The PFM Editor - Printers and Fonts Kit(3.1)

Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

◄Up► ◄Next► ◄Previous► ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The Printer Font Metrics (PFM) Editor is a Microsoft Windows application that a font vendor can use to create and edit PFM files and create Printer Cartridge Metrics (PCM) files for Hewlett-Packard printers and printer drivers that use Printer Control Language (PCL). The PFM Editor simplifies and accelerates the task of creating PFM files by not requiring a great deal of knowledge about either the PFM file format or Windows device drivers. The PFM Editor allows developers with some font experience to create the information file needed by the driver to support the cartridge. The PFM Editor reads the filename of a PFM file from the command line in the WIN.INI file. Thus, defining the PFM extension in WIN.INI allows the user to double-click PFM files to edit them. The Main Window The main window of the PFM Editor contains several fields that give general identifying information about the font. All of these members appear in the PFMHEADER structure. You should always specify at least the Pitch member before selecting any of the metrics or dialog boxes described in the following sections. The following members appear in the main window. Member Description ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Font Name The name of the font, such as Courier(R). Char Set The character set the font represents. It can be one of the following values. Value Meaning ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 0 Windows ANSI 180 Math-8 (PCL driver only) 181 PI Font (PCL driver only) 182 LineDraw (PCL driver only) 183 PC Line (PCL driver only) 184 Tax Line (PCL driver only) 185 US Legal (PCL driver only) 255 OEM character set Pitch Two selections: Fixed and Proportional. Effects Three selections indicating the appearance of the font: Italic, Underline, Strikeout. Font Family Six selections: Don't Care, Roman, Swiss, Modern, Script, and Decorative. The driver uses the family to classify fonts for identification and selection purposes. Points The point size of a font, or its height in units of 1/72 of an inch. Weight The weight of the font minus a number from 0 to 1000. 400 represents a normal, medium font. Larger numbers represent bold fonts. Copyright A 60-character string containing the font supplier's copyright notice. The File Menu The File menu contains all the standard Windows File menu commands along with one extra command: Create PCM File. The following is a list with descriptions of those commands. Command Description ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── New Causes the PFM Editor to reinitialize itself, and display an empty, untitled PFM file. Open Displays a standard Open File Name dialog box. PFM is the default file extension. Save Saves the PFM file with the same name as previously used in a Load or Save operation. If the file is untitled, the Save As dialog box appears. Save As Allows the user to specify a filename before saving. Create PCM File Allows the user to create a cartridge-metrics file for the PCL driver. Exit Exits the PFM Editor. About Displays an informational dialog box. As with all applications, the user is given the opportunity to save or cancel if the New, Open, or Exit commands are chosen when the current file has been saved, but not changed. The Metrics Menu The Metrics menu allows you to activate dialog boxes to specify dimensional information about the font. The Metrics popup menu contains three options: Basics, Extended, and Effects. Basic metrics includes information about character-range heights and such things as average widths, device resolution, and leading. Extended metrics is detailed information about the geometry of the font, including such things as baseline, ascents and descents, orientation, scale, and so on. Effects metrics is information about how to synthesize effects such as underlining and strikeout. To get to this dialog box, you must first go through the Extended Metrics dialog box. The Basic Metrics Dialog Box From the Metrics menu, choose the Basics command to display the Basic Metrics dialog box. It contains information about font size. The dialog box contains the following text boxes. Text box Description ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Characters First The first character in the character set. This is the numeric character code of the first character for which the font contains a printable character. Last The last character in the character set. This is usually 127 for a 7-bit character set, or 255 for an 8-bit character set. Default The code of the character printed if the driver is asked to print a character that falls outside the range First through Last. Break The character that delimits words in word wrapping. If an application or the DrawText function is asked to wrap a string in a box, it will break the string into multiple lines only at break character positions. This is generally the space character (32 in both ANSI and ASCII). Leading Internal The leading that appears within the height specified by the height of the font. Diacritical