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Re: Hello from GNU Press


From: Karl Berry
Subject: Re: Hello from GNU Press
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 12:30:47 -0400

            By the law?

Brain spasm, I just meant `by the way' :).  I added you to the list.

            We could just assume that everybody follows the TDS.  Then we
    just install everything under texmf/tex/texinfo

Right, the problem isn't the texmf/tex/texinfo part.  It's the prefix.
There's no way to know what TeX tree to install them in.  Using the
location of the tex binary from the path doesn't help because most sites
have a `local' texmf tree which is where the files should be really
installed, but there's no realistic way to know where it is.

Right now, Texinfo installers can say
make TEXMF=/their/local/texmf install-tex
but in practice few people do...

    ... don't think that smashing each font's idiosyncrasies into
    texinfo.tex is a good idea.

Sure, but I don't think there are that many idiosyncrasies, at least to
begin with.  Every one of the PS text fonts is treated in exactly the
same way, so we don't need separate files for them.  

    (You do mean PSNFSS and not PLNFSS, right?)

No, I meant PLNFSS.  It is a (minimal) implementation of PSNFSS for
plain TeX.  Texinfo can't use the PSNFSS macros themselves, it would end
up pulling in all of LaTeX.  PLNFSS does reuse the .fd files, though, I
believe.  (I have never been completely clear on exactly what
information gets included in .fd files; anyway ...)

            I was using palatino.tex since PSFNSS uses palatino.sty.  One
    could conceivably use ppl.tex (or whatever suffix we really want), but I
    consider that less than user-friendly.

Well, my ideal interface would be a command like:
@fontfamily roman ppl
In that context, `palatino' doesn't help (and there's no need for
subsidiary files, either).

            My current implementation is completely ignored by makeinfo in
    info mode.  Of course, this could possibly be a side-effect, so I would
    be happy to make it cleaner.

It is a side effect of being before the @setfilename, I believe.

    However, I'd like to suggest that we split Metafont and PostScript
    font sizes.  Why?  Because almost all PostScript fonts should be
    scaled "at f00pt" while Metafont fonts should still be scaled
    according to magsteps.

I'm not sure that it does any harm to use `scaled NNNN' for PS fonts.
However, we can easily allow for both by specifying a suffix instead
of just the magstep number, thus:
@fontsize smaller scaled 800
or
@fontsize smaller at 8pt

        I agree; but have no idea how encodings work in TeX.  

It boils down to using different fonts.  The user says something like
`use encoding 8t', and we tack `8t' onto the filename when we issue the
\font command.  The complex part is accessing the characters from the
right positions, but ... one thing at a time.


My suggestion for a first concrete step is, redo what's in texinfo.tex
to provide more rational \set...commands (internally, not for Texinfo
source usage), and use them to define the default CM fonts.  That should
expose all kinds of issues with supporting the PS fonts.

Thanks,
karl




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