Box graphic characters
Rich Pasco
characters (single and double lines, horizontal, vertical, and corners).
I want to print them, and convert them to PDF files that others can
display.
These characters don't seem to be available in Courier (although I may
be mistaken). Are there any freely available PostScript fonts which
include these characters?
The Windows font "Terminal" seems to have them, but I can't figure out
how to use it when printing (other than bitmap screen capture).
I am using Ghostscript 8.5 and Acrobat 4.0 if that matters.
- Rich
Andreas Prilop
> I have some old PC-DOS (MS-DOS) files which utilize the box graphic
> characters (single and double lines, horizontal, vertical, and corners).
>
> These characters don't seem to be available in Courier (although I may
> be mistaken). Are there any freely available PostScript fonts which
> include these characters?
I don't know about PostScript fonts - but TrueType fonts for Windows
contain the box drawing characters:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/wgl4.htm
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/unicode/unidata25.html
--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?
Philip Griffin-Allwood
Mar 2005 07:14:34 -0800
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Hi Rich
> I have some old PC-DOS (MS-DOS) files which utilize the box graphic
> characters (single and double lines, horizontal, vertical, and corners).
> I want to print them, and convert them to PDF files that others can
> display.
Sounds like a problem with which I dealt recently on a WordStar list.
I had to update the WordStar DOS PS printer driver which I maintain to
be able to access all the characters. The issue was complicated though
by only one set of fonts having all the extended characters within
them--the OS/2 Courier, Times New Roman and Hevetica.
> These characters don't seem to be available in Courier (although I may
> be mistaken). Are there any freely available PostScript fonts which
> include these characters?
As noted above all the characters are in the IBM trio. While they are
not free, getting a used copy of OS/2 Warp 3 which has them should be
cheap (the latest version is in the Fixpack 40 for Warp 3).
> The Windows font "Terminal" seems to have them, but I can't figure out
> how to use it when printing (other than bitmap screen capture).
If you have the font, then the may issue will be getting your PS
printer drive to create a PS file which acknowledges the existence of
the fonts. I had to modify the WS PS driver, so it would include them.
Before that the characters were appearing on screen, but not being
inserted into the generated PS file.
From which program are you generating the PS file.
> I am using Ghostscript 8.5 and Acrobat 4.0 if that matters.
To get GS to recognize and produce a PDF using the above fonts, I had
to use GS 7.06 with the Fontmap designation being Fontmap.os2. GS8.50
would not produce a PDF with the characters included.
I also suspect that if I understood how to use GS_AGL.PS from the GS
lib folder, I might be able to generate a PDF with the characters
without having to use the Warp Type 1 fonts.
Phil
===========================
(Rev.) Philip Griffin-Allwood, Ph.D.
Kentville, Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada
pg...@auracom.com
http://www.glinx.com/~grifwood
Alex Cherepanov
> I have some old PC-DOS (MS-DOS) files which utilize the box graphic
> characters (single and double lines, horizontal, vertical, and corners).
> I want to print them, and convert them to PDF files that others can
> display.
You can replace pseudo-graphic characters with real PostScript graphic
and convert the result to PDF.
Ian Wilson
> I have some old PC-DOS (MS-DOS) files which utilize the box graphic
> characters (single and double lines, horizontal, vertical, and corners).
> I want to print them, and convert them to PDF files that others can
> display.
These are typically from the CodePage 437 character set (or similar
variants).
> These characters don't seem to be available in Courier (although I may
> be mistaken).
The box-drawing shapes (glyphs) are included in the Courier font found
in the HP Laserjets I've tried.
Rich Pasco
> These are typically from the CodePage 437 character set (or similar
> variants).
Yes, that is correct.
>> These characters don't seem to be available in Courier (although I may
>> be mistaken).
>
> The box-drawing shapes (glyphs) are included in the Courier font found
> in the HP Laserjets I've tried.
