pfaedit(1) · carta

NAME

pfaedit – create and modify PostScript fonts

SYNOPSIS

pfaedit [-new] [-recover {none|auto|clean}] [-script scriptfile] [-help] [-usage] [-version] [-nosplash] [-display name] [-depth val] [-vc type] [-cmap type] [-sync] [-keyboard ibm|mac|sun|ppc] fontname

DESCRIPTION

pfaedit allows you to create and modify PostScript and TrueType fonts. You can save fonts in several different PostScript formats as well as TrueType, OpenType and CID-keyed fonts. It will also generate bitmaps.

If the -new flag is specified, a new PostScript font with the ISO 8859-1 encoding (the international encoding standard for western Europe, and the standard for most X fonts) will be created.

If the -recover flag is specified, you can control PfaEdit's crash recovery mechanism — just in case the crash recovery itself causes problems. -recover=none will not attempt to recover from crashes on this run, while -recover=clean will delete any recovery information.

If the -script flag is specified then the following argument will be treated as the filename of a script file, which will be executed. will not open the X display and it will pass any other command line arguments to the script file.

-help will list the available options and fork off a browser looking at the online documentation. If you have installed the docs locally it will search for them in /usr/share/doc/pfaedit (or whatever other location was compiled in), if not it will search for them online.

-usage will list the available options.

-version will display the current version of pfaedit (a six digit string containing the date stamp of the source files).

-nosplash will not display the splash screen.

The -display flag must be followed by a display-name argument (localhost:0) and allows you to specify the display.

The -depth flag must be followed by an integer specifing a pixel depth supported by the current X server. pfaedit will attempt to find a visual that matches this depth, and if found will use it.

The -vc flag must be followed by either the name of a visual class or an integer enumerating a visual class. pfaedit will attempt to find a visual that matches this class, and if found will use it.

The -cmap flag must be followed by one of the strings: "Current", "Copy", or "Private". It gives the user some control over how colormaps are handled on 8bit screens. If you select "Current", pfaedit will attempt to allocate its colors in the current (shared) colormap. It probably won't get everything it wants. If you specify "Copy" then pfaedit will allocate what it can and then copy the current colormap. This means it can make use of cells other programs are using. If you specify "Private" then pfaedit will create a new colormap and fill it up with exactly what it likes. pfaedit will attempt to find a visual that matches this depth, and if found will use it.

-sync flag will make X synchronous. This is mostly for debugging. It slows X down.

The -keyboard flag must be followed by one of the keywords "ibm", "mac", "sun" or "ppc". If specified pfaedit will alter its menus to display modifier keys appropriate for that system. (ppc assumes you have a mac keyboard and are running SuSe linux. The mappings are different from those used by X on Mac OS/X. Annoying).

If a fontname is given, pfaedit will open a font view looking at each font you selected. This may be a binary or ascii PostScript type1 font (.pfa or .pfb extensions) or one of pfaedit's spline font database files (.sfd extension), or even a PostScript type 0 font (.ps extension, though the encoding will probably be lost here), a true type font (.ttf), an opentype font (.otf), a CID-keyed font (.cid, .otf) or a bitmap font (.bdf).

Without flags or arguments, pfaedit will open a file picker dialog and allow you to browse your disk to find the appropriate font file, or create a new one.

ENVIRONMENT

If any of the following environment variables exist, they are used by pfaedit:

BROWSER: Specifies the name of a browser program for examining documentation.

AUTOTRACE: Specifies the location of the autotrace program.

FILES

~/.PfaEdit/autosave/: crash recovery directory

/usr/share/pfaedit/*.ui: translations for the user interface

/usr/share/doc/pfaedit/*.html: optional location for online documentation.

*.cidmap: "encoding" files for Adobe's cid formats
from http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/cidmaps.tgz

AUTHOR

George Williams

BUGS

No doubt many. But unknown (and ever changing). See http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/#known-bugs for a current list.