Mac => PC Font Conversion Toolkit

Have you ever suspected that all the really neat freeware and 
shareware Type 1 and Truetype fonts are available only in 
Macintosh formats?  Do you have some PC fonts that are 
obviously Mac conversions (e.g., high-ANSI characters are in 
the wrong place, font names include extraneous version numbers, 
etc.), but they lack documentation?  Here, all in one place for 
the first time ever (at least at ftp.cica.indiana.edu), are all 
the tools you need to extract Mac font archives and convert the 
fonts to PC format for Windows or ATM.

All these tools came originally from an assortment of FTP sites 
(they are listed in HOW_TO.TXT).  They are all either shareware 
or freeware, and they are included in this archive in the same 
format (ZIP or self-extracting) in which I obtained them.  I 
don't see any legal problems with including them all together 
like this.  If any of the authors object, please contact me 
(address below).

These are the included files:

README.TXT	This file
HOW_TO.TXT	Instructions, from comp.fonts FAQ
BINHEX13.ZIP	Converts Mac Binhex (.HQX) to binary
XBIN23.ZIP	Converts Mac Binhex (.HQX) to binary
EXT-PC.ZIP	Uncompresses Mac Compactor files
UNSITI.EXE	Uncompresses Mac Stuffit files
UNSIT30.ZIP	Uncompresses Mac Stuffit files
REFONT14.ZIP	Converts Type 1 and Truetype fonts: Mac to PC, 
		PC to Mac, *NOT* Type 1 to TTF or TTF to Type 1
BM2AFM02.ZIP	Creates .AFM files from Mac bitmaps

HOW_TO.TXT is taken from the MS-DOS FAQ (frequently asked 
questions) for the Usenet group comp.fonts.  It tells where 
most of these programs came from, and how to use them.  

All the programs are plain DOS programs, but I have had no 
trouble using them in a DOS box in Windows.

Two of the programs, BINHEX13 and XBIN23, convert "binhexed" 
files into binary format.  Binhex is the Mac equivalent of 
UU-encoding, allowing files to be appended to e-mail messages 
or sent over 7-bit communication links.  XBIN23 is the more 
robust of the two, ignoring text headers at the beginning of 
the file, but occasionally it will choke on a file (e.g., 
mira.sit.hqx from archive.umich.edu).  It always creates three 
files, .DAT (the one you want), .INF, and .RSR (these can be 
deleted.  BINHEX13 has a full-screen user interface with a 
dialog box for selecting files.  A text header fools it into 
thinking that it can't handle a file (you can remove the header 
in advance with Notepad).  It successfully converted the files 
that XBIN23 couldn't.  It creates only the .DAT part, and gives 
it a more instructive file extension: .CPT for Compactor files 
and .SIT for Stuffit files.

Compactor and Stuffit are types of compressed archives, similar 
to ZIP files.  Compactor seems to be used more, especially for 
fonts.  EXT-PC (EXTRACT.EXE) extracts these files.  It is ordinarily run 
twice:

EXTRACT FOO.CPT -F 	;extracts the data fork, including .AFM 
			;and README files
EXTRACT FOO.CPT -F -R	;extracts the resource fork, including 
			;.PFB, .TTF, and Mac bitmap files

Mac filenames can be long, can contain spaces, don't have 
consistent naming conventions, and are otherwise unruly.  
EXTRACT takes the first 11 letters (minus spaces) of the Mac 
filename and turns them into the DOS filename:  "Happy Holiday 
Dingbats Plain" would become "HAPPYHOL.IDA".  This is not 
necessarily a problem (you can always rename the file) unless 
the next file happens to be "Happy Holiday Dingbats Oblique", 
which would be contracted to the same DOS name.  When EXTRACT 
encounters this situation, it stops, and will not extract any 
more files, even if their DOS names would be unique.  The only 
way to prevent this is to use the -U switch, which tells the 
program to create "unique filenames".  These are NAME001, 
NAME002, etc.; it tells you the Mac names as it converts.  It 
starts with NAME001 *every time you run it*, so remember to 
change the names to something else before you run it again.  I 
find that it helps to run the program with the -L switch to get 
a listing of the archive, so I can decide whether -U is 
necessary and to get an idea of what the archive contains.

Of the two programs for extracting Stuffit archives, UNSITI is 
in my opinion the best; it works in an interactive mode, 
allowing you to decide for each file whether to extract it and 
whether to rename it.  UNSIT30 is explained in HOW_TO.TXT.

REFONT converts either Type 1 or Truetype fonts from Mac to PC 
format (PC to Mac, also).  It recognizes which type of file it 
is working with (.AFM, Type 1 outline, or Truetype) and 
automatically creates a DOS file of the same name (first eight 
characters) and the appropriate extension (.PFM, .PFB, or .TTF, 
respectively).  REFONT does not change the character sequence; 
characters above 127 will not be in the standard Windows ANSI 
order, and sometimes high-ANSI characters referred to in the 
font's documentation may not appear (I'm sure there is a reason 
for this, but I don't know what it is).

BM2AFM02 creates an .AFM file from a Mac bitmap; this is useful 
only if the .AFM is missing.  I have tried it out, but have no 
experience with it.

All my observations are based on converting about 60 fonts, all 
from the mirror of archive.umich.edu at wuarchive.wustl.edu.  I 
have read that Mac fonts can also be found on ftp.cs.umb.edu 
and sumex-aim.stanford.edu.

In the comp.fonts FAQ (HOW_TO.TXT) is the statement, "Some font 
authors specifically deny permission to do cross-platform 
conversions."  My feeling is that this refers to fonts that you 
plan to redistribute (that is why I am not posting all the 
fonts I converted to ftp.cica.indiana.edu), but not to fonts 
you plan to use yourself.  I certainly expect that if you pay 
the shareware fee on a font, the author isn't going to care 
where you use it.

This file is copyright 1993 by Curtis Clark (for what it's 
worth).  If for some reason you decide to distribute it 
separately from the included program files, I (or my designated 
agent) may choose to wonder why you bothered.

Curtis Clark
jcclark@csupomona.edu
Biological Sciences
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Pomona CA 91768 USA