On my IBM/Lexmark 4029, the characters are in the ROM since that printer
can print them when in vanilla ASCII mode. But they don't seem to be
accessible in PostScript. They're not assigned to any 8-bit codepoints
by default, nor do they have Postscript names that I know of. Any ideas?
They do however have Unicode code points and can be displayed in a
web browser:
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/unicode/unidata25.html
http://www.borgendale.com/codepage/cp437.gif
- Rich
Ian Wilson
> Ian Wilson wrote:
>
>
>>These are typically from the CodePage 437 character set (or similar
>>variants).
>
>
> Yes, that is correct.
>
>
>>>These characters don't seem to be available in Courier (although I may
>>>be mistaken).
>>
>>The box-drawing shapes (glyphs) are included in the Courier font found
>>in the HP Laserjets I've tried.
>
>
> On my IBM/Lexmark 4029, the characters are in the ROM since that printer
> can print them when in vanilla ASCII mode. But they don't seem to be
> accessible in PostScript. They're not assigned to any 8-bit codepoints
> by default, nor do they have Postscript names that I know of. Any ideas?
Yes, here's what I'd do
1) Send to the printer Mark Lentczner's fontsheets.ps, or otherwise get
the printer to print a list of internal PS fonts.
2) Select a font, say courier and use Dylan McNamee's showfont.ps to
print out a list of glyphs for that font, with the names that can be
used to access them.
3) Having identified a font with box-draw characters, write a perl
script to convert the text file into a postscript file
e.g.
foo | bar
baz | qux
...
would become
%!PS
/y 800 def
/newline { /y y 12 sub def 50 y moveto } def
/Courier findfont 12 scalefont setfont
50 y moveto
(foo ) show \SF110000 glyphshow ( bar) show newline
(baz ) show \SF110000 glyphshow ( qux) show newline
...
showpage
Where I use | to mean CP437 character 0xB3 and SF110000 is the name
printed under that glyph by showfont.ps
I'd find this quite straightforward in Perl, but you may prefer TCL, VB
or whatever.
Ghostscript's Courier (i.e. Nimbus Mono) doesn't include these glyphs.
So you have to test with a real printer.
> They do however have Unicode code points and can be displayed in a
> web browser:
> http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/unicode/unidata25.html
> http://www.borgendale.com/codepage/cp437.gif
I suspect there is no way to use Unicode code-points in Postscript.
Michael Piotrowski
> On my IBM/Lexmark 4029, the characters are in the ROM since that printer
> can print them when in vanilla ASCII mode. But they don't seem to be
> accessible in PostScript. They're not assigned to any 8-bit codepoints
> by default, nor do they have Postscript names that I know of. Any ideas?
The Courier Type 1 fonts donated to X11 by IBM contain the box-drawing
glyphs. These fonts are freely available; you can find them in any
X11 installation or on the Net, e.g.,
The file names are cour.pfa, courb.pfa, couri.pfa, and courbi.pfa.
The glyphs have names like SF010000.
HTH
--
Michael Piotrowski, M.A. <m...@dynalabs.de>
Public key at <http://www.dynalabs.de/mxp/pubkey.txt>
Ian Wilson
> Rich Pasco wrote:
>
>> Ian Wilson wrote:
>>
>>> These are typically from the CodePage 437 character set (or similar
>>> variants).
>>
>> Yes, that is correct.
>>
>>
>>>> These characters don't seem to be available in Courier (although I may
>>>> be mistaken).
>>>
>>>
>>> The box-drawing shapes (glyphs) are included in the Courier font
>>> found in the HP Laserjets I've tried.
>>
>>
>>
>> On my IBM/Lexmark 4029, the characters are in the ROM since that printer
>> can print them when in vanilla ASCII mode. But they don't seem to be
>> accessible in PostScript. They're not assigned to any 8-bit codepoints
>> by default, nor do they have Postscript names that I know of. Any ideas?
>
You could try the following (apologies to group for long posting) I
can't remember if it ever worked.
%!
