NEWS 2.9.0 92/07/06 -- list of changes to mff = CHANGES SINCE MFF 2.8 = pdc Mon. 6 July 1992 You can install fonts on a different filesystem Previously if the directory specified by -T or -P was on a different filesystem, on some systems mff would fail with the message "cross-device link". Now mff tries to make a copy of the file if plain linking fails. A "m" can be used in the part of font names to use mm For example, ma55a3m5 is 3.5-mm Malvern 55 (about the same as ma55s10, as it happens). "shar" dropped from the distribution -v options accumulate to increase verbosity Just -v prints only the #{{{ and #}}} lines; more -v options cause mff to be more verbose. I added this feature to make "mff -vf-" more useful. The -n output is simplified. rejigged the Computer Modern clone fonts The CM clones now all have names strating `fcm' to suit Karl Berry's naming scheme: fcm? is like cm?, fcm?s is like cmss?, fcm?t is like cmtt?, and fcm?st is like a cheap electric typewriter. renamed KM to CM CM now stands for Computer Modern; it is very similar to Knuth's Computer Modern Roman/Text Italic. I have also added the option of numeric style names to the rc.mff file -- cm55s12 is roman, cm56s12 is italic and cm75s12 is boldface. Facilities for brain-damaged filesystems A friend of mine owns an Atari ST, which uses an MS-DOS-like filesystem. When compiled on such a machine, mff uses commas/semicolons in its searchpath(s) and understands backslashes in file names (it also allows forward slashes, on the expectation that something like the GNU library filename-mapping is being used). Certain filesystems -- including the MS-DOS system one -- cannot deal with filenames of the length needed by TeX fonts. mff understands font templates like C:\FONTS\%f\%n.%p and now if the subdirectory C:\FONTS\%f is missing it will attempt to create it. Further, since FOO.300PK and FOO.300GF may no longer be distinct names, the GFtoPK processor is requested to produce an intermediate file called FOO.PK instead (which is then renamed to whatever the -P template specifies, by default FOO/300.PK). A proper ST distribution would also include plain-text documentation rather than nroff manual pages, and a simpler makefile. I'm part-way there. rc.mff changed to mff.rc It seemed to make sense at the time for startup files to be named rc.mff because other mff files end in ".mff". However, for consistency with the MS-DOS-filenames versions, I have changed back to using "mff.rc" as the name. (There is a CPP macro that canels this change.) many small internal changes Less dependence on newer libary functions (an attempt to be more portable). More syntax errors produce an error message instead of mysterious behaviour. The association-list module has been rewritten with a simpler, cleaner implementation. The code is more portable than it was. Some subtle bugs have been fixed. more man pages = CHANGES SINCE MFJOB 2.7.1 = Damian Cugley Sat. 1 June 1991 mfjob has been renamed mff This is to prevent confusion with Eberhard Mattes' MFjob. MFjob does a similar job to mff, and is part of the emTeX distribution for MS-DOS and OS/2 personal computers. This means that files named after the program -- such as .mfjobrc -- now have new names. While I was at it I changed the per-project startup file to rc.mff rather than .mffrc; this makes it a visible file which is probably more sensible. The system startup file was renamed rc.mff to match. the first input command -- a hack to get the name right -- is removed This means that it does not produce empty .mf files. Instead METAFONT/GFtoPK creates the TFM and GF files as .tfm and .XXXpk (because jobname is set to the driver name not the font name). These are renamed to .tfm and .XXXpk in the appropriate directories. To support this, the -T and -P options are now *filename* templates not *directory* templates. %f.tfm and %f.%n%p are appended if necessary, so directory names can still be used. A side effect is that only one log file is produced per driver file, instead of one per font. This is usually an advantage -- unless there is some sort of error (in which case mff terminates and the log file is preserved) the log files are not wanted. This results in a lot less clutter. Another consequence is that `mff cmr12' does not work any more -- formerly it would input cmr12.mf and because this ended in `bye' the second (spurious) `input' was ignored! Now a new option has been added to suppress the parsing step altogether -- so `mff -S cmr12' now ought to work. Font sizes can include p for a decimal point For those people that need such things, ma7p5 can be used to mean 7.5-pt Malvern. Note that this means you can not have a suffix ending in p. Configuration now all in Makefile -- -D directives override config.h man pages for shar and testfont gray.mf -- a simple hackette for making grayfonts easily a small program searchpath added This is a "corollary" to the searchpath module that is used by mff. It is only useful in shellscripts (in the style of dirname(1) and basename(1)). some bug fixes * Local Variables: mode: text fill-prefix: " " fill-column: 76 End: