Description:

texlive-afm provides afm2tfm, a converter for PostScript font metric
files. PostScript fonts are accompanied by .afm font metric files
which describe the characteristics of each font. To use PostScript
fonts with TeX, TeX needs .tfm files that contain similar information.
Afm2tfm will convert .afm files to .tfm files.

If you are installing texlive in order to use the TeX text formatting
system and PostScript(TM) files, you will need to install texlive-afm. You will
also need to install texlive-dvips (for converting .dvi files to PostScript
format for printing on PostScript printers), texlive-latex (a higher level
formatting package which provides an easier-to-use interface for TeX), and
texlive-xdvi (for previewing .dvi files in X). Unless you are an expert at
using TeX, you should also install the texlive-texmf-doc package, which
includes documentation for TeX.