Upload newly built DANCER font files

[MattHeffron]

Uploaded sizes 8-14 - and replaces sizes 10 and 12.
Other sizes "available"...

[pamoroso]

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to use these fonts. If I apply Dancer 14 to this text in TEdit:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

I get black boxes (top window):

Opening DANCEROBJ-SAMPLES.TEDIT produces unknown IMAGEOBJ errors (bottom window) and loading DANCEROBJ yields an error (break window) because DANCEROBJ is in a different branch.

[rmkaplan]

Maybe approve/merge the DANCEROBJ PR first (it's harmless), and then work from that.

…

On Jul 31, 2026, at 12:37 AM, Paolo Amoroso ***@***.***> wrote: pamoroso left a comment (Interlisp/medley#2711) <#2711 (comment)> I'm not sure how I'm supposed to use these fonts. If I apply Dancer 14 to this text in TEdit: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z I get black boxes (top window): dancer.png (view on web) <https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/700f019f-08c5-4976-a800-43e52df36e21> Opening DANCEROBJ-SAMPLES.TEDIT produces unknown IMAGEOBJ errors (bottom window) and loading DANCEROBJ yields an error (break window) because DANCEROBJ is in a different branch. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2711?email_source=notifications&email_token=AQSTUJOO4MSEDHVCFNRFB3D5HREFDA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTKMJUGA2TCNBTGEZKM4TFMFZW63VQOJSXM2LFO5PXEZLROVSXG5DFMSSWK5TFNZ2KYZTPN52GK4S7MNWGSY3L#issuecomment-5140514312>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AQSTUJKO6TEWNXCS5PDENKD5HREFDAVCNFSNUABFKJSXA33TNF2G64TZHMZDQMJVGE4TSNRUHNEXG43VMU5TKMBSGY4DSNBTGEZKC5QC>. You are receiving this because your review was requested.

[MattHeffron]

Duplicate of my comment from PR #2717, as it's somewhat related to both...

None of this, below, is directly related to FONTSAMPLER, but it shows what the glyph mapping should be and the intended appearance of the glyphs (which look pretty poor at 1 pixel per point resolution).

I hand modified a .PS file of an older FONTSAMPLER output, to see what the PostScript Type 1 font generated.
(Sorry, that I used a file that reads across vs. reads down. That's the way FontForge shows it, but I didn't choose for that reason.)
Here's DANCER12.ps.txt (added .txt because GitHub)
And here's the generated DANCER12.pdf
I did have to modify the original Type 1 font file:
I commented out the serverdict begin 0 exitserver (line 3) because ps2pdf (a.k.a. ghostscript) failed with a security issue. (I'm guessing that it's only required if installing the font on a PostScript printer.)
I also removed the EOT control char at the end.
FontForge had given a warning about the size of an EN space (1600 vs. 1024).
I noticed in the font file:
/FontMatrix [0.000625 0 0 0.000625 0 0] def
And that the 0.000625 is 1/1600. I replaced that line with:
/FontMatrix [0.0009765625 0 0 0.0009765625 0 0] def
where 0.0009765625 is 1/1024.
That scaled the renderings up a bit, maybe closer to what the old DANCER DISPLAYFONT files had. I'll try generating new BDF files and then new MEDLEYDISPLAYFONT files. (I'll wait until FONTSAMPLER works, so we can get before and after for comparisons.)
Here's the updated font file:
Dancer.pfa.txt (added .txt because GitHub)
I "installed" the font by creating a symbolic link in /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/Dancer linked to /home/matt/Dancer.pfa.
I used ghostscript directly, insead of ps2pdf because I was debugging the issues with the font file.

gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=DANCER12.pdf DANCER12.ps

[MattHeffron]

I'll try generating new BDF files and then new MEDLEYDISPLAYFONT files. (I'll wait until FONTSAMPLER works, so we can get before and after for comparisons.)

I tried this, as mentioned above. The differences were negligible, and not all positive, at that.
These display fonts just don't have the pixel resolution for the details present in the PostScript font.
(I could try having otf2bdf use a higher pixel resolution, but a given font size in such a font would be noticeably larger than other DISPLAY fonts.)
I can generate larger point size MEDLEYDISPLAYFONT files from the earlier BDF files, if they'd be useful. (It's pretty quick for just the DANCER fonts.)
Since we have a Dancer PostScript font, I should investigate how to provide that info to the POSTSCRIPTSTREAM driver, and through to the conversion to PDF. I'll add an enhancement issue.