Re: Linux man-pages PDF book

["G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>]

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At 2024-04-16T03:02:28+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > > troff:<standard input>:1649: error: cannot load font 'TINOR' to
> > > mark it as special
> > 
> > Your _FONTSDIR must point to a directory which has a subdirectory
> > called 'devpdf' which holds TINOR and UnifontM and a suitable
> > 'download' file which gives the location of the actual .pf[ab] files
> > (i.e. within texlive - no need to copy it). The difference,
> > with/without, is in the number of glyphs not found messages.
> 
> I also need to understand what's that TINOR file, what type of file it
> is, and how I can get it.

This, I can answer.  It is a device-independent troff font description
file.  It is a plain text file in a format documented by Brian Kernighan
originally in CSTR #97 in about 1982, then in the 1992 revision of CSTR
#54, and of course also in the groff_font(5) man page.

The reason for the font description file is that traditionally digital
fonts were (1) restrictively licensed and (2) programs that used fonts
often didn't need the fonts themselves, but just descriptions of what
glyphs they contained and the dimensions ("metrics") of each glyph.  It
is a rendering device that uses a digital font.  A typesetter (or
graphical display system[1]) needs only to know the metrics of the
glyphs to that it can position them appropriately relative to each
other.

This is why when PDF renderers substitute fonts, the result is often so
terribly ugly.  The glyphs of the substituted font are placed in
positions appropriate to a font that may have different metrics.  So
they are crowded or spaced out weirdly, the kerning is off, and so on.

Regards,
Branden

[1] Historically in the X Window System there was a transition from
    "server-side" font rendering to "client-side".  I suspect
    server-side rendering was implemented in the first place to work
    around the expense of digital font licensing.  Someone like Jim
    Gettys would know for sure.

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