Fonts Help [tfm]

[Karl Berry]

    I can't remember how to use Postscript fonts in 
    plain TeX, 

Gosh, Peter, have you been with XeTeX so long :)?

For example, foo.tex -> foo.pdf:
\font\foo = ptmr {\foo This is Times Roman.}\end
tex foo && dvips foo && ps2pdf foo.ps foo.pdf

As you and many others here already know, of course TeX (the original
program) does not know from beans about Metafont vs. Type 1. It just
reads tfm files (ptmr.tfm in this case), and \font is the only way to
load them. It's the driver that makes the format distinction.

It is with the other engines that combine the typesetting and the output
(aforementioned pdftex, luatex, xetex) that the engine needs to know the
format.

Personally, when I need to do this, I find the tfm filenames I want just
by looking at texlive.tlpdb. (By searching for the package name and then
browsing through the various files in it.) --best, karl.