Re: Latin Modern and cm-super in Debian [was: LilyPond 2.3.0 released]

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

Florent Rougon writes:

Hi Florent,

> I'm the Debian maintainer of the lmodern package, which contains the
> Latin Modern fonts. I found this thread via a little bit of googling.

I can imagine.  The fonts thread was quite blunt and explicit, in places.

> I don't have much to add to what Werner already explained. Only that:
>
>   1. lmodern is in no way trying to hijack cm-super in Debian, as one of
>      the preceding mails seems to imply.

Ok, thanks for pointing that out.

>      I repeat: cm-super in Debian is only waiting for a maintainer

(is it in wnpp?)

You hinted in your package description that lmodern is `better', and
Werner indicated that development on lmodern is going faster than
cm-super, combined with the fact that cm-super was not available in
Debian, had me think that we maybe should wait for lmodern to really
surpass cm-super before switching to one of those at all.

>   2. I uploaded a package of the latest upstream release of the Latin
>      Modern fonts here today:
>
>        deb http://people.via.ecp.fr/~flo/debian sid/binary-all/
>        deb-src http://people.via.ecp.fr/~flo/debian sid/source/

Ok, that's great, but it still means that LilyPond would depend on
something th'ts currently not in Debian, which is not a good thing.

> And next time, before anyone else feels like saying I write bullshit in
> my packages' descriptions

That was me, and I apologise for not copying you on that discussion.
Please don't take offence.  But note that Han-Wen, as the author of
mftrace, thinks he knows/should know quite a bit about metafont and
postscript/type1 problems.

The lmodern description says:
   [..]
   The Latin Modern fonts were generated using MetaType1,
   [..]

The 'bullshit' was referring to that sentence.

Noone here has actually investigated it further, I think, but as I
read it, Werner and Han-Wen reached consensus that fully automated
generating of type1 from mf sources is most probably not what
happened:

    > > Jan:
    > > However, Han-Wen asserts that CM-like font generation using (modified)
    > > metapost is 1. next to impossible,

    > Werner:
    > Han-Wen is wrong :-)
    > 
    > > 2. higly improbable and
    > 
    > It is a semi-automated process.

    Han-Wen:
    Perhaps, but then the word "*generated* using
    MetaType1" is not entirely accurate.

So, now that you're taking part of this discussion, perhaps like to
explain how they were made, exactly?  And in case the process indeed
is not [fully] automatic, you may want to make the package's
description less misleading.

I agree that there's probably a world of nuances between `bullshit'
and `not entirely accurate'.

Greetings,
Jan.

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien       | http://www.lilypond.org