marks appear in this space. External The recommended additional space to insert between lines. This space is not already accounted for in the height of the font. Resolution Horizontal and Vertical The number of dots-per-inch at which the font was digitized. For an HP LaserJet, for example, both of these numbers should be 300. Widths Average For proportional space fonts, the average width of all the characters in the font. This box is relabeled "All" for fixed-pitch fonts, because all fixed-pitch characters have the same width. It is represented in font units. The PFM Editor does not calculate the average width from the width table; it must be explicitly entered. It is generally the width of the lowercase x. Maximum The width in font units of the widest character in the font. Again, this is not calculated from the user-width table. For fixed-pitch fonts, this box is not used and is disabled. Height The height in font units of the character cell, including internal leading. Ascent The ascent in font units of the font. The distance from the top of the character cell to the baseline of the font. With the exception of the width table for proportional fonts, this dialog box fills in the remainder of the Microsoft-defined font file header. All of these text boxes must be specified accurately. There are also two buttons: OK, which carries out the changes in the PFM file, and Cancel, which ignores all changes made. The Extended Metrics Dialog Box The extended font metrics are a more detailed description of the font's geometry. The dialog box contains the following text boxes. Text box Description ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Lower Case Ascent The distance in font units from the baseline to the top of lowercase ascenders, typically measured from the lowercase d. Descent The distance in font units from the baseline to the bottom of descenders, usually specified for lowercase p. Point Size The intended size of the font in twips (1/20th of a point, or 1/1440 of an inch). Cap Height The height in font units of the font's uppercase characters, usually taken for the character H. X Height The height in font units of lowercase characters, usually the height of the lowercase x. Slant The angle in tenths of a degree clockwise from the vertical. Master Height The size in device units at which the values in the extent table are exact. Master Units The Master Height text expressed in font units. If the two are different, then the device is a linear scaling device, and the application needs to scale all values by the ratio of the requested size to this value. Scale Min and Max The minimum and maximum sizes to which a linear scaling device can scale a font. Orientation Portrait and Landscape The orientation of the font, which may be either or both. The Master Height, Master Units, and Min and Max Scale boxes are used on devices that can scale fonts linearly to any size. On devices that do not scale fonts, these numbers should all be equal to the value in the Height box from the Basic Metrics dialog box. All these members come from the EXTTEXTMETRIC structure. The Effects Metrics Dialog Box This menu item is disabled (grayed) until you specify the extended metrics. The information you can then specify in this dialog box tells the driver how to synthesize effects such as underlining and superscripting, while allowing for the per-font, per-size customization of these effects. It also forms the remainder of the EXTTEXTMETRIC structure in the PFM file. Superscripting, subscripting, underlining, double underlining, and strikethroughs require two numbers. The vertical position of the effect and its size. Offsets are measured downward from the baseline of the font, which means that strikeouts and superscripts will generally have negative offsets. The size specifies the thickness of lines in font units for the line effects, or the height in font units for superscripts and subscripts. For double underlines, you may specify the upper and lower lines independently. The Tables Menu This popup menu contains three selections: Widths, Kerning Pairs, and Kerning Track. Since these are only appropriate for proportional-width fonts, they are disabled for fixed-pitch fonts. The width table contains the exact specification, per-character, of the widths of characters in proportional fonts. Track- and pair-kerning are used to fine-tune character spacing. The Width Table Dialog Box The Width Table dialog box has a scrollable list box containing all the characters and their widths, represented by decimal numbers in font units. Notice that, since this table is an absolute requirement for all proportional fonts, you must set the font pitch to proportional and the first and last characters in the Basics dialog box before entering a width table. Just above the list box is a label number with an edit control next to it. Whenever a character is selected from the list box, the label changes to the character's code, and the edit control is changed to its width. The width can then be changed. To change the width of a character in the width table in the list box, you must choose the Width button. If the character is not the last one in the