Re: [bug #59933] Curly brackets displayed correctly in ps, but not in pdf

[G. Branden Robinson]

[this conversation is going to bug-groff but not to the ticket]

Hi Oliver,

At 2022-06-01T14:25:51+0200, Oliver Corff wrote:
> Hi Branden,
> 
> thank you for the update!
> 
> I checked, there is no directory type1/ under /usr/share/fonts.
> 
> Then, I did a "locate a0100" and found the fonts in
> /usr/share/X11/fonts/urw-fonts/.
> 
> Groff will probably not have these in the standard search path.
> 
> I'll experiment with setting a symbolic link from /usr/share/fonts and
> let you know tonight.

It's probably going to be more complicated than that.  groff itself does
not read and does not use the PFB and AFM files provided by URW; that is
because groff does not actually do font rendering.  That is up to the
"output device".

The way this works for PostScript and PDF output is that groff needs
"font _description_ files" in its own (really, device-independent troff)
format.  This tells it what the geometries of the glyphs provided by the
fonts are.  That way groff draws them in the correct places.

(Since Dave is CCed and he knows what a terminological stickler I am,
this is why I am militant about calling TR, HB, ZCMI, etc., "font
_description_ files" in our documentation.  30 years ago as a very green
Unix user on SunOS, I could not understand why troff "fonts" had such
unfriendly, indecipherably short names, and how on earth the minimal
quantity of information in them could possibly draw glyphs.)

What groff _can_ do is construct PostScript and PDF files that embed the
fonts that they use.  That is what the "download" files for these output
devices are for.  They tell grops(1) and gropdf(1) where to find the
_actual_ font files corresponding to each of the groff font identifiers
used in the document.

This is a big part of what Peter Schaffter's "install-font" shell
script[1] is all about.  And why managing this better, with less user
involvement, is one of the major desired feature developments for
groff[2].

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-06.html#install-font
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/groff-mission-statement.html

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