[9fans] Sam fonts

[9fans] Sam fonts

[Koray Erkan]

Hi

I've posted this earlier but it didn't generate much enthusiams, probably - as Joel Salomon suggests - due to the fact
that I didn't send it via the mailing list. Here it is again, after I've finally subscribed.

--

I'm using "Sam" on a Windows XP machine. Though I find the editor gratifying for coding purposes, I'm not entirely happy
with its font management. I'd like to use another face that my eyes are more comfortable with - such as the Windows
default "Courier".

Pike notes in a comment in the sources that the "subfonts" are from a certain "X distribution from MIT." I don't know
these resources.

Also, I have a MikTEX installation on the same machine. I tried to use *its* fonts with Sam - using its command-line
font specification switch - but this didn't work.

Given the above:

- Do you have any suggestions how I can convert Windows's font files to the format recognized by Sam?
- Where can I get more of these "X distribution" fonts?
- Are TEX's fonts compatible with the said X distribution's fonts? Is a conversion needed? If so, how, with what tools?

--

Charles kindly suggested that I check the lib/font/bit directory on the Plan9 installation (CD), but my efforts came to
nil. None of the fonts I copied and tried to load worked. Sam seems to accept them (i.e. does not issue errors), but
when I type, I only get large steps of white space.

I need Sam on the Windows platform (we don't choose our platforms just out of fancy but for commercial reasons), and I
have great difficulty working with its default settings. (Hint: I process very large text files with linguistic data in
them, and Sam's currently available fonts are either too bold/large and hence make it impossible to fit enough data into
the screen, or they are too small and, since it lacks syntax coloring, I have great difficulty visually parsing out the
already involved and intricate text strings - e.g. things like localization strings in the XML-based TMX format with
umpteen fields of data describing the strings. I currently use multiple editors to utilize their varying list processing
and regex facilities like TextPad, UltraEdit, etc. Sam, with its structured regexes and everything, is a godsend.)

Your help - or hints - would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.


Cheers
Koray

Re: [9fans] Sam fonts

[Russ Cox]

Unfortunately there is no good answer to your question.
The fonts in the Plan 9 distribution are not the format that
the Windows sam binary expects.
If you download http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/extra/9pm051031.zip
and extract that, then you can get a few more fonts of different sizes.

I do not know of any good way to convert Windows fonts
into fonts for sam.  There are ways, but the fonts often come
out looking quite ugly.

Russ