font, choosing the Width button, or pressing the ENTER key also causes the selection to be advanced to the next character, which enables you to quickly enter the entire width table. The Pair Kerning Table Dialog Box You can fine-tune character spacing for proportional fonts by using pair-kerning. The Pair Kerning Table dialog box consists of a list box containing character pairs and the amount of space to insert or delete between them. A negative kern amount (given in font units) specifies tighter spacing, while a positive amount spreads characters out. The three edit controls are for the From and To characters and the kerning amount. If you select a kern pair in the list box, the editor displays the values in the structure for modification. There are three buttons for manipulating the Pair Kerning Table: ♦ Add, which adds the kern pair to the table in the edit controls. ♦ Delete, which removes the selected kern pair from the list box. ♦ Change, which replaces the selected kern pair with the contents of the edit control. The Pair Kerning Table is sorted; adding or replacing a pair does not give it a particular position in the table. As in the other dialog boxes, the OK button carries out the changes in the PFM file, and the Cancel button ends the dialog without saving the changes to the table. The Track Kerning Table Dialog Box You type values into the Track Kerning Table in the same manner as for the Pair Kerning Table. There are five text boxes to consider. For the kerning degree, negative values specify tighter kerning, and positive values specify looser kerning. The minimum size specifies the smallest size in font units for which track kerning applies, and the maximum size specifies the largest font. The minimum amount specifies the amount of track kerning to apply to fonts of the minimum size and below. The maximum amount is the track kerning to apply to all fonts at least as large as the maximum size. The Driver Menu The PCL printer is currently the only supported printer in the Driver menu. The PCL Driver dialog box contains information specific to the PCL driver for HP LaserJet-type printers. The text boxes are as follows. Text box Description ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Symbol Set Specifies the HP-defined symbol set for a font. (For more information about the symbol sets, see the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Printer documentation.) The following are the currently defined symbol sets (selected with individual buttons): E.C.M.A. 94 Generic 7 Generic 8 ISO Den/Nor ISO France ISO Germany ISO Italy ISO Spain ISO Sweden/Finland ISO U.K. Kana 8 Line Draw Math 8 Math Symbols Roman 8 Roman Ext. U.S. ASCII U.S. Legal User Defined Mem Usage An approximation of the amount of memory in the printer that the soft font requires. This is given as the following formula: ((sum of all character widths + 7)>> 3) * height + 63 Escape String This is the escape string you send to the printer to select the font. It may contain any PCL commands. You may use the following special sequences to type control characters: \e - escape (ASCII 27, 0x1b) \[ - escape (ASCII 27, 0x1b) \n - line feed (ASCII 10, 0xa) \r - carriage return (ASCII 13, 0xd) \xnn - hexadecimal character code \nnn - octal character code When the PFM Editor displays an escape string, it converts all non-ASCII printing characters to the hexadecimal format \xnn. As in the other dialog boxes, the OK button carries out the changes in the PFM file, and the Cancel button ends the dialog without saving changes. Creating PCM Files The PCL driver uses Printer Cartridge Metric (PCM) files to define cartridges other than built-in Hewlett-Packard cartridges. PCM files are essentially a collection of PFM files (one for each font in the cartridge). To make a PCM file, you must first create the individual PFM files for each of the cartridge fonts. You can create PFM files easily with the Printer Font Installer. Simply add the font, which must be in the Hewlett-Packard PCL format. The Printer Font Installer will automatically scan the PCL font and create the PFM file. Use the PFM Editor to edit the file. Verify all the boxes and values. Also, notice that the Printer Font Installer does not enter the font escape string. You must do this with the PFM Editor. After you have created all the PFM files and saved them in one directory, from the File menu, choose the Create PCM File command to display a dialog box and prompt you for a PCM filename. Put this file in the same directory as its constituent PFM files. After you type a filename and choose the OK button, a second dialog box appears with the PCM filename in a static control at the top. The first edit control in the dialog box enables you to enter the cartridge title, which must be a nonempty title (that is, you must fill in the edit control). This title is the string placed in the cartridge selection list box in the driver's Printer Setup (device-mode) dialog box. Verify that the correct font escape string is defined for each PFM file. The PFM Editor places a list of PFM files, that are in the same directory as the target PCM file, in a list box on the left side of the dialog box. You