This file accompanied the original distribution of the Hershey fonts, via the Usenet: *************************************************************************** This distribution is made possible through the collective encouragement of the Usenet Font Consortium, a mailing list that sprang to life to get this accomplished and that will now most likely disappear into the mists of time... Thanks are especially due to Jim Hurt, who provided the packed font data for the distribution, along with a lot of other help. This file describes the Hershey Fonts in general, along with a description of the other files in this distribution and a simple re-distribution restriction. USE RESTRICTION: This distribution of the Hershey Fonts may be used by anyone for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, providing that: 1. The following acknowledgements must be distributed with the font data: - The Hershey Fonts were originally created by Dr. A. V. Hershey while working at the U. S. National Bureau of Standards. - The format of the Font data in this distribution was originally created by James Hurt Cognition, Inc. 900 Technology Park Drive Billerica, MA 01821 (mit-eddie!ci-dandelion!hurt) 2. The font data in this distribution may be converted into any other format *EXCEPT* the format distributed by the U.S. NTIS (which organization holds the rights to the distribution and use of the font data in that particular format). Not that anybody would really *want* to use their format... each point is described in eight bytes as "xxx yyy:", where xxx and yyy are the coordinate values as ASCII numbers. *PLEASE* be reassured: The legal implications of NTIS' attempt to control a particular form of the Hershey Fonts *are* troubling. HOWEVER: We have been endlessly and repeatedly assured by NTIS that they do not care what we do with our version of the font data, they do not want to know about it, they understand that we are distributing this information all over the world, etc etc etc... but because it isn't in their *exact* distribution format, they just don't care!!! So go ahead and use the data with a clear conscience! (If you feel bad about it, take a smaller deduction for something on your taxes next week...) The Hershey Fonts: - are a set of more than 2000 glyph (symbol) descriptions in vector ( point-to-point ) format - can be grouped as almost 20 'occidental' (english, greek, cyrillic) fonts, 3 or more 'oriental' (Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana) fonts, and a few hundred miscellaneous symbols (mathematical, musical, cartographic, etc etc) - are suitable for typographic quality output on a vector device (such as a plotter) when used at an appropriate scale. - were digitized by Dr. A. V. Hershey while working for the U.S. Government National Bureau of Standards (NBS). - are in the public domain, with a few caveats: - They are available from NTIS (National Technical Info. Service) in a computer-readable from which is *not* in the public domain. This format is described in a hardcopy publication "Tables of Coordinates for Hershey's Repertory of Occidental Type Fonts and Graphic Symbols" available from NTIS for less than $20 US (phone number +1 703 487 4763). - NTIS does not care about and doesn't want to know about what happens to Hershey Font data that is not distributed in their exact format. - This distribution is not in the NTIS format, and thus is only subject to the simple restriction described at the top of this file. Hard Copy samples of the Hershey Fonts are best obtained by purchasing the book described above from NTIS. It contains a sample of all of the Occidental symbols (but none of the Oriental symbols). This distribution: - contains * a complete copy of the Font data using the original glyph-numbering sequence * a set of translation tables that could be used to generate ASCII-sequence fonts in various typestyles * a couple of sample programs in C and Fortran that are capable of parsing the font data and displaying it on a graphic device (we recommend that if you wish to write programs using the fonts, you should hack up one of these until it works on your system) - consists of the following files... hershey.doc - details of the font data format, typestyles and symbols included, etc. hersh.oc[1-4] - The Occidental font data (these files can be catenated into one large database) hersh.or[1-4] - The Oriental font data (likewise here) *.hmp - Occidental font map files. Each file is a translation table from Hershey glyph numbers to ASCII sequence for a particular typestyle. hershey.f77 - A fortran program that reads and displays all of the glyphs in a Hershey font file. hershey.c - The same, in C, using GKS, for MS-DOS and the PC-Color Graphics Adaptor. Additional Work To Be Done (volunteers welcome!): - Integrate this complete set of data with the hershey font typesetting program recently distributed to mod.sources - Come up with an integrated data structure and supporting routines that make use of the ASCII translation tables - Digitize additional characters for the few places where non-ideal symbol substitutions were made in the ASCII translation tables. - Make a version of the demo program (hershey.c or hershey.f77) that uses the standard Un*x plot routines. - Write a banner-style program using Hershey Fonts for input and non-graphic terminals or printers for output. - Anything else you'd like!