🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BEN.89Mar17135348@ulrich.mth.msu.edu> ben@ulrich.mth.msu.edu (Ben Lotto) writes:
>There are several fonts that came with the TeX that we have on our SUNs
>which are not on my PC.  I have compared cmr10.pk from these two systems
>and they are not the same.  Does anyone know how to convert one to the
>other? 

All of TeXs font files (pk, gf, pxl) are stored in machine independent
form.  The two versions of cmr10 may be different because they were
generated from different versions of the METAFONT sources, or with
different parameters.  Try generating proof-sheets for both with
`\input testfont' and see if you can detect any differences.

>More generally, does anyone know the format of .pk, .gf, and .pxl files
>and how they vary over different releases of TeX?  Where would I find
>this information?

TUGboat (the TeX User's Group newsletter) has had articles about this.
Of course, the horse's mouth on this subject is the commentary in the
souce code itself, so look at the WEB sources of relevant programs.

DVI: DeVice-Independent file
     Produced by TeX, read by output device interfaces.
     TUGboat v3, n2: 14-19
     The book _TeX:_The_Program_ (or WEB source for TeX82) Sec. 583

TFM: TeX Font Metric file
     Produced by METAFONT, read by TeX and output device interfaces.
     TUGboat v2, n1: 12-16
     The WEB source for TFtoPL and PLtoTF.

GF:  Generic Font file
     Produced by METAFONT, read by output device interfaces.
     TUGboat v6, n1: 8-11
     The book _METAFONT:_The_Program_ (or the WEB source for MF84)

PK:  PacKed font raster file
     Produced by GFtoPK, read by output device interfaces.
     TUGboat v6, n3: 115-120
     The WEB source for PKtoPX.

PXL: PiXeL font raster file
     Produced by METAFONT78, read by output device interfaces.
     (obsolete but still widely used)
     TUGboat v2, n3: 8-12

As for historical treatment of how the file-formats have evolved over
time, I don't think they have changed for many years.

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