[Groff] Re: PFB->PFA and overlong lines

[Eddie Kohler]

Hi Werner,

> the DSC standard from Adobe requires that no input line is longer than
> 255 characters.  In case a PFA file is included as a resource, this
> requirement should hold also.
> 
> Now consider the URW font corresponding to Times Roman, n021003l.pfb,
> distributed with gs (I have NimbusRomNo9L-Regu 1.05).  It contains an
> overlong /Notice string.  ...
> pfbtops from groff and a pipe through t1disasm and t1asm, don't have
> overlong lines in the eexec section but didn't catch the /Notice
> problem.

Thanks for notifying me on this issue.

> This looks like a bug to me.  Fixing it should relatively simple by
> splitting the lines with a final `\' if in a string (at least this is
> what I will do in pfbtops).

I don't think this is a bug, at least for t1asm/t1disasm. First off the
255-character limit is over 10 years old. Second off, t1asm/t1disasm does
not claim to generate "DSC-conforming" PostScript; neither do most of these
tools. We don't check whether DSC comments are present, or whether they
conform to the DSC spec. We don't check even whether the included
PostScript is valid (whether saves and restores match up, for example). And
we shouldn't; these tools are meant to replicate their input, with only
those changes the user explicitly requested. Garbage in garbage out. A tool
that claims to "DSC-ify" PostScript might check line lengths as you
suggest, but my feeling is that t1asm/t1disasm should not.

Eddie