Help please: How to get lining numerals into my small caps font.

[Alan Vlach]

Hilmar Schlegel wrote:
> 
> Alan Vlach wrote:
> >
> > Hello:
> >
> > This is a low-level irritation about which I have posted one or two
> > queries over the last few months:  I have a commercially-purchased set
> > of Sabon fonts which I like very much, but the small caps and oldstyle
> > figures are in the same file, so fontinst generates a font psbrc8t with
> > non-lining numerals in the numeral slots '060 through '071.  I want to
> > put _lining_ numerals there.
> 
> This requires renaming the characters which have a faulty name assigned.
> Either you do that explicitely in the AFM (the hard way) or have a
> version of scripts/fontinst which can cope without doing so explicitely.

As far as I can tell, none of the characters have a ``faulty name
assigned'' (whatever that means).  The characters are correctly called
`zero', `one', `two', ....  Fontinst is pulling the (correctly named)
numerals from the Sc+OsF font when I want it to pull the numerals from
the normal font.  I don't understand what you mean by ``renaming the
characters''.

> > This seems like an easy problem to solve and shouldn't have taken me the
> > hours I've spent so far.  I am not looking for another full-scale
> > implementation of Sabon (no Y&Y commercials, please) or anything more
> > than just the answer to this specific question.  Maybe it's in the
> > fontinst documentation, but I don't understand the syntax of fontinst
> > commands, so the docs don't make that much sense to me.
> 
> Well, understanding fontinst basics is a requirement to make full use of
> font capabilities.

I would dearly love to understand the fontinst basics.  Where is the
book that explains the basics?  The fontinst documentation assumes that
the reader _already_ understands what the commands mean (``glyphon'' and
so forth) and provides precious few examples to illustrate what the
commands actually do.  I need lots of carefully explained examples,
along the lines of ``A Gentle Introduction to TeX''.

For example, what command (or series of commands) would I employ to tell
fontinst:  ``Take character in slot x of font A and put it in slot y of
font B.''  Nothing in the documentation explains clearly enough how to
do this.

> 
> > So ... if anyone knows how, please tell me how to put lining numerals in
> > positions '060 through '071 of my psbrc8t font.
> 
> Get the character naming in the AFM files correct.

Like I said, I don't understand what you mean by this.  I don't think
the character names are incorrect, but assuming they _are_ incorrect,
_how_ do I get them correct?  What file(s) do I edit?  What commands do
I execute?  If I alter the AFM files, don't I destroy fontinst's ability
to put oldstyle numerals where I _do_ want them?  I really want to
understand.

Please help.

Thanks,
--Alan Vlach