MFDoc.tioga
Pavel, September 18, 1985 5:36:46 pm PDT
METAFONT
CEDAR 6.0 — FOR INTERNAL XEROX USE ONLY
METAFONT
Pavel Curtis
© Copyright 1985 Xerox Corporation. All rights reserved.
Abstract: METAFONT is Don Knuth's famous program for helping typographers design families of fonts in a machine-independent fashion. This document describes only how to use the Cedar implementation.
Created by: Pavel Curtis
Maintained by: Pavel Curtis <Pavel.pa>
Keywords: METAFONT, Knuth, fonts
XEROX   Xerox Corporation
    Palo Alto Research Center
    3333 Coyote Hill Road
    Palo Alto, California 94304

For Internal Xerox Use Only
Using METAFONT
Bring over [Cedar]<CedarChest6.0>Top>MF.df
There are three commands: MF, IniMF, and InterruptMF. The first two work as described in the soon-to-be-released METAFONTBOOK. The third is a simple command to make a running METAFONT stop and interact with the user.
There are two User Profile entries of interest:
MF.DefaultInputsDirectory: TOKEN ← "[systemHost]<TeX>Inputs>"
This describes the directory METAFONT should use to find input files that it can't find in the local directory.
MF.DefaultBaseFile: TOKEN ← "[systemHost]<TeX>Formats>Plain.base"
This is the name of the file of pre-digested macros METAFONT will read in order to initialize itself. The default is the Plain macros from the METAFONTBOOK.
There are a few local extensions to the Plain base:
The titling command will override the definition of the specified mode to force METAFONT to display the titles of characters on the screen as they are produced. This is useful with the values of mode which actually produce fonts, as opposed to, for example, proof or smoke modes.
Several new modes have been created:
dover or localfont to produce a font for use on the Dover printers
raven   to produce a font for a Raven printer
platemaker or plate or pmaker
   to produce a font for the Platemaker at 880 dots per inch
lf or strike or ks or screen
   to produce a font for use on an LF display
Fonts for use on PARC printers should be sure to specify a family name, face byte and, optionally, a coding scheme. There are three new macros for this purpose:
font�mily "FOO";
will set the family name to be FOO. This should be all uppercase and contain no spaces.
font�𡤋yte n;
will set the face byte of the font to n. Please make 0 d n d 255.
coding←scheme "foo";
will set the coding scheme to be foo.
If you want to make you input files usable at other METAFONT sites, uses of these three macros should be wrapped in code like this:
if known Xerox←world: ... uses of the three macros ... fi