How to compare fonts? (HPRINT fails)

[masinter]

I was looking for a way to compare two fonts (one read from hevetica12.strike in AltoFonts and one from helvetica12-mrr-0 in displayfonts>c0>. After patching \fontfilename.old (and display-font-name-map which looks very dossy), adding 'strike to displayfontextensions, setting displayfontdiectories in various orders

I was able to read both using (\readdisplayfontfile 'helvetica 12 'mrr 0 'display 0)

I thought I would try HPRINT to see any diffs, but HPRINT produces output like this

Notice the odd linebreaks when printing the bitmap.

[masinter]

clue: if HPRINT is printing to a non-random-accessible stream, it opens a {NoDirCore} stream, prints to that, and then copybytes .

[masinter]

pr #506 fixes the EOL problem but the other problems (how to compare font files? HPRINT on DEFAULTFONT fails) remain

[masinter]

I want to examine the fonts we have, not sure what is what. We have some lispusers packages

• BIGGER-FONT (no doc) seems to modify FONTSET(BIGGER) to also change the AR button font. Recommend delete.
• EDITFONT (no doc) seems to be an editor that lets you edit a display font. Includes READSTRILEFONTFILE and WRITESTRIKEFONTFILE. Write some documentation.
  
  invoke (EDITFONT (FONTCREATE 'TERMINAL 10))
• FONTDECLS: some declarations from elsewhere, unreferenced. Delete.
  
• FONTSAMPLER -- Can be used to show Displayfonts
  
• NOVAFONT -- read fonts from Viewpoint. Obsolete; if we get new fonts it will be from modern sources.
  
• PSCFONT-FIX-FILENAME -- junk utility. Delete.
• READAPPLEFONT -- useful?
  
• READDISPLAYFONT
  
• SFFONT -- NO docs, compiled version -- seems to be a spline font reader(!) not compiled, needs "IRISSTREAM"?
• library/FONTSAMPLE -- no docs -- a different font sampler -- shows some characters but for multiple fonts so just abcdefghijkl in lower and upper case for all of the fonts

Plus files in the loadups::

• sources/AFONT
• sources/FONT
• sources/FONTPROFILE

[masinter]

I wasn't sure how to make progress on the FONT issues, but cataloging what we have seemed like a start.

What to do next?