Subject: TTF to PS conversion v 1.2 Documentation

From: "L.S.Ng" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 1994 12:54:29 BST

True Type Font to Postscript conversion
=======================================

1.  This program consists of several algorithms that convert True Type
Font (TTF) data points to Postscript (PS) data points, including
Elevation of Quadratic B-spline curve to Cubic B-spline curve
('Elevation') and Decomposition of Glyph into Separate Paths
('Decomposition').  They are described in greater detail else where.

2.  The program can be compiled in various ways, e.g.  using GNU C
Compiler:

    gcc -o ttf2ps ttf2ps.c

3. Usage:

    ttf2ps TTF-file Document-file

4.  This implementation is specially configured for reading Format 3
(Chinese Big5) TTF file.  The document file here should be a Chinese
Big5 document file.  The load_font() function for reading TTF Glyph is
written for Format 3 TTF.  Chinese TTF files can be obtained from ftp
ifcss.org:/software/fonts

5.  Limitations:
a) in this release (version 1.2), support for ASCII and
non-Chinese characters/symbols are not included.  Any non-Chinese
character/symbols are treated as blank space.
b) Layout is limited to one page only.
Application notes: this program can be used, at least, to draw a few
lines of Chinese characters such as Dui Lian or some greeting cards.

6.  The output file is a Postscript program with two parts.  The first
part consists of layout settings (horizontal/vertical), character size
and attribute (outline/filled) and the definition of each characters in
terms of paths.  The second part is an image of the original document
formatted line by line.

7.  Each character is treated as several PS paths, without using the
Font structure of the Postscript language, for several practical
reasons.  Each character is drawn using 'translate & ufill/ustroke'
rather than 'moveto & show'.

8.  Application notes:  Based on this algorithm, it is possible to
generate Postscript Fonts from TTF fonts.  This is particularly
significant to Chinese Desktop Publishing as Chinese DTP resources such
as fonts have been rare and expensive. It is hope that this will bring
down the costs and pushes the perfomance level of Chinese DTP.