Re: Hello from GNU Press

[Simon Law]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 12:30:47PM -0400, Karl Berry wrote:
> >             By the law?
> 
> Brain spasm, I just meant `by the way' :).  I added you to the list.

        Cool.

> >             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...

        I encountered that problem with pbox's Makefile.  I just
declared a DESTDIR variable and defaulted it to the current directory.
Using /usr/local/texmf as a sane default shouldn't be bad either.
Perhaps Thomas Esser would be able to help us out, though.

> >     ... 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.  

        I'm not so sure about that.  Some PostScript fonts may not have
the same bolds and obliques and such, right?

> >     (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 ...)

        Oh.  Well, I'll take a look at it.

> >             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).

        If we could do that, and safely handle all the bolding and such,
then that would be ideal.

>             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.

        Ah.

> >     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

        That's much better.  The "scaled NNNN" for PS fonts is silly,
because most of them default to 7pt, so we'd have to recalculate
everything.  It's probably easier just to "scaled" or "at" explicitly.
Although then, "@fontsize smaller scaled 800" needs to pick the correct
Metafont size to scale from.

        It does worry me that this may get rather verbose.  I'd prefer
some simple method of specifying the default Roman font as foo, and not
have to worry about font sizes (which should be automagically handled
properly.)  Perhaps if the @fontsizes are set to some sane defaults, and
you specify "@fontfamily roman ps ppl", or "@fontfamily roman mf cm",
which should be only thing you need to do to change the current font.
(Well, you may have to ask for your current font again.)

> >     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.

        OK.  So we merely have to pick the right suffix.  How is that
handled right now?  I didn't see any explicit code to pick up suffixes.

> 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.

        Yes, I can see that.  I will try to get on it as soon as I can.
However, I'm going to work on paragraph indentation first, as I haven't
gotten acceptable info output yet.  (The ad-hoc solution I've got for
Palatino is "Good Enough" for printing a manual.)

Simon

P.S.  Do you know who Joshua Gay is?  I heard that he did some work in
      this area for GNU Press, but haven't found evidence of it.