Q: accents and built-in PCL fonts

[Louis Vosloo <71172.524@compuserve.com>]

Bob Hueckstedt writes:

> I have downloaded the metric files for the LJ3 and LJ4 fonts. These are 
> the PCL fonts built in to the HPLJ3 and HPLJ4 printers. I have access to 
> a HPLJ3p on campus, and I use a HPLJ4l (300dpi) at home. I successfully 
> ran vptovf on the pl files and put the vf and tfm files in the 
> directories where TeX searches for them. The fonts print out just fine 
> until I use TeX commands for accents, e.g., \=a, for macron-a. All I get, 
> on either machine is plain a. The macron doesn't come through. (If it 
> matters, the code page I used for these tests was the factory default 
> one, Roman-8, also called 8U.) Since I have tfm files for these fonts I 
> was expecting the accent commands to work. Is my expectation wrong, or am 
> I doing something wrong? (By the way, when I use accent commands on PS 
> fonts built in to the HPLJ3p, all goes well.)

That is perfectly consistent:  HP Roman 8 encoding lacks `macron' (as well
other things like `breve' `ogonek' etc).  If you look in the log file you will
most
likely see `missing character' errors (it is most annoying that (i) these errors
do not show up on screen --- only in the log file and (ii) no context is given
---
which makes them next to impossible to localize).

Berthold.