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9. Charspace

Charspace lets you add side bearings (the blank spaces on either side of a character) to a bitmap font. This is necessary because scanned images typically do not include side bearing information, and therefore Imageto (see section 6. Imageto) cannot determine it.

The input is a bitmap (GF or PK) font, together with one or more CMI files (see section 9.2 CMI files), which specify character metric information. If a corresponding TFM file exists, it is read to get default values for the character dimensions (Charspace promptly overwrites the widths). The output is a TFM file and (typically) a revised GF file with the new width information.

The basic idea for Charspace came from Harry Smith, via Walter Tracy's book Letters of Credit. See `charspace/README' for the full citation.

9.1 Charspace usage  Details on improving the character metrics.
9.2 CMI files  You specify the metrics in a separate file.
9.3 Invoking Charspace  Command-line options.