Re: [Groff] TeX fonts and groff

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

> I fear I phrased my question badly.  Seem to be doing that a lot
> recently.  I didn't mean "just any collection of TeX fonts," but
> rather "specific TeX fonts that are plainly available on my (Debian)
> installation (of tetex), but only as .vf's and .tfm's."
> 
> For example, in my /usr/share/texmf/fonts/tfm/ and
> /usr/share/texmf/fonts/vf, there exist .vf's and .tfm's for
> cg/optima.  I'd like to make the Optima fonts available to -Tps,
> which would require .pfa or .pfb files.  Scour as I might the CTAN
> site, I can't discover .pfa or .pfb files for anything resembling
> om<whatever>__.pfa/b.  Hence, I'm wondering how to generate the
> .pfa/b's myself, in order to use the fonts with groff -Tps.  Or,
> barring that, where to get my hands on the .pfa/b's for the fonts
> that come with my TeX installation.  The cm-super and lm fonts you
> mention exist on CTAN as .pfb's.  But where are the others?
> 
> Is there some sort of licensing issue invovled here?  Foundries
> have donated fonts to TeX, but you can only use those fonts if
> you're running TeX?  

CG Omega has nothing intrinsically to do with TeX.  The vf and
tfm files you are referring to contain "meta-information" about
the fonts; they're not the fonts themselves (meaning also that
you can't generate pfa or pfb files from them).  This
meta-information appears to be freely distributable (like Adobe
allows you to download afm files for their fonts from their web
site free of charge).  I'd guess, however, that you have to
license the actual fonts.