Font Metric Locations

Font Metric Locations

A list containing one or more UNIX pathnames that tells Ada-ASSURED where to find font metric files. A font metric file contains, among other things, information about the widths of characters in a font. This information is necessary in order to calculate where to put line breaks if Use Absolute Right Margin is false. A font metric file is needed for each font used in a document. When a font is first used in a document, the information in Font Metric Locations is used to locate its font metric file.

More than one pathname may be specified in Font Metric Locations. The pathnames must be separated by a colon (`:'). The pathnames will be examined in order from left to right to locate the font metric file in question. For example, if Font Metric Locations is ``/usr/fonts/:/system/fonts/'', the directory /usr/fonts/ will be searched first, and if the font metric file is not found there, /system/fonts/ will be searched.

If a pathname in Font Metric Locations is a file instead of a directory, it is assumed to contain a map from font names to font metric file names. The mappings in this file (which must be in a format specified by Adobe Systems, Inc.) apply only to the directory in which the file is contained or to another directory specified in the file. They do not apply to the rest of the directories in the search list. If there is no mapping file, the font metric file for a given font must follow one of the following naming conventions: the name of the font; the name of the font followed by the suffix ``.afm''; the name of the font followed by the suffix ``.AFM''. If a font metric file cannot be found, default font metrics will be used to calculate line breaks and an error message will be printed. These defaults will typically produce lines that are too short.