This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete
documentation for this version of TeX can be found in the info file
or manual
Web2C: A TeX implementation.
The
tftopl
program translates a (program-oriented) font metric file to a
(human-oriented) property list file. Thus, you can edit the contents of
the TFM files, if the font designer has not done his or her job
properly, or if you're encountering strange difficulties, or if you're
just curious. It also serves as a TFM-file validating program, i.e., if
no error messages are given, the input file is correct.
The
pl_name
is extended with
.pl
if it lacks a suffix.
If
pl_name
is not given, standard output is used. Likewise,
tfm_name
is extended with
.tfm
if it lacks a suffix. Also, path searching is done for the
.tfm
file
using the environment variable TEXFONTS. If that is not set,
tftopl
uses the system default.
The argument
format
to
-charcode-format
specifies how character codes are output in the PL file. By
default, only letters and digits are output using the
C
integer code (i.e., in ASCII); the others are output in octal. (Unless
the font's coding scheme starts with
TeX math sy
or
TeX math ex,
in which case all character codes are output in octal.) If
format
is
ascii,
all character codes that correspond to graphic characters, besides the
left and right parentheses, are output in ASCII. Finally, if
format
is
octal,
all character codes are output in octal.
Without the
-verbose
option,
tftopl
operates silently. With it, a banner and progress report are printed on
stdout.
SEE ALSO
pltotf(1),
Donald E. Knuth,
TeX
ware.
Donald E. Knuth,
The Metafontbook
(Volume C of
Computers and Typesetting),
Addison-Wesley, 1986, ISBN 0-201-13445-4.
AUTHORS
Donald E. Knuth wrote the program. It was published as
part of the
TeX
ware
technical report, available from the TeX Users Group.
Howard Trickey and Pavel Curtis originally ported it to Unix.
