Short of buying Fontographer or its successor, what tools are available 
to convert fonts to .ttf so Povray can use them?

-- 
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
"How'd ya like to climb this high *without* no mountain?" --Porky Pine

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Anton Sherwood wrote:
> Short of buying Fontographer or its successor, what tools are available 
> to convert fonts to .ttf so Povray can use them?

Since 3.5 you don't need any tools. Just supply the font name and all that 
are supported will be used automatically.

	Thorsten

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> Anton Sherwood wrote:
>> Short of buying Fontographer or its successor, what tools are 
>> available to convert fonts to .ttf so Povray can use them?

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> Since 3.5 you don't need any tools. Just supply the font name
> and all that are supported will be used automatically.

I made a wild guess at the syntax, but no luck ..

-- 
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
"How'd ya like to climb this high *without* no mountain?" --Porky Pine

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Anton Sherwood wrote:
>> Anton Sherwood wrote:
>>> Short of buying Fontographer or its successor, what tools are 
>>> available to convert fonts to .ttf so Povray can use them?
> 
> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
>> Since 3.5 you don't need any tools. Just supply the font name
>> and all that are supported will be used automatically.
> 
> I made a wild guess at the syntax, but no luck ..

There is no "syntax" to guess. You just supply the _name_ of the font.

	Thorsten

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>>> Anton Sherwood wrote:
>>>> Short of buying Fontographer or its successor, what tools are 
>>>> available to convert fonts to .ttf so Povray can use them?

>> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
>>> Since 3.5 you don't need any tools. Just supply the font name
>>> and all that are supported will be used automatically.

> Anton Sherwood wrote:
>> I made a wild guess at the syntax, but no luck ..

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> There is no "syntax" to guess. You just supply the _name_ of the font.

So I open the "Text Fonts" scene template and replace "crystal.ttf"
with "Baskerville Bold" (having first used Font Book to choose an 
existing font name), and am not utterly astonished to see

	Parse Error: Cannot open font file.

Then it occurs to me that "no syntax" could mean the keyword "ttf" 
shouldn't be there, so I delete it and am even less amazed to see

	Parse Error: Expected 'ttf', string literal found instead

So far so good.

-- 
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
"How'd ya like to climb this high *without* no mountain?" --Porky Pine

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Anton Sherwood <bro### [at] poboxcom> wrote:
> >>> Anton Sherwood wrote:
> >>>> Short of buying Fontographer or its successor, what tools are
> >>>> available to convert fonts to .ttf so Povray can use them?
>
> >> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> >>> Since 3.5 you don't need any tools. Just supply the font name
> >>> and all that are supported will be used automatically.
>
> So I open the "Text Fonts" scene template and replace "crystal.ttf"
> with "Baskerville Bold" (having first used Font Book to choose an
> existing font name), and am not utterly astonished to see
>
>  Parse Error: Cannot open font file.
>
> Then it occurs to me that "no syntax" could mean the keyword "ttf"
> shouldn't be there, so I delete it and am even less amazed to see
>
>  Parse Error: Expected 'ttf', string literal found instead
>
I think our friend Thorsten Froehlich is overly optimistic...
My experience (of today and earlier):
Of the many fonts available on my Mac, only very few seem to qualify for POV.
Those are mainly Windows fonts with names like "myfont.ttf".
These fonts must be single fonts, not font suitcases. Most dfil fonts or other
fonts described as TrueType by Apple FontBook do not work.
I have managed to convert several of my fonts using two old utlility programs
for Mac Classic: one is TTConverter. Once you have done that, you must put the
new converted fonts in POV's "include" folder or in the same folder as your
..pov file.

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> I think our friend Thorsten Froehlich is overly optimistic...

Well, the thing is that Apple delivers more and more fonts in other formats 
with each version of Mac OS X (which is a good thing, as plain TrueType font 
files are not perfect). And what POV-Ray needs is indeed a "real" TrueType 
font file. One way to get lots of TrueType font files (that still work on 
Mac OS X) is from a Mac OS 9 Install CD. Or from any Windows install, in 
particular if various Adobe tools have been installed before, because they 
tend to come with additional TrueType fonts.

> My experience (of today and earlier):
> Of the many fonts available on my Mac, only very few seem to qualify for POV.
> Those are mainly Windows fonts with names like "myfont.ttf".

They are not Windows fonts, they are regular TrueType font files.

> These fonts must be single fonts, not font suitcases. Most dfil fonts or other
> fonts described as TrueType by Apple FontBook do not work.

Font Book calls almost everything TrueType that isn't a PostScript font. In 
particular, as you note, the new font suitcase files won't work - 
internally they contain multiple TrueType font versions, but that is of no 
use for POV-Ray because they don't match a ".ttf" file format...

	Thorsten

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> I have managed to convert several of my fonts using two old
> utlility programs for Mac Classic: one is TTConverter. . . .

Sigh, I wish you'd said that before I moved to Leopard,
which abandoned Classic ...

-- 
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
"How'd ya like to climb this high *without* no mountain?" --Porky Pine

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Anton Sherwood <bro### [at] poboxcom> wrote:

>> I have managed to convert several of my fonts using two old
>> utlility programs for Mac Classic: one is TTConverter. . . .
>
>Sigh, I wish you'd said that before I moved to Leopard,
>which abandoned Classic ...

SheepShaver works fine, also -- or let's say especially -- on intel Macs 
with Leopard.



Best regards,

Günther

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