[tex-live] PK fonts characters left blank by "dvips -P pdf" on windows

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Tue Nov 16 17:03:53 CET 2010


Cezary Śliwa <sliwa at cft.edu.pl> wrote:

> Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> > sliwa at cft.edu.pl wrote:
> >> It seems that "dvips -P pdf" fails to properly generate PK fonts on
> >> Windows, leaving characters blank (tested on TeX Live 2010 and also 2009).
> >> No such problem on Linux. The reason is probably that mktexpk ignores
> >> --dpi and uses just the MF mode, resulting in a font generated at 600dpi
> >> instead of 8000dpi. I see that mktexpk is an EXE file on Windows...
> >
> > -Ppdf really ought not to be necessary nowadays, anyway.  (i suspect the
> > faq doesn't agree: i'll review that tonight -- i've a new version of the
> > faq near to release.)
> 
> OK, but then what is the purpose of config.pdf included in the
> distribution? Are the blank characters intentional?

config.pdf supports people who continue to use this mechanism.

> > it has never (ime) worked for documents that required bitmap fonts --
> > since there has never been a metafont mode for a 8000dpi printer.
> 
> dpdfezzz is used on Linux.

what linux?  (it's not available on mine, that i can see.)

> > so what you observe is nothing directly to do with tl -- i first noticed
> > it with an early tetex, i think.
> 
> Right, the sames happens when using TeX installed with my Linux distro
> (CentOS 5.5). But the Windows version of mktexpk from TeX Live just
> silently ignores --dpi, which is not OK, I think.

ah.  that's a bug, i would imagine.

> > if your system is daft enough not to use outline fonts by default for
> > computer modern, etc., there are other ways to solve the problem.
> 
> The font is bbm (I doubt there is a PostScript ouline version).

not on ctan, anyway.  there aren't many blackboard bold fonts available
in outline format -- apart from the default msbm, there's only
doublestroke, i think.  istr doublestroke isn't well thought of: perhaps
the gust font people can be persuaded to convert bbm, too.



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