Specifications

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System V Printer Configuration
1. Copy the font file to the appropriate directory.
The fonts available for use with PostScript printers reside in the
/usr/share/lib/hostfontdir directory or other directories.
2. Add to the map table the name of the font and the name of the file in which it resides.
Also in the hostfontdir directory, you (the administrator) must create and maintain a
map table that shows the correspondence between the name assigned to each font by
the foundry (the company that created the font) and the name of the file in which that
font resides. A file name that begins with a slash (/) is used as is; otherwise the
pathname is relative to the host font directory. Comments in the map table are introduced
by % (as in PostScript) and extend to the end of the line.
For example, to map the font called Palatino Bold, add the following line to the map
table:
Palatino–Bold /usr/share/lib/hostfontdir
(The map table itself is in the /usr/share/lib/hostfontdir/map file.)
After this entry exists in the map table on your system, your users will be able to have a
Palatino Bold font used in their print jobs. When they submit for printing a file containing
a request for this font, the print service will prefix a copy of the file
/usr/share/lib/hostfontdir to that file before sending it to the printer, as long as it is not
defined in the residentfonts file.
3. If you will be using troff, you must create new width tables for this font in the standard
troff font directory.
Downloading Host–Resident Fonts
When the PostScript document contains a request for fonts not loaded on the printer, the
download filter manages this request. This filter is invoked as a fast filter; it downloads
fonts automatically if the fonts reside on the same system as the printer. The download
filter may also send fonts to a remote printer. To do this, you can create a new filter table
entry that calls the download filter as a slow filter through the –y option. Alternatively, you
may force selection of this filter by changing the input type.
The download filter does the following:
• It searches the PostScript document to determine which fonts have been requested.
These requests are documented with the following PostScript structuring comments:
%%DocumentFonts: font1 font2 . . .
in the header comments.
• It searches the list of fonts resident on that printer (in
/etc/lp/printers/printer–name/residentfonts) to see if the requested font must be
downloaded.
• If the font is not resident on the printer, it searches the host–resident font directory to see
if the requested font is available. The only candidates for downloading are fonts listed in
the map table that point download to readable files. A Type 1 font is downloaded once, at
most, for a single document, even if it occurs multiple times in the %%DocumentFonts:
comment or PostScript file. The downloading of fonts occurs only for the duration of the
PostScript job. However, permanent downloading of fonts to the printer’s RAM can be
done with special PostScript programming techniques using the exitserver operator.
Requests for unlisted fonts or inaccessible files are ignored. All requests are ignored if
the map table cannot be read.
• If the font is available, the filter takes the file for that font and prefixes it to the file to be
printed.
• The filter sends the font definition file and the PostScript source file (the file to be printed)
to the PostScript printer.