pkfix-helper - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

pkfix-helper - preprocess dvips-produced PostScript documents before passing them to pkfix

SYNOPSIS

pkfix-helper [--help] [--verbose] [--force=name=fontspec] [--ps=filename.ps]
[--tex=filename.tex] [--cache=filename] [--include=fontspec] [--exclude=regexp]
[--keep=fontspec] [--quiet] [--no-repeats] [--spp=number] [input.ps [output.ps]]

DESCRIPTION

Motivation
PostScript documents created with old versions of dvips almost invariably utilize
bitmapped (PostScript Type 3) fonts. The problem with bitmapped fonts is that they target
a specific device resolution; a PostScript file produced using 300 DPI fonts will look
grainy on a 600 DPI printer. Even worse, all bitmapped fonts look grainy when zoomed in
on screen. The solution is to use vector (PostScript Type 1) fonts, which are resolution-
independent and appear crisp at any size or scale.

While it is no longer difficult to configure dvips to use vector fonts, it is not always
possible to rerun dvips on an old .dvi file. The .dvi file and document source may have
been lost; or, the source may no longer compile because packages it depends upon may no
longer be available.

Heiko Oberdiek's pkfix script replaces bitmapped fonts in dvips-produced PostScript files
with the corresponding vector fonts. It works by parsing the PostScript comments with
which dvips surrounds bitmapped-font definitions. For example, a font definition
beginning with the comment "%DVIPSBitmapFont: Fi cmss10 11 28" and ending with a matching
%EndDVIPSBitmapFont is known to define font "Fi" as "cmss10" (Computer Modern Sans Serif
at a design size of 10 points) scaled to 11 points. Only the 28 characters actually used
by the document are defined. pkfix then replaces the font definition with one that
defines "Fi" using the same set of characters but taken from the cmss10.pfb vector font
file.

Unfortunately, pkfix works only with versions of dvips newer than v5.58 (ca. 1996).
Naturally, the older a PostScript document, the less likely its sources still exist and
can still be recompiled. Older versions of dvips lack %DVIPSBitmapFont comments and
various other PostScript comments on which pkfix relies. Without PostScript comments to
guide it, pkfix is unable to determine which vector fonts correspond with which bitmapped
fonts.

Overview
The pkfix-helper script is a preprocessor for pkfix that attempts to determine the
association between each document-font name (e.g., "Fi") in a PostScript file and the
original font (e.g., "cmss10") and fonts size (e.g., 11 points). It then fabricates the
PostScript comments that pkfix expects to see so that pkfix can do its job.

pkfix-helper works by comparing every document font against every .tfm font file it knows
about (assuming that each such font has a corresponding .pfb vector version) and selecting
the best matching .tfm file for every document font. pkfix-helper has access only to the
widths of characters and only to those characters actually used in the document. Also,
the program recognizes only a limited set of the most popular .tfm files and scaling
factors. Consequently, the comparison is imperfect and pkfix-helper may attribute an
incorrect font to a given name. Fonts comprising only one or two characters actually used
in a document are particularly problematic for pkfix-helper because many fonts may be
near-enough matches to fool the problem.

pkfix-helper is designed so that a user can guide the font-selection process by manually
designating matching fonts. With a modicum of diligence and patience a user can correct
any mismatched fonts and help the program provide proper input to pkfix.

OPTIONS

pkfix-helper accepts on the command line the filename of a PostScript document to process
(with the default being the standard input device) and the filename of a modified
PostScript document to create (with the default being the standard output device). The
program also accepts the following command-line options:

Frequently Used Options
-h, --help
Display usage information and exit. The --verbose and --quiet options can be used to
increase and decrease the amount of information presented.

-v, --verbose
Increase the amount of status information that pkfix-helper displays as it runs.
Additional instances of --verbose on the command line further increase the program's
verbosity. By default, only major operations are displayed. A single --verbose
additionally displays information about individual font comparisons. A second
--verbose additionally displays details about some of the program's internal
operations.

-f name=fontspec, --force=name=fontspec
Force pkfix-helper to associate a specific font with a given font name appearing the
document. name is a two-character dvips font name such as "Fa". fontspec is a font
specification such as "cmmi8" or "cmsy10 @ 1.1X". An asterisk used in the name of the
base font (e.g., "cmti*") will automatically try all integral test font sizes from 5
to 17 points ("cmti5", "cmti6", ..., "cmti17"). An asterisk used as a scale value
(e.g., "cmsy10 @ *") will be replaced by the scale value that gives the best match to
the original font's metrics. The --force option can be specified repeatedly on the
command line.

-p filename.ps, --ps=filename.ps
Create a PostScript file called filename.ps that shows the dvips name and a font
sample of every font used by the input document.

