Font-AFM - README

NAME

Font::AFM - Interface to Adobe Font Metrics files

SYNOPSIS

     use Font::AFM;
     $h = new Font::AFM "Helvetica";
     $copyright = $h->Notice;
     $w = $h->Wx->{"aring"};
     $w = $h->stringwidth("Gisle", 10);
     $h->dump;  # for debugging

DESCRIPTION

This module implements the Font::AFM class. Objects of this class are initialised from an AFM-file and allows you to obtain information about the font and the metrics of the various glyphs in the font.

All measurements in AFM files are given in terms of units equal to 1/1000 of the scale factor of the font being used. To compute actual sizes in a document, these amounts should be multiplied by (scale factor of font)/1000.

The following methods are available:

$afm = Font::AFM->new($fontname)

       Object constructor. Takes the name of the font as argument.
       It will croak if the font can not be found.

$afm->latin1_wx_table()

       Returns a 256 element array, where each element contains the
       width of the corresponding character in the iso-8859-1
       character set.

$afm->stringwidth($string, [$fontsize])

       Returns the width of the string passed as argument. The
       string is assumed to be encoded in the iso-8859-1 character
       set. A second argument can be used to scale the width
       according to the font size.

$afm->FontName

       The name of the font as presented to the PostScript language
       `findfont' operator, for instance "Times-Roman".

$afm->FullName

       Unique, human-readable name for an individual font, for
       instance "Times Roman".

$afm->FamilyName

       Human-readable name for a group of fonts that are stylistic
       variants of a single design. All fonts that are member of
       such a group should have exactly the same `FamilyName'.
       Example of a family name is "Times".

$afm->Weight

       Human-readable name for the weight, or "boldness", attribute
       of a font. Exampes are `Roman', `Bold', `Light'.

$afm->ItalicAngle

       Angle in degrees counterclockwise from the vertical of the
       dominant vertical strokes of the font.

$afm->IsFixedPitch

       If the value is `true', it indicated that the font is a
       fixed-pitch (monospaced) font.

$afm->FontBBox

       A string of four numbers giving the lower-left x, lower-left
       y, upper-right x, and upper-right y of the font bounding box.
       The font bounding box is the smallest rectangle enclosing the
       shape that would result if all the characters of the font
       were placed with their origins coincident, and then painted.

$afm->UnderlinePosition

       Recommended distance from the baseline for positioning
       underline stokes. This number is the y coordinate of the
       center of the stroke.

$afm->UnderlineThickness

Recommended stroke width for underlining.

$afm->Version

Version number of the font.

$afm->Notice

Trademark or copyright notice, if applicable.

$afm->Comment

Comments found in the AFM file.

$afm->EncodingScheme

       The name of the standard encoding scheme for the font. Most
       Adobe fonts use the `AdobeStandardEncoding'. Special fonts
       might state `FontSpecific'.

$afm->CapHeight

Usually the y-value of the top of the capital H.

$afm->XHeight

Typically the y-value of the top of the lowercase x.

$afm->Ascender

Typically the y-value of the top of the lowercase d.

$afm->Descender

Typically the y-value of the bottom of the lowercase p.

$afm->Wx

       Returns a hash table that maps from glyph names to the width
       of that glyph.

$afm->BBox

       Returns a hash table that maps from glyph names to bounding
       box information. The bounding box consist of 4 numbers: llx,
       lly, urx, ury.

$afm->dump

       Dumps the content of the Font::AFM object to STDOUT. Might
       sometimes be useful for debugging.

The AFM specification can be found at:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/DeveloperSupport/TechNotes/PSfiles/5004.AFM_Spec.ps

ENVIRONMENT

METRICS Contains the path to seach for AFM-files. Format is as for

              the PATH environment variable. The default path built
              into this library is:

               /usr/lib/afm:/usr/local/lib/afm:/usr/openwin/lib/fonts/afm/:.

BUGS

Kerning data and composite character data is not yet parsed. Ligature data is not parsed.

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.