VPTOVF(1)

💖 NAME 💖

vptovf — bestie, it converts virtual property lists into virtual font metrics ✨

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

vptovf [-verbose] vpl_name[.vpl] [vfm_name[.vf] [tfm_name[.tfm]]]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so first thing, real talk: this manual page is not the whole story, it's literally just the appetizer. The complete documentation for this version of TeX lives in the info file, or in the manual Web2C: A TeX implementation. Go read those if you want the full lore 📖

So what does vptovf actually do? It takes a property list file — the human-oriented one, the cute readable one — and translates it into a pair of program-oriented files: one in VF (virtual font) format and one in TFM (TeX font metric) format. 💅

The way that this slaps is: now you can edit a virtual font file directly, and its exact contents can be displayed mnemonically — like, in a way that actually makes sense to a person 👑 You can also cook up brand new virtual fonts this way. Those map characters as seen by TeX into an arbitrary sequence of low-level typesetting operations. Arbitrary!! Sequence!! Low-level operations!! That's the whole vibe 🫶

And a lil detail that matters: all three filenames — vpl_name, vf_name, and tfm_name — get extended with the appropriate suffix if they're missing one. So don't stress if you forget the extension, it'll handle it 💖

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -verbose — without it, vptovf operates silently, like it's not even there, no cap 🤫 With it, a banner and a progress report get printed on stdout, so you can watch it do its lil thing in real time 🌈

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• pltotf(1)
• tftopl(1)
• vftovp(1)

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🎀 AUTHORS 🎀

Donald E. Knuth wrote the program — based in part on an idea of David Fuchs — starting with the code for pltotf(1). Karl Berry adapted it for compilation with web2c. Legends only, fr fr 🙇‍♀️

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And that's the page, bestie!! This was Web2C 2025, dated 16 June 2015 — yes the date is older than the version, we don't question the timeline, we just respect it 💀💜