Re: microtype for texinfo

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 09:08:19PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 08:23:11AM +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:
> > - 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:

I think that having sm-super as a dependency is better for Texinfo TeX,
in my opinion, having some glyphs rendered in bitmap is not satisfying.
And for Texinfo TeX having microtype set in a document with bitmap
glyphs may trigger the non scalable fonts error.

> 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.

It seems to me that cm-super is a dependency of Texinfo TeX (soft or
hard, depending on the distribution conventions), at least in a
GNU/Linux distribution.  To me the functionality loss without cm-super
is more problematic than additional dependencies.  That is what I would
argue for packaging, except maybe for distros very much focused on small
footprints.  To me, the only viable way to avoid this dependeny would be
to split the texinfo package with texi2any and Texinfo TeX separate.

-- 
Pat