can select one or more of these files and move them to the right-hand "selected" list box by choosing the Select button (or double-clicking a filename). You can remove selected PFM files, or place them back in the left-hand "available" list box by selecting filenames in the same manner in the right-hand "selected" list box. When you choose the OK button, the PFM files that appear in the right-hand list box are placed in the PCM file. To create the PCM file, you must select at least one PFM file and have a nonempty title string. When the editor creates the PCM file, it also creates a text file in the same directory with the same name and the .INI extension. On the first line of this initialization file is the title of the cartridge; the list of PFM files follows on subsequent lines, one filename per line. Whenever the PCM dialog box is chosen, the PFM Editor looks for the .INI file and uses the stored data to initialize the title string and the list of selected PFM files. Note: Editing a PFM file will not cause the PCM file to be updated. The PFM Editor cannot directly edit PCM files. Therefore, if you make a change in a PFM file, you must rebuild the PCM file. Converting PFM Files for Minidrivers If you want to use a file you've created with the PFM Editor with minidrivers, you'll need to convert the file using the CVTHPPFM utility. You run this utility from the MS-DOS command line. Additionally, if you want to convert 3.1 PFM files to use with 3.0 PFM files, you can use the CVTHPPFM utility to perform this conversion as well. The PFM Editor Error Messages The following error messages can appear when using the PFM Editor. A brief explanation of why the message appears is given after each message. Break character not in character set The break character must be between the first and last character in the character set, inclusive. Can't find filename, ignored The initialization file for a PCM file contained a reference to a PFM file that is not in the same directory, or that does not have the .PFM extension. Can't open filename, ignored The specified PFM file was in the current directory when the list box of available PFM files was created. However, when the attempt to write the PCM file was made, the PFM file could not be read. Can't write the PCM file An error occurred while writing to the PCM file, or to the associated initialization file. Changing the character range will invalidate the width table If you enter a width table and then change the first and last characters, the width table will no longer be valid. This will not occur if you have a specific font in mind when you create a PFM file. Couldn't save file filename The file specified could not be saved because of an error opening or writing the file, attempting to write over a read-only file, or running out of disk space. Default character not in character set The default character must be between the first and last character in the character set, inclusive. Driver information not specified You attempted to save a file that does not contain PCL driver information. Error creating the initialization file for filename The initialization file corresponding to the given file could not be opened. Error creating the PCM file filename The PCM file could not be opened because of an inappropriate filename (such as a nonexistent directory), a preexisting read-only file of the same name, or being out of disk space. filename contains the wrong driver information version This is a warning indicating that while the PFM file appears to be in the correct format, the driver-specific information contains a version number that this PFM Editor does not support. filename contains the wrong header version number This is a warning indicating that the PFM header has a version number that this PFM Editor does not recognize. filename does not contain driver information The PFM file does not contain a PCL driver structure. filename does not contain extended text metrics This is a warning that the PFM file being read into the PFM Editor does not contain extended text metrics. filename has been modified. Save before continuing? This message allows you to save a file or abort an operation before doing something that will abandon a modified PFM file, such as choosing the New, Open, or Exit commands. filename is not a valid file name The filename given is invalid because it contains illegal characters or syntax errors. filename is not a valid PFM file The specified file does not contain a PFM file, or the PFM file is either corrupted or from the wrong version. Proportional font requires a width table You attempted to save a PFM file that specifies a proportional font but does not contain a width table. Unrecognized device devicename The PFM contains a device name that the PFM Editor does not recognize. The only name recognized currently is "PCL/HP LaserJet." Width table will need to be reentered This is warning indicating that changing your character range invalidates your width table. Write over original filename? A file with the same name as the filename you specified using the Save As command already exists. Choose Yes to write over the old file, or No to choose a new name. ♦