Font::AFM - Interface to Adobe Font Metrics files

SYNOPSIS

        use Font::AFM;
        $h = new Font::AFM "Helvetica";
        $copyright = $h->Notice;
        $w = $h->Wx->{"aring"};
        $w = $h->stringwidth("Gisle", 10);
        $h->dump;  # for debugging

DESCRIPTION

       This module implements the Font::AFM class. Objects of
       this class are initialised from an AFM-file and allows you
       to obtain information about the font and the metrics of
       the various glyphs in the font.

       All measurements in AFM files are given in terms of units
       equal to 1/1000 of the scale factor of the font being
       used. To compute actual sizes in a document, these amounts
       should be multiplied by (scale factor of font)/1000.

       The following methods are available:

       $afm = Font::AFM->new($fontname)
          Object constructor. Takes the name of the font as
          argument. It will croak if the font can not be found.

       $afm->latin1_wx_table()
          Returns a 256 element array, where each element
          contains the width of the corresponding character in
          the iso-8859-1 character set.

       $afm->stringwidth($string, [$fontsize])
          Returns the width of the string passed as argument. The
          string is assumed to be encoded in the iso-8859-1
          character set.  A second argument can be used to scale
          the width according to the font size.

       $afm->FontName
          The name of the font as presented to the PostScript
          language findfont operator, for instance "Times-Roman".

       $afm->FullName
          Unique, human-readable name for an individual font, for
          instance "Times Roman".

       $afm->FamilyName
          Human-readable name for a group of fonts that are
          stylistic variants of a single design. All fonts that
          are member of such a group should have exactly the same
          FamilyName. Example of a family name is "Times".
          Human-readable name for the weight, or "boldness",
          attribute of a font.  Exampes are Roman, Bold, Light.

       $afm->ItalicAngle
          Angle in degrees counterclockwise from the vertical of
          the dominant vertical strokes of the font.

       $afm->IsFixedPitch
          If the value is true, it indicated that the font is a
          fixed-pitch (monospaced) font.

       $afm->FontBBox
          A string of four numbers giving the lower-left x,
          lower-left y, upper-right x, and upper-right y of the
          font bounding box. The font bounding box is the
          smallest rectangle enclosing the shape that would
          result if all the characters of the font were placed
          with their origins coincident, and then painted.

       $afm->UnderlinePosition
          Recommended distance from the baseline for positioning
          underline stokes. This number is the y coordinate of
          the center of the stroke.

       $afm->UnderlineThickness
          Recommended stroke width for underlining.

       $afm->Version
          Version number of the font.

       $afm->Notice
          Trademark or copyright notice, if applicable.

       $afm->Comment
          Comments found in the AFM file.

       $afm->EncodingScheme
          The name of the standard encoding scheme for the font.
          Most Adobe fonts use the AdobeStandardEncoding. Special
          fonts might state FontSpecific.

       $afm->CapHeight
          Usually the y-value of the top of the capital H.

       $afm->XHeight
          Typically the y-value of the top of the lowercase x.

       $afm->Ascender
          Typically the y-value of the top of the lowercase d.

       $afm->Descender
          Typically the y-value of the bottom of the lowercase p.
          Returns a hash table that maps from glyph names to the
          width of that glyph.

       $afm->BBox
          Returns a hash table that maps from glyph names to
          bounding box information.  The bounding box consist of
          4 numbers: llx, lly, urx, ury.

       $afm->dump
          Dumps the content of the Font::AFM object to STDOUT.
          Might sometimes be useful for debugging.

       The AFM specification can be found at:

          ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/DeveloperSupport/TechNotes/PSfiles/5004.AFM_Spec.ps

ENVIRONMENT

       METRICS   Contains the path to seach for AFM-files.
                 Format is as for the PATH environment variable.
                 The default path built into this library is:

                  /usr/lib/afm:/usr/local/lib/afm:/usr/openwin/lib/fonts/afm/:.

BUGS

       Kerning data and composite character data is not yet
       parsed.  Ligature data is not parsed.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 1995-1997 Gisle Aas. All rights reserved.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it
       and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.