%%Title: cp437print.ps
%%Creator: Ian Wilson
%%CreationDate: Fri Sep 10 2004
%%Pages 1
%
% Based on asciiprint.ps by Ben Cranston
% http://www.wam.umd.edu/~zben/PostScript/asciiprint.html
%
%
% Re-encode a font to the Code Page 437 (OEM) character set.
%
systemdict /CP437Encoding known not {
/CP437Encoding [
/null /Wsmiley /Bsmiley /heart
/diamond /club /spade /Bbullet
/Wbullet /Bcircle /Wcircle /male
/female /quarternote /sixteenthnote /sun
/pointerright /pointerleft /Varrowboth /exclamdbl
/paragraph /section /cursorblock /floor
/arrowup /arrowdown /arrowright /arrowleft
/smallLLsingle /arrowboth /pointerup /pointerdown
/space /exclam /quotedbl /numbersign
/dollar /percent /ampersand /quoteright
/parenleft /parenright /asterisk /plus
/comma /minus /period /slash
/zero /one /two /three
/four /five /six /seven
/eight /nine /colon /semicolon
/less /equal /greater /question
/at /A /B /C
/D /E /F /G
/H /I /J /K
/L /M /N /O
/P /Q /R /S
/T /U /V /W
/X /Y /Z /bracketleft
/backslash /bracketright /asciicircum /underscore
/quoteleft /a /b /c
/d /e /f /g
/h /i /j /k
/l /m /n /o
/p /q /r /s
/t /u /v /w
/x /y /z /braceleft
/bar /braceright /asciitilde /Delta
/Ccedilla /udieresis /eacute /acircumflex
/adieresis /agrave /aring /ccedilla
/ecircumflex /edieresis /agrave /idieresis
/icircumflex /igrave /Adieresis /Aring
/Eacute /ae /AE /ocircumflex
/odieresis /ograve /ucircumflex /ugrave
/ydieresis /Odieresis /Udieresis /cent
/sterling /yen /point /integral
/aacute /iacute /oacute /uacute
/ntilde /Ntilde /aunder /ounder
/questiondown /smallULsingle /smallURsingle /half
/quarter /exclamdown /lessdbl /greaterdbl
/lightbox /mediumbox /darkbox /Vsingle
/SF010000 /SF020000 /SF030000 /SF040000
% /VsingleTleftsingle /VsingleTleftdbl /VdblTleftsingle /VdblURsingle
/VsingleURdbl /VdblTleftdbl /Vdbl /VdblURdbl
/VdblLRdbl /VdblLRsingle /VsingleLRdbl /VsingleURsingle
/VsingleLLsingle /HsingleTupsingle /HsingleTdownsingle
/VsingleTrightsingle
/Hsingle /VsingleXsingle /VsingleTrightdbl /VdblTrightsingle
/VdblLLdbl /VdblULdbl /HdblTupdbl /HdblTdowndbl
/VdblTrightdbl /Hdbl /VdblXdbl /HdblTupsingle
/HsingleTupdbl /HdblTdownsingle /HsingleTdowndbl /VdblLLsingle
/VsingleLLdbl /VsingleULdbl /VdblULsingle /VdblXsingle
/VsingleXdbl /VsingleLRsingle /VsingleULsingle /allblack
/botblack /leftblack /rightblack /topblack
/alpha /beta /Gamma /pi
/Sigma /sigma /mu /tau
/Phi /theta /Omega /delta
/infinity /phi /element /intersection
/equivalence /plusminus /greaterequal /lessequal
/integraltp /integralbt /divide /approxequal
/degree /bullet /dotmath /radical
/eta /squared /block /blank
] def
} if
%
% Override the setfont procedure with a new procedure that re-encodes
% the font to use the CP437 style.
