Fonts

[Joe Weening <JSW@sail.stanford.edu>]

Les Earnest tells me that KST is an MIT font format that is very similar
to the FNT format used for XGP fonts at Stanford.  (Does anyone still have
an XGP these days?  Ours died a few years ago.  I think it went to the
Computer Museum.)

PXL was the format output by old Metafont (pre-1984), but is still in wide
use.  The new Metafont uses GF (generic font) format.  There are programs
to translate between the two formats, so it is not much of a problem.  To
add confusion, there is a PK ("packed") format which is better than GF in
most respects.  There is a GF to PK translator, and recently I heard about
a PK to PXL translator, completing the circle.

All of these formats (PXL, GF, PK) were intended not to be specific to any
particular output device, and the thought was that people would translate
them to formats specific to their printers or screens.  In some cases this
has been done (e.g. for the Dover printer, which we still use here), but
most output drivers nowadays just accept one or more of the generic
formats.  None of them contain kerning and similar information; when
people use TeX, it gets this from the associated TFM files.

Sorry if this has been a bit long-winded.  If anyone is serious about
keeping compatible with the TeX/Metafont world, they should add code to
the Symbolics font editor to read GF files; this would skip a step (GF to
PXL translation) that is currently needed.

						Joe