[Aleph] ovp2ovf, font_install_unicode and the Mac

[Marc Wilhelm Küster]

Hello Giuseppe,

>>The recent weeks and months have been relatively silent on this list as
>>everybody seems to have been busy with a other tasks (certainly that is
>>true for me, even though I am only a simple user).
>>    
>>
>
>For me specifically, I've been working on my PhD thesis. The
>good news is, I've basically reached completion, in the
>sense that the research and coding part are done, so what is
>missing is the final testset and the actual writing.
>
>  
>
Similar with me, except that I've finished my PhD thesis end of last
year and then had to go through all the associated exams as well as
various other activities. Following that, I've been called to the
university of applied sciences in Worms for web services and XML
technologies, starting first of June. Now, over the summer I plan,
amongst other tasks, to actually prepare the book version of my thesis,
to be published by Niemeyer early next year. Needless to say that I'll
continue to do so with Aleph / Lamed.

Currently, I'm beginning to go through their typographic requirements
and adapt my typesetting routines to their wishes. One of their wishes
is the use of Garamond as the base font instead of the standard Omega font.

>>That is not to say that from a practical purpose nothing has happened
>>--- I am very grateful for Giuseppe  to have integrated Aleph into teTeX
>>3. In fact, Aleph was hailed as one of the major improvements in teTeX 3
>>in what may very well be Germany's leading, general purpose computer
>>magazine, c't.
>>    
>>
>
>Wow. Do you have a pointer to this? The more positive
>reviews I can get on Aleph, the easier it would be for me to
>present the project to my University.
>
>  
>

No problem: Elke Niedermair: "Experte für Textsatz", c't 7/05, Seite 71.
 I could,  if you are interested, scan you that short article once I'm
back home where've got the actual paper version. The text is in German,
of course.* *

>>I do have a minor problem on the Mac, though, that is associated to
>>ovp2ovf. To integrate Unicode fonts I have so far used the
>>font_install_unicode.pl of Vincent Zoonekynd (cf.
>>http://zoonek.free.fr/LaTeX/FontInstallUnicode/). That script depends on
>>ttf2tfm and an old version of ovp2ovf, namely version 1.11 from
>>TeXLive6, whereas the current version 2.0 doesn't seem to work. ("Si
>>vous avez un problème du genre "Bad metric (TFM/OFM) file", cela
>>provient sûrement de la version de ovp2ovf utilisée : je constate que
>>les versions 1.15 et 2.0 ne marchent pas, alors que la version 1.11, qui
>>était sur le CD TeXLive6 marchait très bien." from the above URL)
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>Vincent Zoonekynd offers a binary version of the linux ovp2ovf 1.11 for
>>download, but neither the source nor a binary for Mac OS X. I cannot
>>find it on the web, either, nor do I have access to a TeXLive6 CD. Does
>>anybody of you have by any chance access to either the old code or a Mac
>>binary (or, even better, of course, the news that everything is fixed
>>now in some ovp2ovf > 2.0)?
>>    
>>
>
>I have not done any work at all on the font metric auxiliary
>programs, but IIRC *one* of the issues with the was a simple
>matter of line ending. If you *do* have the 1.15 or
>subsequent version as binary, could you try converting the
>line endings in the ovp file to Mac/Unix/Windows format and
>see if any of these work?
>
>  
>

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately none of the lineendings worked with
ovp2ovf 2.0...

I did find a stacktrace in one of the log files, though.

------------

Command: ovp2ovf
Path:    /sw/bin/ovp2ovf
Parent:  bash [211]

Version: ??? (???)

PID:    5957
Thread: 0

Exception:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes:      KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x0000000a

Thread 0 Crashed:
0   ovp2ovf     0x000087e0 set_character_measure + 136 (dimen_routines.c:85)
1   ovp2ovf     0x000035d0 yyparse + 1700 (pl.y:293)
2   ovp2ovf     0x00002e04 main + 2844 (omfonts.c:262)
3   ovp2ovf     0x00001dd8 _start + 392 (crt.c:267)
4   dyld        0x8fe01048 _dyld_start + 60

Thread 0 crashed with PPC Thread State:
  srr0: 0x000087e0 srr1: 0x0000d030                vrsave: 0x00000000
    cr: 0x24002484  xer: 0x00000004   lr: 0x00008764  ctr: 0x000035c4
    r0: 0x00000003   r1: 0xbffff2e0   r2: 0x001fab60   r3: 0x00000002
    r4: 0x00003127   r5: 0x0002e1a0   r6: 0x00000001   r7: 0x00000000
    r8: 0x00000007   r9: 0x000000e0  r10: 0x00003127  r11: 0xcccccccd
   r12: 0x000181d0  r13: 0xbffff370  r14: 0x00022f34  r15: 0x00022f34
   r16: 0x00000000  r17: 0x00000190  r18: 0xbffff500  r19: 0x00000006
   r20: 0x000000c8  r21: 0xbffff370  r22: 0x0001b0c0  r23: 0x00000001
   r24: 0xbffff382  r25: 0xbffff524  r26: 0x0000009c  r27: 0x0001b108
   r28: 0x001fab6c  r29: 0x0000000c  r30: 0x011a7460  r31: 0x00008764

Binary Images Description:
    0x1000 -    0x1afff ovp2ovf     /sw/bin/ovp2ovf
  0x226000 -   0x234fff libkpathsea.4.dylib     /sw/lib/libkpathsea.4.dylib
0x8fe00000 - 0x8fe50fff dyld 43    /usr/lib/dyld
0x90000000 - 0x901a6fff libSystem.B.dylib     /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
0x901fe000 - 0x90202fff libmathCommon.A.dylib    
/usr/lib/system/libmathCommon.A.dylib
0x91d33000 - 0x91d53fff libmx.A.dylib     /usr/lib/libmx.A.dylib

-------

According to this, the error occurs within a while loop that goes
through a list of character measurements (e. g. character widths)

Unfortunately, if compiling the omfonts (= ovp2ovf) utility from the
TexLive source code (which I assume is the same one as for tetex as far
as the omega font utilities are concerned), it doesn't work either, but
with a lexer error: "fatal flex scanner internal error--end of buffer
missed" --- which doesn't exactly facilitate debugging. Let's see if
I'll find the time over the next week or so to look a bit more in detail
into the issue.

Best regards,

Marc