Typesetting/APL Fonts
TrueType Fonts
For Web, text editors in modern operating systems such Microsoft Word, Windows Wordpad, even Notepad, a TrueType font is a great solution.
A number of quite good TrueType fonts are now available including APL385 Unicode (apl385.ttf), SImPL (SImPL.ttf) and APLX Upright (aplx_unicode.ttf). All are available from Vector Magazine's font page.
Click to download the recommended all-purpose font: APL385 Unicode
Here are examples of documents from this Wiki typeset using SImPL:
- File:APL SimPL.pdf from Wordpad (using Typesetting/APL Characters article)
- File:Life.pdf from Internet Explorer 7 (using Doc/Life article)
Windows Procedure::
- Download and install
- SImPL.ttf, e.g. on Windows by copying to %SystemRoot%\Fonts
- Adobe PostScript Printer Driver
- Ghostscript
- Configure your browser or specify a custom CSS to use SImPL.ttf, or select the font in an editor
- Print (with Preview) selecting the Generic PostScript Printer, saving to a file with .ps extension
- use ps2pdf file.ps command from Ghostscript to convert to PDF
Type 1 Fonts and LaTeX
For PostScript enabled operating system or LaTeX, it is possible to use Type 1 scalable fonts, which provide best viewing experience for various media output.
One such font SAXPSA originally developed by Joey Tuttle and exended by others, compiled by RobertBernecky and available at http://www.snakeisland.com/ (elaborate system install) or http://olegykj.sourceforge.net/ (simplified local install).
Here are examples of documents from this Wiki typeset using this font:
- File:Apltest.pdf generated by pdftex
magnified version rendered by Acrobat Reader
LaTeX Procedure (Simple)::
- download and extract SAXPSA Type 1 APL font package, and follow File:Readme.txt
- place the contents of the "texmf" folder in a user or local texmf folder according to your texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf configuration
- see the fonts/map folder *.map files for additional configuration, esp. dvips. Consult dvips and pdftex docs as needed
See Also
- Fonts developed for APL, Vector
- An APL Unicode Font, Vector Magazine
- Adobe Printer Drivers
- Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview
- http://www.snakeisland.com/ - SAXPSA "aplfont" package by Rober Bernecky
- http://olegykj.sourceforge.net/ - SAXPSA package with simple install
- The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbols List, has custom symbols tutorial
- Making outline fonts from Metafont, TeX FAQ