-t filename.tex, --tex=filename.tex
Create a Plain TeX file called filename.tex that shows the dvips name and a font
sample of every font that pkfix-helper used in the output document.

Infrequently Used Options
-C filename, --cache=filename
Speed up TFM file processing by caching character metrics into file filename. On some
systems it takes a long time to read a TFM file, spawn tftopl to convert it to PL
format, and extract from the PL data the metrics for each character. The first time
--cache is specified, pkfix-helper proceeds as normal then writes all of the extracted
character metrics to filename. On subsequent runs in which --cache=filename is
specified, pkfix-helper reads the previously extracted metrics from filename, going
through the tftopl-based process only for TFM files that were not previously
encountered.

-q, --quiet
Instruct pkfix-helper to produce no output during its run except for fatal error
messages.

-1, --no-repeats
Prevent pkfix-helper from associating the same fontspec with more than one dvips font
name.

-i fontspec, --include=fontspec
Add fontspec to the list of font specifications against which pkfix-helper compares
every document font. (In contrast, --force designates a font specification to use
only for a specific document font.) The --include option can be specified repeatedly
on the command line.

-x regexp, --exclude=regexp
Remove all font specifications matching regular expression regexp from pkfix-helper's
list of known fonts. The --exclude option can be specified repeatedly on the command
line.

-k fontspec, --keep=fontspec
Do not substitute a vector font for bitmapped font fontspec ("Fa", "Fb", etc.). This
is useful when converting documents that use obscure bitmapped fonts for which there
is no vector equivalent. For example, it was somewhat common in the past to include
graphics such as university or corporate logos into a document by converting the
bitmapped image into a single-character font and using that font in LaTeX. --keep
prevents such fonts from being replaced. The --keep option can be specified
repeatedly on the command line.

-a, --any-scale
Allow any value to be used to scale a font when ""*"" is specified as the scale
factor. Normally, pkfix-helper considers only integer multiples of 0.1 that are
greater than or equal to 1.0 (i.e., fontname@1X, "@1.1X", "@1.2X", "@1.3X", etc.).

-s, --spp
Specify the number of font samples per page to print to the files indicated using the
--ps and --tex options. The default value, 25, should work well in most
circumstances.

DIAGNOSTICS

"Best match for name is rather poor"
The best font pkfix-helper found for dvips font name name has a mismatch value greater
than or equal to 1.0. (The mismatch value is the sum of the squares of the difference
between the character widths of a document font and a potential replacement font.)
Use the --force option to designate an alternative replacement font or scaling amount.

EXAMPLES

For the purpose of the following examples, assume that oldfile.ps is the name of a
PostScript file produced by an old version of dvips and utilizing at least one bitmapped
font. It's always worth verifying that pkfix can't convert the file on its own:

$ pkfix oldfile.ps newfile.ps
PKFIX 1.3, 2005/02/25 - Copyright (c) 2001, 2005 by Heiko Oberdiek.
==> no fonts converted

(Alternatively pkfix may issue an error message such as "!!! Error: Parse error (@start
parameters)!".) Only when pkfix can't replace bitmapped fonts with vector fonts is pkfix-
helper needed. In its simplest form, pkfix-helper takes the name of an input file
(oldfile.ps in this example) and the name of an output file (pkfix-oldfile.ps), which will
have the same contents as the input file but serve as suitable input for pkfix:

$ pkfix-helper oldfile.ps pkfix-oldfile.ps
Reading oldfile.ps ... done.
Number of Type 3 fonts encountered: 10
Bitmapped fonts are typeset at 600 DPI.
Finding character widths ... done.
Reading TFM files ... done (103 TFMs in 193 scaling variations).
Matching fonts:
Processing Fi ... done (cmr10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.11683).
Processing Fa ... done (cmti10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.08892).
Processing Fb ... done (cmr8 @ 1X, mismatch=0.07133).
Processing Ff ... done (cmbx12 @ 1.2X, mismatch=0.02948).
Processing Fh ... done (cmtt10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.06895).
Processing Fd ... done (cmmi10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.03966).
Processing Fj ... done (cmbx12 @ 1X, mismatch=0.03972).
Processing Fe ... done (cmbx10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.00762).
Processing Fg ... done (cmsy10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.00875).
Processing Fc ... done (cmr6 @ 1X, mismatch=0.00284).

