In emacs, how does one add custom true type fonts to ps-print?

Question

I'm customizing emacs to print to ps with custom faces. I've found this reference, which explains how to add Helvetica. To emacs ps-print.

I'm trying to use Consolas, so I used the following code:

;; Add consolas to supported printing fonts.
(require 'ps-print)
(setq ps-font-info-database
    (append
        '((Consolas
            (fonts  (normal      . "Consolas")
                    (bold        . "Consolas-Bold")
                    (italic      . "Consolas-Italic")
                    (bold-italic . "Consolas-BoldItalic"))
            (size . 10.0)
            (line-height . 10.48)
            (space-width . 5.51719)
            (avg-char-width . 5.51719)))
        ps-font-info-database))

The document prints without errors, but it uses default fonts instead of Consolas. When I the convert the ps doc to pdf, and then copy text from the pdf to Open Office, I do get consolas. but in the pdf the text displays as something like Courier.

Which names should I use? Is Consolas-bold wrong? I couldn't find anything on the web about this problem.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The reason that the code above would work for Helvetica is that Helvetica is one of the standard fonts in postscript. You usually have 3 fonts that are always available in PS - Times Roman, Helvetica and Courier.

Adding new fonts depends on the software. Some will download a postscript type1 font to the target device (TTF fonts get converted before downloading usually), but that depends on having a target device that can accept fonts. The other way is for the software to draw the document as a series of vectors.

PDF uses a similar system to the first way in that it can embed the font (or a subset of it to save space) into the document.

I don't quite know how to do it in emacs, but I would expect you would need to tell emacs where the font is located and how to embed it - maybe even pre-convert it to Postscript Type1.

TBH you'd be best off investigating LaTeX for postscript / PDF printing.

Answer 2

This worked for me (Emacs 23.3.1 / Windows 7 64x) [still wrestling with color output]:

;; Printing
(require 'ps-print)
(setq printer-name '"USB001")
(setq ps-printer-name t)
(setq ps-lpr-command "g:/dev/bin/ghostscript/gs9.04/bin/gswin64c.exe")
(setq ps-lpr-switches '("-q" "-dNOPAUSE" "-dBATCH"
                        "-sDEVICE=mswinpr2"))
;; Add Consolas 
(setq ps-font-info-database
      (append
       '((Consolas
          (fonts (normal      . "Consolas")
                 (bold        . "Consolas-Bold")
                 (italic      . "Consolas-Italic")
                 (bold-italic . "Consolas-Bold-Italic"))
          (size           . 11.0)
          (line-height    . 13.0)
          (space-width    . 6.04688)
          (avg-char-width . 6.04688)))
       ps-font-info-database))
(setq ps-font-family 'Consolas)
(setq ps-font-size 11)

;; Print in color
(setq-default ps-print-color-p t)

;; Page layout: Header [file-name     2011-12-05]
;;              Footer [                     n/m]

;; Header
(setq ps-header-lines 1)
(setq ps-header-font-size 11)
(setq ps-header-title-font-size 11)
(setq ps-header-font-family 'Consolas)
(setq ps-right-header '(ps-time-stamp-yyyy-mm-dd))
(setq ps-print-header-frame nil)        ; no box top

;; Footer
(setq ps-footer-lines 1)
(setq ps-footer-font-size 11)
(setq ps-footer-font-family 'Consolas)
(setq ps-print-footer t)
(setq ps-left-footer nil)
(setq ps-right-footer (list "/pagenumberstring load"))
(setq ps-footer-offset .50)
(setq ps-footer-line-pad .50)
(setq ps-print-footer-frame nil)        ; no box bottom

;; Keystroke to print
(global-set-key (kbd "C-|")  'ps-print-buffer-with-faces)

Good luck!