There is an area in J Wiki dedicated to fonts http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Typesetting It does have some information about LaTeX, but could be expanded with a dedicated LaTeX page.
Also although APL fonts typically include box drawing characters, there are more fonts that have them but without APL. Interesting that Type 1 SAX font renders with blank overlaps by Adobe Acrobat Reader. I believe self-intersections should be avoided in Type 1 fonts. http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb26-2/piska.pdf http://www.inf.bme.hu/~pts/textrace/textrace_talk.pdf ----- Original Message ---- > From: Joey K Tuttle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > John, > > One of the reasons I dislike box drawing characters is the large > number of hours I spent tweaking them for the book "Computer > Architecture Concepts and Evolution" by Gerrit Blaauw and Frederick > Brooks. The book was crafted by David Lines, a graduate student of > Fred's using TeX and a font that provided them. > > Actually, Fred wanted non-italic characters, so they substituted in > Courier glyphs that ended up in the book. The endless arguments over > italic, slanted (and the slant angle) and especially the adaption of > lowercase italic "American Typewriter Light" (the font the original > APL type element borrowed from) were almost as tedious as the line > drawing stuff. > > The changes from the IPSA SAX font that I did for Fred Brooks were > minor and involved trying to get the boxes to join smoothly in the > sizes being used in the book - an endless pursuit... (but then, you > did say "those irritating box characters") However, I'm curious, what > was missing from the SAX font? It originally had a complete set. Did > Bob move them around or did some go missing? > In the original font, the box characters were below space (this was > done because codepoints above 127 were consumed by APL and "underbar" > alphabetic characters making 11 contiguous positions unavailable). > > The SAX font glyphs started in codepoint 15 with the IPSA logo, > followed by 11 box drawing characters in an order that is perhaps > different than the DOS order, then TM, CircleC, CircleR, open star, > and codepoint 31 was my initials (JKT) in a logo... Some of these > were in the nature of watermarks. > > In addition to the APL fonts, I have one that was put together for J > (the early years) using Courier Roman for alphabetics and special > characters (@#$% etc.). In that font, the box characters are > immediately above 128 and the rest of the upper half of font is blank. > > One interesting variation on all this was the font used in the IBM > Systems Journal, APL 25th Anniversary Edition. Italics were vetoed > and the slant angle was reduced (I argued against changing from 14 > degrees to 7 degrees, but gave in since IBM was paying me in lieu of > giving me credit in the colophon - an amusing thing in itself...) > Later, the feedback was that the font really should have been more > slanted... Perhaps the most curious thing about that font is that it > is the only PostScript font that I have ever encountered that was in > EBCDIC (not ASCII) order... I talked to the printing company about it > and they said they didn't argue with IBM - and just please provide it > that way and they would deal with it.... > > One of the suggestions in this thread was to use ISO characters, and > for some things that is OK. But IMHO, APL rendered in such a font > always reminds me of a ransom note... > > I have various versions of these fonts if they are of any interest/use to you. > > - joey > > > At 12:09 -0700 2008/06/04, John Baker wrote: > >I want to typeset the J graphic box characters in LaTeX2e - particularly the > >pdftek MikTeK version - using the \usepackage{lstlistings} > >package. > > > > For this to work I need a typewriter family virtual TeX font that combines > >Ghostscript Adobe Courier with the box > >characters found in something like TrueType Lucida Console (Type 1 would be > >easier). The resulting virtual font has > > to be properly defined and mapped for LaTeX2e. I've poked around J and CTAN > >and the only thing I've come up with is > > Bob Berneky's adaption of a Type 1 APL sax font which doesn't have a > >complete set of box characters. > > > >I'm enough of a TeXnician to do this but if I someone else has a good > >solution LaTeX2e typesetting of box characters please chime in. > > > >John Baker ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