$ pkfix pkfix-oldfile.ps newfile.ps
PKFIX 1.3, 2005/02/25 - Copyright (c) 2001, 2005 by Heiko Oberdiek.
*** Font conversion: `cmti10' -> `CMTI10'.
*** Font conversion: `cmr8' -> `CMR8'.
*** Font conversion: `cmr6' -> `CMR6'.
*** Font conversion: `cmmi10' -> `CMMI10'.
*** Font conversion: `cmbx10' -> `CMBX10'.
*** Font conversion: `cmbx12' -> `CMBX12'.
*** Font conversion: `cmsy10' -> `CMSY10'.
*** Font conversion: `cmtt10' -> `CMTT10'.
*** Font conversion: `cmr10' -> `CMR10'.
*** Font conversion: `cmbx12' -> `CMBX12'.
*** Merging font `CMBX12' (2).
==> 10 converted fonts.
==> 1 merged font.

Although pkfix-helper tries to automate as much as possible the font-detection process,
some fonts will invariably be incorrectly identified. The program outputs a warning
message if it knows a match is bad but the lack of a warning message does not necessarily
indicate that pkfix-helper did a good job. It is therefore strongly recommended that the
user produce "before" and "after" font sheets:

$ pkfix-helper -q oldfile.ps pkfix-oldfile.ps \
--ps=oldfonts.ps --tex=newfonts.tex

$ tex newfonts.tex
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.4.5)
(./newfonts.tex [1] )
Output written on newfonts.dvi (1 page, 1292 bytes).
Transcript written on newfonts.log.

$ dvips newfonts.dvi -o newfonts.ps
This is dvips(k) 5.92b Copyright 2002 Radical Eye Software (www.radicaleye.com)
' TeX output 2006.06.11:1636' -> newfonts.ps
<texc.pro><8r.enc><texps.pro>. <cmr6.pfb><cmsy10.pfb><cmbx10.pfb><cmbx12.pfb>
<cmmi10.pfb><cmtt10.pfb><cmr8.pfb><cmti10.pfb><cmr10.pfb>[1]

After running the preceding commands, oldfonts.ps shows samples of the fonts in oldfile.ps
and newfonts.ps shows samples of the replacement fonts that pkfix-helper used to produce
pkfix-oldfile.ps. Print oldfonts.ps and newfonts.ps and compare them carefully for
incorrect fonts and sizes.

Suppose that the choice of "cmbx12 @ 1.2X" for font "Ff" looks wrong; say the characters
look taller in oldfonts.ps than in newfonts.ps. This is where the trial-and-error stage
begins. Let's hypothesize that "cmb12" is a better match than "cmbx12" but we don't know
how much to scale the font. Fortunately, pkfix-helper allows "*" to be used as a scaling
factor to tell the program to automatically detect an optimal scaling factor, even if
doing so means choosing a nonstandard font size:

$ pkfix-helper oldfile.ps pkfix-oldfile.ps --force="Ff=cmb12 @ *"
Reading oldfile.ps ... done.
Number of Type 3 fonts encountered: 10
Bitmapped fonts are typeset at 600 DPI.
Finding character widths ... done.
Reading TFM files ... failed.
pkfix-helper: Unable to process user-specified TFM file "cmb12"

Oops, it looks like we don't have a cmb12.tfm file on our system. Let's try scaling up
cmb10.tfm instead:

$ pkfix-helper oldfile.ps pkfix-oldfile.ps --force="Ff=cmb10 @ *"
Reading oldfile.ps ... done.
Number of Type 3 fonts encountered: 10
Bitmapped fonts are typeset at 600 DPI.
Finding character widths ... done.
Reading TFM files ... done (103 TFMs in 193 scaling variations).
Matching fonts:
Processing Fi ... done (cmr10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.11683).
Processing Fa ... done (cmti10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.08892).
Processing Fb ... done (cmr8 @ 1X, mismatch=0.07133).
Processing Ff ... done (cmb10 @ 1.5X, mismatch=0.00035).
Processing Fh ... done (cmtt10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.06895).
Processing Fd ... done (cmmi10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.03966).
Processing Fj ... done (cmbx12 @ 1X, mismatch=0.03972).
Processing Fe ... done (cmbx10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.00762).
Processing Fg ... done (cmsy10 @ 1X, mismatch=0.00875).
Processing Fc ... done (cmr6 @ 1X, mismatch=0.00284).

The match has definitely improved, although 15 pt. is certainly an odd size for a font.
Then again, many documents do use nonstandard sizes so this may in fact be correct. The
best way to verify is once again to produce, print, and compare a pair of font samples and
iterate until all of the fonts look correct. Use one instance of --force for each font
you want to alter.

ENVIRONMENT

pkfix-helper honors the following environment variables:

GS The name of the Ghostscript interpreter (default: gs)

TFTOPL The name of a utility for converting .tfm files to .pl files (default: tftopl)

Use pkfix-helper online using onworks.net services