Re: microtype for texinfo

[Gavin Smith]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 08:23:11AM +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:
> > He's willing in principle to suggest that cm-super[-minimal] become part
> > of the recommended TeX packages, but I'm not sure that is warranted.
> 
> I just suggested two possible options, both I don't mind:
> - make cm-super (the full set) a "recommends" of
>   texlive-fonts-recommended
>   This will install it automatically unless the user explicitly disables
>   installation of recommended packages.
> 
> - make cm-super a dependency of texinfo (next version, in Debian)
>   that way the package will be pulled in in any case
> 
> I am fine with doing both.

I'm not asking for the second option:

Adding new dependencies for Texinfo has a clear cost.  People already
complain about Texinfo depending on all the TeX packages, and often
are not using the TeX output (only building Info or HTML).  I don't
think it's good to increase the dependencies for Texinfo by 60 MB if that's
how much it is.

I'm fine with not enabling microtype in LaTeX output by default (I had
never thought it was necessary in the first place).  As I've already said
in other messages, the @microtype command was intended for texinfo.tex only,
not other output formats.

People are free to edit and customize LaTeX output as they like and this
would include using microtype if they have the right TeX and LaTeX packages
installed.

Even if we don't turn on microtype there is still the issue with pixellated
fonts.

Re the first option - obviously there are other users of
texlive-fonts-recommended than Texinfo users and I don't have much
insight into the broader situation.  It appears to me that the use
of these fonts with texi2any LaTeX output is a very minor point in
favour of installing these fonts (and the LaTeX output is new and we
don't know how many people will use it).

However, there doesn't seem to be anything special about texi2any LaTeX
output that would not also apply to other LaTeX files that people may
wish to process.  The issues with raster fonts and microtype would
apply to all files where the T1 encoding is specified.

My impression is that specifying T1 encoding is extremely prevalent, see e.g.:

https://latexref.xyz/fontenc-package.html
https://texfaq.org/FAQ-fuzzy-T1
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/664/why-should-i-use-usepackaget1fontenc