🚀 go-pugleaf

Recently, a program called "drawimp" was posted to the Macintosh
newsgroups by its author, Allan Weber of USC.  This program is designed
to convert a Macintosh "MacDraw" file into Impress format, so that it
can be printed on an Imagen laser-printer.  I'm trying to get this
program to work, and could use some help.

So far, the program works as documented, except for the conversion of
text strings to Impress format.  The program as-released is designed to
work with the TeX Metafont files (of the "cm" variety).  Our site
doesn't have TeX, but does have Scribe.  For some reason, drawimp isn't
able to interpret the Scribe metafont files, and as I lack
documentation on their format I'm not sure what changes I need to
make.

Originally, drawimp opens and reads Metafont files in the
/usr/lib/tex/fonts directory, and selectively downloads the necessary
glyphs to the Imagen printer.  I was able to modify drawimp to
accomodate the different location and names of the Scribe font files,
but the files that we have in our /usr/lib/scribe/fonts directory seem
to have a different internal format than what drawimp is expecting.  As
released, drawimp expects files named something like "cmr10.MMMMpxl",
where MMMM is the magnification factor multiplied by 1000.  The Scribe
font files are named (e.g.) "cmr10.rMM", where MM is the magnification
factor multiplied by 10.  So far so good... but when drawimp tries to
read the "pixel tail" structure at the end of the file, it doesn't see
what it expects, mumbles a warning, tries to load the raster
definitions anyhow, becomes extremely confused, generates a segment
fault, and dumps core.

So, some questions:

1) Is there a difference in the formats of the "pxl" files expected by
   drawimp (and, apparently, TeX also), and the "r" files used by Scribe?

2) Are the structures of "pxl" and "r" files documented, and can anyone
   send me a copy via email?

3) Has anyone out there already done what I'm attempting to do (i.e.
   convert drawimp to work with Scribe, rather than with TeX)?

advTHANKSance for your help in this matter!

                Dave Platt

Internet:  dplatt@teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
Usenet: {hplabs|sun|ucbvax|seismo|uw-beaver|decwrl}!teknowledge-vaxc.arpa!dplatt
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Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.