Re: MS-DOS line drawing font in Lout?

[Frank Sergeant]

"Valeriy E. Ushakov" <address@hidden> wrote:
> Lout can use virtually any PostScript font.  So you have to find a
> (monospaced) PostScript font with pseudographics and let Lout knows
> about it.  You can grab some Windows font editor/converter and make a
> Type1 font out of TTF font.

     Thank you very much for your detailed instructions on
incorporating a DOS-character set font into Lout and
thanks also to several people who emailed me with some
suggestions.

     One suggestion led to me finding an IBM-donated font
in the X11 files on my Linux system:

      /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/cour.pfa

I put it into Ghostscript's Fontmap and was able to run
the Ghostscript prfont.ps utility and its DoFont command
to display the font.  Sure enough, it contains the line
drawing characters, but they are not in the encoding vector
(they show on the third page printed by DoFont).
I have been unable to locate an associated afm file for
this font.

     Perhaps with your (Valeriy) suggestion, I will be able
to locate a font and associated pfm file.

     Another suggestion was that I use a (bitmapped) screen
capture utility under Windows to get the image.  I was able
to do this under Windows 95, running the msdos application
in a windowed-DOS box, using the Windows Paint program.
Then, I used the xv program under Linux to convert the .bmp
file to a Postscript file.  I was able to embed this into
the Lout document.  Unfortunately, the image is far too dark.
Possibly I can use an alternative screen capture program under
Windows and/or use an image-manipulation utility to lighten
the image.  (This is getting more complicated than I had hoped.)

     Also, on the Coast to Coast (Simtel) archives, I found
some DOS utilities that seem to convert a text file (which
can include line drawing characters) to a Postscript file.
I haven't tried these yet, but that may be another way to
bypass the need for the (correct) font.

     So, I am getting closer to a solution of some sort.
If anyone has further suggestions or a pointer
to an IBM/OEM (PC8) monospaced type 1 font and an associated
afm file, I am (as Ross Perot might say) "all ears."

     Does anyone know if the non-Latin1 character set fonts
that Jeff mentioned could not be put in the Lout distribution,
but were on his ftp site (which I have still been unable to
access -- "service not available" message), happen to include
the font I am looking for?


  -- Frank
  address@hidden