🚀 go-pugleaf

In <9203280712.AA13092@raisin-nut>
<1992Mar28.042523.6423@algor2.algorists.com>, Jeffrey Kegler writes:

> When I attempt to print multifarious.ps
> from the MH mailer's documentation, the following occurs:
>
> =================== Start of piece of terminal session ====================
> $ zcat multifar.ps.Z | gs -dNOPAUSE -sOUTPUTFILE=/dev/null - 2>&1 | tee errs
> Initializing... done.
> Error: /invalidfont in --%show_continue--
> [...... a bunch of other stuff ......]

There are at least three different problems interacting here.

(1) The file is, in fact, buggy.  It uses the name /fi both as an
abbreviation for the 'fill' operator and as a font name.  The former
use overrides the latter, so strings that should be shown in the fi
font (whatever that is) in fact come out in whatever font was
current.  As a result, nearly all the labels on the diagram on p. 4
are shown in a font that lacks most of the alphabetic characters, so
this diagram displays with lots of white spaces where labels should
be.  (I checked this by printing the file on a LaserWriter.)

(2) There is also a bug in the CharBuilder procedure, namely, if an
attempt is made to display a character that is not in the font,
CharBuilder does nothing; specifically, it never executes a
setcharwidth or a setcachedevice.  This violates Adobe's documented
requirements for Type 3 fonts.  Adobe interpreters apparently
disregard this, and assume a character width of 0; Ghostscript gives
the error reported above.  I will "fix" Ghostscript to do what the
Adobe interpreters do, by changing line 389 of gschar.c (the sws_none
case) from
		return_error(gs_error_invalidfont);	/* WRONG */
to
		penum->wxy.x = penum->wxy.y = 0; break;

(3) After this change, Ghostscript gets through p. 4 OK, and then
crashes.  I am still tracking this problem down.  I will post the fix
if it's simple, or just put it in 2.4.1 if not.

L. Peter Deutsch :: Aladdin Enterprises :: P.O. box 60264, Palo Alto, CA 94306
ghost@aladdin.com, ...decwrl!aladdin!ghost ; 415-322-0103 8-9 AM M-F/msg
	    "Implementation is the sincerest form of flattery."