%
/realsetfont /setfont load def
/setfont {
dup length dict begin
{1 index /FID ne {def} {pop pop} ifelse} forall
/Encoding CP437Encoding def
currentdict
end
/Temporary exch definefont
realsetfont
} bind def
%
%
%
/Courier findfont 10 scalefont setfont
/colwid (m) stringwidth pop def
%%Page: One 1
36 756 moveto
256 string
{ %exec
{ %loop over file
dup currentfile exch readstring exch
{ %loop FF
(\f) search exch
{ %loop LF
(\n) search exch
{ %loop CR
(\r) search exch
{ %loop TAB
(\t) search exch
{ %loop BS
(\b) search exch
show
not { exit } if
pop currentpoint exch colwid sub exch moveto
} loop %BS
not { exit } if
pop currentpoint exch 36 sub colwid div .49 add cvi
8 add dup 8 mod sub colwid mul 36 add exch moveto
} loop %TAB
not { exit } if
pop 36 currentpoint exch pop moveto
} loop %CR
not { exit } if
pop 36 currentpoint exch pop
11 sub dup 25 le { %if
pop showpage 756
} if
moveto
} loop %LF
not { exit } if
pop showpage 36 756 moveto
} loop %FF
not { exit } if
} loop %over file
pop showpage
} bind exec
%
% Plain text to be printed follows below
%
Rich Pasco
> You could try the following (apologies to group for long posting) I
> can't remember if it ever worked.
I tried it. The plain text I added printed OK, but the box characters
within it came out blank.
- Rich
Philip Griffin-Allwood
30 Mar 2005 11:51:09 +0200
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
At a quick glance these appear to be an earlier version of the Courier
font released with OS/2 and which are the ones which I use. Using them
would require an editing of the Fontmap file for GS7.06 (let me state
again that I am yet unable to get GS8.50 to generate a PDF with these
characters.
Here is the section from the prologue file for use of the characters
from my DOS PS driver
% initialize the IBMenc reencoding vector
%
0 [ 1 /SS000000 /SS010000 /heart /diamond /club /spade
7 /bullet
8 /SM570001 /SM750000 /SM750002 /male /female /musicalnote
/musicalnotedbl /SM690000 /SM590000 /SM630000 /SM760000
/exclamdbl
20 /paragraph /section
22 /SM700000 /SM770000 /arrowup /arrowdown /arrowright /arrowleft
/rightangle /arrowboth /SM600000 /SV040000
128 /Ccedilla /udieresis /eacute /acircumflex /adieresis /agrave
/aring /ccedilla /ecircumflex /edieresis /egrave /idieresis
/icircumflex /igrave /Adieresis /Aring /Eacute /ae /AE
/ocircumflex /odieresis /ograve /ucircumflex /ugrave /ydieresis
/Odieresis /Udieresis /oslash /sterling /Oslash /multiply
159 /florin /aacute /iacute /oacute /uacute /ntilde /Ntilde
/ordfeminine
/ordmasculine /questiondown /registered /emdash
171 /onehalf /onequarter
173 /exclamdown /quotedblleft /quotedblright
176 /SF140000 /SF150000 /SF160000 /SF110000 /SF090000
181 /Aacute /Acircumflex /Agrave /copyright
185 /SF230000 /SF240000 /SF250000 /SF260000
189 /cent /yen
191 /SF030000 /SF020000 /SF070000 /SF060000 /SF080000 /SF100000
/SF050000
198 /atilde /Atilde
200 /SF380000 /SF390000 /SF400000 /SF410000 /SF420000 /SF430000
/SF440000
207 /currency
208 /eth /Eth
210 /Ecircumflex /Edieresis /Egrave /Euro /Iacute /Icircumflex
/Idieresis
217 /SF040000 /SF010000 /SF610000 /SF570000 /brokenbar
222 /Igrave
223 /SF600000
224 /Oacute /germandbls /Ocircumflex /Ograve /otilde /Otilde
230 /micro /thorn /Thorn
233 /Uacute /Ucircumflex /Ugrave /yacute /Yacute
238 /overline /acute
240 /minus /plusminus /underscoredbl
243 /threequarters /paragraph /section
246 /divide
247 /cedilla /ring /dieresis /dotaccent
/onesuperior /threesuperior /twosuperior /filledbox /space ]
{ %forall
dup type /nametype eq
{ %ifelse
IBMenc 2 index 2 index put
pop 1 add
}{ %else
exch pop
} ifelse
} forall
pop
I am in Halifax and my work sheets listing all the Glyph names is in
Kentville--but I found them doing a google with the PS character names
and the word Glyph.
