of commands used in Type 3 is restricted.
Of course with autotracing of high resolution bitmaps, it's
"easier" to obtain the outlines, and can basically work on any fonts, even
not MetaFont ones (e.g. with fonts from a bitmap acquired from scanner...),
with less or no-human postprocessing at despite of quality.
It would be interesting to see TeXtrace with MusixTeX fonts... ;-)
Bye.
Giuseppe.
