Font metrics strangeness

[bbennett]

Lout (3.12) handles the principal fonts of its own docs (Times,
Helvetica, Courier) without any apparent problems, but setting, e.g.,

    @Document
        @InitialFont { Palatino Base 12p }

produces output with crude and sloppy letterspacing and which provokes
"Font 'Palatino Roman' has bad BBox" warnings from Adobe Acrobat
Reader. (BTW the new -Z option is pure joy!)

Replacing the contents of font/Pa-Rm with those of a more recent
Palatino Roman AFM file (por_____.afm from CTAN) produces some
improvement in this case, but letterspacing is still sloppy and (since
the FontBBox values are unchanged in the new AFM?) "bad BBox" messages
continue.

Brief experiments with Lout's other fonts show similar problems,
whether the corresponding standard Type 1 fonts or Adobe Type Manager's
generic-substitutional master fonts are called by Acrobat.

PS and PDF output files, naturally enough, show identical symptoms.
Only Times, Helvetica and Courier appear to work as expected. Have I
missed something obvious?


-- Bruce Bennett <address@hidden>