NAME
wml::des::gfont - Graphical Font Tag
SYNOPSIS
#use wml::des::gfont
<gfont [attributes]>One Single Line Of Text</gfont>
DESCRIPTION
This is a nice interface to the gFONT program which can be found at
http://www.engelschall.com/sw/gfont/. It provides a "<gfont>" tag which
can be used similar to the standard HTML tag "<font>". But instead of
online rendering by the webbrowser the text is rendered offline via
gfont into a GIF image. This has the following advantages:
All TeX-available fonts can be used.
you can use any TeX-available fonts instead of the commonly known
ones the typical browsers support. These fonts will actually look
like you want, i.e. Helvetica _is_ Helvetica with "<gfont>" while
it can be Arial or a totally different (substituted) font when
using the "<font>" tag.
Fonts with much greater size can be used.
With "<gfont>" you can increase the "size" attribute up to +9 which
is actually 200pt in size while the HTML font tag usually stops at
+4. So "<gfont>" can be used for big headlines.
You can create banners with colored backgrounds.
The standard "<font>" tag cannot use a different background color
in HTML 3.2, "<gfont>" can. Because it directly renders into a GIF
image which background has not to be transparent.
When an image is generated, a text file containing the command which
has been run is created, its name is the image file name with a ".cmd"
suffix. When WML is re-run, this file is searched for and gFONT
executed only if command line has changed.
ATTRIBUTES
base=filename
Usually the created images for a source file page.wml are named
page.gfontXXX.gif where "XXX" is a number starting with 000. When
you use a "base=foo" attribute, then the resulting files are named
foo.gfontXXX.gif. Actually you can even use a complete filename
including a directory prefix, i.e. when you use
"base=../../common/foo" attribute, then the GIF images are created
as ../../common/foo.gfontXXX.gif. Use this feature to direct the
images to a particular directory. Additionally using a "base="""
attribute leads to images which are so-called hidden Unix files or
dot-files.
And for most flexibility when no base is specified and the variable
"GFONT_BASE" is defined (usually from within a .wmlrc file via
"-DGFONT_BASE~path/to/gfont/dir/base") it is used. Use this
feature to redirect the created images to a particular directory.
You may also use the variable "IMAGE_BASE" which defines in a
single line all base names for images generated by WML.
file=filename
Use this to explicitly set the output filename for the GIF image.
This is usually not used, because you don’t need to know the actual
filename. But sometimes it can be useful to explicitly set it.
notag
This forces "<gfont>" to expand to nothing, i.e. no resulting
"<img>" tag. The image itself is still generated. In combination
with the above "file" attribute this can be used to generate images
to particular files which can be used at other positions, for
instance inside "<rollover>" (see wml::des::rollover(3)) tags.
color=#rrggbb
Sets the font (foreground) color. Default is "#000000" which is
black.
bgcolor=#rrggbb
Sets the image background color. Default is no color at all, i.e.
transparent background.
face=fontname
Sets the type of the used font where fontname is actually any TeX-
available font or a name alias from the Fontmap file of gFONT. See
gfont(1) for more details. Default is "Times".
size=number
Sets the relative size of the font, similar to the HTML 3.2
"<font<" tag. Default is 0. The following correspondence to pt-
sizes exists:
size: -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
pt: 12 16 20 32 40 50 60 80 100 120 140 160
This leads to nearly the same font sizes for "<font>" and "<gfont>"
tags on typical browser setups.
align=location
This directly corresponds to the "align" attribute of the "<img>"
tag.
crop
This indicates that the image should be cropped, i.e. the edges
containing only the background color should be removed.
adjust=spec
This passes through spec to the -r option of gFONT which adjusts
the size of the final image. Use this to expand the image and/or
align it.
:img:ATTR=STR
The ‘‘ATTR=STR’’ pairs are passed along to the "<img>" HTML tag.
EXAMPLE
<gfont face="HelveticaBold" size=+6 color="#3333cc">
A sample Headerline
</gfont>
AUTHOR
Ralf S. Engelschall
rse@engelschall.com
www.engelschall.com
REQUIRES
Internal: P1, P2, P3, Image::Size (P5M)
External: gfont (PATH)
SEE ALSO
HTML "<font>" tag, gfont(1), http://www.engelschall.com/sw/gfont/