Before I had all the bugs out of the printer driver, I did successfully
create PDFs with the characters by editing a PS file from the DOS
program and replacing generated \000 with the correct PS number before
distilling the file.
Rich Pasco
> 1) Send to the printer Mark Lentczner's fontsheets.ps, or otherwise get
> the printer to print a list of internal PS fonts.
I obtained this file from
http://www.glyphic.com/free/fontsheets/fontsheets.html
> 2) Select a font, say courier and use Dylan McNamee's showfont.ps to
> print out a list of glyphs for that font, with the names that can be
> used to access them.
I obtained this file from
http://home.att.net/~tom.brodhead/ps.htm
and changed /TSTN to Courier
> Ghostscript's Courier (i.e. Nimbus Mono) doesn't include these glyphs.
> So you have to test with a real printer.
Neither does Courier as installed on my printer. :-(
- Rich
Michael Piotrowski
> At a quick glance these appear to be an earlier version of the Courier
> font released with OS/2 and which are the ones which I use. Using them
> would require an editing of the Fontmap file for GS7.06 (let me state
> again that I am yet unable to get GS8.50 to generate a PDF with these
> characters.
By default, Courier is never embedded into the PDF file. Thus, the
receiver's PDF viewer will use its local version of Courier, which
probably doesn't contain all the characters of IBM Courier.
One way to make sure that Courier is embedded is to use ps2pdf13 or
ps2pdf14 with the /printer or /prepress settings, e.g.:
ps2pdf14 -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer boxdraw.ps
(See http://ghostscript.com/pipermail/gs-devel/2002-April/001507.html
for some background information.)
Ian Wilson
Ick! HP Laserjet 1320 is cheap! Duplex too!
Well, you could get the Courier fonts identified by Michael, configure
Ghostscript to use them, then use Phillip's PS preamble (or mine amended
with correct glyph names). You can then use GS to create the PDFs you
wanted and then print to your Lexmark using Acrobat Reader.
Philip Griffin-Allwood
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Hi Michael!
> By default, Courier is never embedded into the PDF file. Thus, the
> receiver's PDF viewer will use its local version of Courier, which
> probably doesn't contain all the characters of IBM Courier.
Somehow I must be embedding the font--Ok checking creation of the file
with 7.06 and 8.50--7.06 is embedding the fonts which is why they are
showing up in the PDFs. I suspect it occurs because of the
instructions at the end of my Prologue file
/AlbertusMedium RV
/AlbertusExtraBold RV
/ArialMT RV
/Arial-BoldMT RV
/Arial-BoldItalicMT RV
/Arial-ItalicMT RV
/AvantGarde-Book RV
/AvantGarde-Demi RV
/AvantGarde-DemiOblique RV
/AvantGarde-BookOblique RV
/Baxter RV
/Baxter-Bold RV
/Bodoni-BoldCondensed RV
/Bookman-Light RV
/Bookman-Demi RV
/Bookman-DemiItalic RV
/Bookman-LightItalic RV
/Miami RV
/BrushScript RV
/CaslonOpenFace RV
/CooperBlack RV
/Courier RV
/Courier-Bold RV
/Courier-BoldOblique RV
/Courier-Oblique RV
/DomCasual RV
/EuroFont RV
/FranklinGothic-Condensed RV
/GillSans RV
/GillSans-Bold RV
/GreekTimesAncientSSK RV
/HebrewJoshuaSSK RV
/Helvetica-Narrow RV
/Helvetica-Narrow-Bold RV
/Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique RV
/Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique RV
/Helvetica RV
/Helvetica-Bold RV
/Helvetica-BoldOblique RV
/Helvetica-Oblique RV
/Hobo RV
/Kaufmann RV
