PTFTOPL(1)

💖 PTFTOPL (1) — general commands manual 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let me tell you about ptftopl and uptftopl because they are lowkey iconic and you're about to be obsessed. 🌸

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✨ NAME ✨

ptftopl, uptftopl — convert Japanese pTeX font metric (JFM) files to property list 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ptftopl [options] tfm_file[.tfm] [pl_file[.pl]]

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so the way that ptftopl works is: it takes a Japanese pTeX font metric (JFM) file and translates it into a Japanese property list (JPL) file. that's the main character job. 💅

but wait, it also serves as a TFM/JFM-file validating program, which is giving side quest energy but honestly? necessary. 🔥

uptftopl is the Unicode-enabled version of ptftopl. same vibe, glow-up encoding.

for the rest of this whole page, we're just gonna call these two (u)ptftopl, mwah. 🎀

(u)ptftopl is upper compatible with tftopl — so if your input TFM file is for roman fonts, it gets translated into an ordinary property list file. no drama, no notes.

now here's the difference between ptftopl and uptftopl and it's all about the internal encoding:

• when the input is a JFM file, ptftopl always treats it as a JIS-encoded JFM.
• uptftopl treats it as a Unicode-encoded JFM by default.

periodt. that's the whole plot twist. 😭

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

compared to tftopl, the following option is added to (u)ptftopl. that's it, that's the new girl. 👑

• -kanji string — sets the output Japanese Kanji code. the string can be one of the followings: euc (EUC-JP), jis (ISO-2022-JP), sjis (Shift_JIS), utf8 (UTF-8), uptex (UTF-8; uptftopl only). ⭐

and here's the tea on how that interacts with the input:

• when one of euc, jis, sjis or utf8 is specified, both ptftopl and uptftopl treat the input JFM as JIS-encoded.
• when uptex is specified with uptftopl, it treats the input JFM as Unicode-encoded.

no cap, uptex is uptftopl only — ptftopl does not get the aux cord. 🙈

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

ptex(1).

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✨ AUTHORS ✨

(u)ptftopl is maintained by Japanese TeX Development Community <https://texjp.org>. 🫶

for bug reports, open an issue at the GitHub repository <https://github.com/texjporg/tex-jp-build>, or send an e-mail to <issue@texjp.org>. they're nice, promise. 💜

this manual page was written by Hironobu Yamashita. ✍️

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and that's the whole thing bestie!! this page is brought to you by Web2C 2026 and it's dated 30 January 2026, and yes we ARE stanning a font-metric converter in this house. (u)ptftopl 4ever. 💖✨🎀🦋🌈👑