From: terjem@stud.cs.uit.no (Terje Normann Marthinussen)
Subject: Re: Metafont font generation for TeX
Organization: University of Tromsoe
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 00:16:08 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.200448.5380@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>, zarthac@bradley.edu (Matthew Simmons) writes:
>Jonathan P Moore - H600/91 (u1jpm@ohm.york.ac.uk) wrote:
>: Can anybody give me a fools guide on how to set up metafont using
>: Arexx so that when I use dvips or Showdvi it actually generates the
>: font required??
>and dviprint...
>
>: The docs are a bit skimpy, and my knowledge of Arexx relies upon the
>: manual that comes with Workbench 2 (ie I know nothing!)
>
>: Thanks a lot
>
>Could you post this, instead of sending it via e-mail?  I'm about to 
>voyage into the world of PasTeX again....

Hmm....
Well, I shall try to give an explanation.

First of all find the callmf package which is included in the Pastex
distribution (in REXX/CallMF) or I believe it's also available as a separate
distribution.

Study the README file there and copy files to their correct destinations 
according to the README file.
(I believe you should copy the two #?.mf files to MF:inputs and the "modes" file
to MF:config.)

Then you'll have to set the CallMF enviroment variable to whatever suits you.
Personally I like metafont to calculate new fonts at once. But before I got
my A4000 this was kind of slow.... So I sometimes used to collect a couple of 
batch files that I could let my Amy work on while I was out :)

If you want metafont to calculate new fonts at once, you should probably
put something like setenv CallMF TeX:REXX/CallMF/MakeTeXFonts in your 
startup sequence (in case you have put the included arexx scripts in REXX:
setenv CallMF MakeTeXFonts is enough (Oh... don't I just love those multiple
assigns...:))

Note: Make sure that you have made a correct assignment of MF: and added a path
      to MF:bin before you do the next steps.

Then you'll probably have to dump a new plain.base file.
cd to the MF:bases directory.
enter:
inimf 
[you'll then get a message like "This is METAFONT, C Version 2.7 (INIMF)"]
**plain
[some text being printed on the screen]
*/input mydevices
[some more text]
*/input Pastex-modes
[even more text]
*/<input any other configuration file that you'll like to include here>
*/dump

Well...
After this Metafont should be ready to use.

But, right now Showdvi (or printdvi) will probably pop up a requester for 
different font disks each time it can't find the font in "TeX:pk". If you press 
cancel, then MetaFont should be started and a new font calculated and put into 
TeX:pk.

If you want to avoid getting this requester simply remove the file
TeX:config/FontVols (uh... I'm typing from my head now... I think it was the name
of the file at least).

Well, as far as I remember that should be all.
I think most or all of the above could be found in the documentation included
with the CallMF and MetaFont packages.

By the way...
Thanks to all the persons which have made TeX/Metafont and utilities available.
Btw. Would the speed increase of a special version compiled for 68040 be big 
enough to justify it's distribution?


Terje Marthinussen
terjem@stud.cs.uit.no



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