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5.2 Map Files

Many things are defined through files. There is a general scheme to associate an object to the files to use: map files. They are typically used to:

• - resolve aliases. For instance the ISO-8859-1 encoding is also called ISO Latin 1, or Latin 1 for short. The encoding.map file will map these three names to the same Encoding Description File.
• - cope with broken files systems. For instance, the-one-you-know-I-don’t-need-to-name cannot handle files named Courier-BoldOblique.afm: it is the same as Courier-Bold.afm. The fonts.map file is here to associate a font file name to a font name.

The syntax of these files is:

• - any empty line, or any line starting by a ‘#’ is a comment.
• - a line with the format

  ***              path
  

  requests that the file designated by path be included at this point.

• - any other line has the format

  key               value
  

  meaning that when looking for key (e.g., name of a font, an encoding etc.), a2ps should use value (e.g., font file name, encoding description file name etc.).

The map files used in a2ps are:

encoding.map

Resolving encodings aliases.

fonts.map

Mapping font names to font file names.

sheets.map

Rules to decide what style sheet to use.