These are the sources for the xhershey tool. Most things are explained in the man page. Here are a few notes: Xhershey expects one character description per line in the database. The Usenet database will have to have lines joined first. join.icn and chk.icn are short Icon programs to join lines and check the database for internal consistency respectively. Something similar can be cooked up with awk or C, I'm sure. There are a few example spec files thrown in this distribution for Script and three styles of Gothic. The fonts are passable but of indifferent quality. They should be balanced in size and weight a little w.r.t. CM or whatever font family you are using before being released. Also I don't think it is a good idea to mix in punctuation symbols from other styles, even though they fill holes in the Script and Gothic map. Some playing around with the pen specs may be a good idea. I just didn't have the time. Speaking of MF files, the parameter files are stolen from those for CMR. These may not be the best. Again, have fun experimenting. In my opinion, the Hershey fonts are good value for money (free), but I have been consistently disappointed in my attempts to make them good fonts for TeX and other high-quality formatters. They just lack enough characters, that little bit of necessary character information or that touch of polish and it would be time consuming to tune the fonts. If you just want some strange screen fonts or previewing fonts for vector displays, Hershey may be ok for you. I'd be interested in any bug reports or improvements, but I doubt if I will have much time to respond appropriately. In other words, this software is provided as is and you are on your own. Ken Yap November 1988