TFTOPL(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay bestie, this is tftopl(1) from the General Commands Manual — the program that converts a TeX font metric (tfm) file to property list (pl) format. it’s giving “binary to plain text glow-up” energy ✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

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

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So here’s the tea ☕: the tftopl program translates a (binary) TeX font metric file to a (plain text) property list file. Then you can view or edit the contents of the tfm file — main character access, honestly 💅. It also serves as a tfm-file validating program, i.e., if no error messages are given, the input file is correct. slay for correctness checks 🫶

The pl_file is extended with .pl if necessary. If pl_file is not given, standard output is used. Likewise, tfm_file is extended with .tfm if it lacks a suffix. no cap, the suffix fairy handles it 🧚

✨ OPTIONS ✨

First up: see tex(1) for details of command-line parsing. iykyk 🌈

• -charcode-format=format — the argument format specifies how character codes are output in the pl file. By default (the historical behavior), ASCII letters and digits are output using the "C" code (i.e., as themselves), and other characters are output in octal; unless the font’s coding scheme starts with "TeX math sy" or "TeX math ex", in which case all character codes are output in octal. If format is ascii, all character codes that correspond to graphic characters, besides the left and right parentheses, are output in ASCII. Finally, if format is octal, all character codes are output in octal. (This option is the same as in vftovp.) periodt 💅
• -verbose — by default, the program operates silently 🤫. With this option, some reports are printed on stdout. cute little status updates, love that 🍓

The standard -help and -version options are also supported. 🫶

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

The program looks for tfm_file using the environment variables TFMFONTS and TEXFONTS, in that order. If neither are set, it uses the system default. environment variable queen behavior 👑

🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

• pltotf(1)
• Donald E. Knuth, TeXware.
• Font utility topic on CTAN: https://ctan.org/topic/font-util
• Package page on CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/tftopl
• Section in the Web2c manual (with an example and summary of the pl format): https://tug.org/texinfohtml/web2c.html#tftopl-invocation
• Typeset source code, including the tfm file format description: https://ctan.org/pkg/knuth-pdf

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Donald E. Knuth wrote the program. It was published as part of the TeXware technical report from Stanford. Howard Trickey and Pavel Curtis originally ported it to Unix. legends only 🫶

Public discussion list and bug reports: https://lists.tug.org/tex-k

---

✨ that’s the tea: Web2C 2026, 30 January 2026. mwah 💋 ✨