[Fontinst] Simple question about \xscalefont{}{}

[Lars Hellström]

At 00.20 +0200 2004-06-28, Duraid Madina wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I just read Philipp Lehman's "The Font Installation Guide" and it was
>very helpful - for the first time, I could get some Postscript fonts I
>had bought a long time ago to work with LaTeX.
>
>Well, I have just one last question. I have a monospaced font which
>works OK: I can install it using a file pcr-drv.tex which reads:
>
>\input fontinst.sty
>\recordtransforms{pcr-rec.tex}
>\latinfamily{pcr}{}
>\endrecordtransforms
>\bye
>
>(The font isn't really Courier but renaming the PFBs/AFMs, it seems to
>"just work".)

If you ever intend to exchange files with anyone else, it might be a good
idea to use the proper name of the font.

>However, the font is a bit too wide. I would like to fake a condensed
>version by using the fontinst command \xscalefont{850}{} . However, I
>don't know how to use this command. Does it belong in pcr-drv.tex? Or in
>another place?
>
>If anyone could give me some simple instructions as to how to use this
>command, it would be much appreciated!

It is typically used like

\transformfont{pcr8rn}{\xscalefont{850}{\reencodefont{8r}{\fromafm{pcr8a}}}}

This will generate MTX and PL fonts corresponding to a TeXBase1-encoded
(8r) Courier (pcr) that has been made "narrow" (n) by the x-scaling you
requested. The manual describes this, although maybe it isn't entirely
clear from it that every

  \xscaledfont{...}{<transformed font>}

is also an example of a <transformed font>.

However, since you are using fontinst on the \latinfamily (which is a
generic just-make-all-the-fonts-in-this-family command) level, you will
probably find it easier to use the \fakenarrow directive to \latinfamily.
Thus try:

\input fontinst.sty
\recordtransforms{pcr-rec.tex}
\fakenarrow{850}
\latinfamily{pcr}{}
\endrecordtransforms
\bye