/Kaufmann-Bold RV
/LetterGothic RV
/LotusWPFont RV
/NewCenturySchlbk-Roman RV
/NewCenturySchlbk-Bold RV
/NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic RV
/NewCenturySchlbk-Italic RV
/NewsGothic RV
/Palatino-Roman RV
/Palatino-Bold RV
/Palatino-BoldItalic RV
/Palatino-Italic RV
/Parisian RV
/Parker RV
/Parker-Bold RV
/Perpetua RV
/Perpetua-Bold RV
/Shelley-AllegroScript RV
/Symbol RV
/Times-Roman RV
/Times-Bold RV
/Times-BoldItalic RV
/Times-Italic RV
/TimesNewRomanPSMT RV
/TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT RV
/TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT RV
/TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT RV
/Utopia-Black RV
/VAGRounded-Thin RV
/VAGRounded-Bold RV
/ZapfChancery-MediumItalic RV
/ZapfDingbats RV
/Wingdings-Regular RV
Possibly it is not this at all, but how 7.06 is handling the use of
FontMap.OS2
Philip Griffin-Allwood
Wednesday 30 March 2005
I have tested these Courier fonts with GS7.05/6 and the do embed the
characters. Add the following to the end of the Fontmap.gs file
%
% ATM fonts that come with OS/2.
/Courier (cour.pfa) ;
/Courier-Oblique /Courier-Italic ;
/Courier-Italic (couri.pfa) ;
/Courier-Bold (courb.pfa) ;
/Courier-BoldOblique /Courier-BoldItalic ;
/Courier-BoldItalic (courbi.pfa) ;
Note this font is to early to contain the Euro.
Phil
===========================
(Rev.) Philip Griffin-Allwood, Ph.D.
Halifax, HRM, and Kentville, Kings Co., N.S., Canada
pg...@auracom.com
http://www.glinx.com/~grifwood
http://users.eastlink.ca/~standrewsunited
Philip Griffin-Allwood
30 Mar 2005 11:51:09 +0200
Thursday 31 March 2005
I have tested these Courier fonts with GS7.05/6 and GS8.50 and they do
embed the characters. Copy the fonts to the GS font directory and add
the following to the end of the Fontmap.gs file (or create a new file
fontmap.lnx by adding the following to fontmap.gs and editing fontmap
to reference the new file).
%
% IBM Fonts from Linux
/Courier (cour.pfa) ;
/Courier-Oblique /Courier-Italic ;
/Courier-Italic (couri.pfa) ;
/Courier-Bold (courb.pfa) ;
/Courier-BoldOblique /Courier-BoldItalic ;
/Courier-BoldItalic (courbi.pfa) ;
Note this font is too early to contain the Euro, so if you want to use
it you will need to get the later Courier font which comes with OS/2.
As you (Michael) pointed out (thank you), to get 8.50 to embedd the
fonts either the Printer or Prepress setting was needed in conjunction
with setting the version to 1.3 or 1.4. Due to my use of OS/2 I had it
set to 1.2. For whatever reason 7.05 embedds with my driver with set
to Default and 1.2.
This is all good news for the person for whom I modified the WordStar PS
driver--I can now provide him with instructions to create PDF using the
characters he wishes to use. Later today or tomorrow I will upload a
driver update with fontmap.lnx for using the above Courier font.
In Rich's case the question is whether the PS driver for his DOS
program is creating a PS file which includes the font. This was the
problem with the Wordstar PS driver until I modified it so it included
the fonts in the created PS file.
Philip Griffin-Allwood
I have updated my version of Roger Allen's WordStar Postscript driver.
http://www.glinx.com/~grifwood/PSDRVPGA.ZIP
From the information gained in this discussion, I have improved the
driver and added Ghostscript Fontmap files for creating PDF using the
extended characters in the Courier font Michael told us about.