Re: Hello from GNU Press

[Simon Law]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 02:43:54PM -0400, Karl Berry wrote:
>     Some PostScript fonts may not have
>     the same bolds and obliques and such, right?
> 
> Everything has bold.  You're right that some fonts have oblique and not
> italic, and that should be handled by the system.

        Agreed.  But then we'd have to either:
a) detect the missing fonts and choose a decent substitute
b) keep a database of the mappings.  (I think that this is the PSNFSS
solution.)

>     some simple method of specifying the default Roman font as foo, 
> 
> The @fontsize and @fontdef commands are only needed if someone wants to
> override the defaults for some crazy reason.  I guess I didn't make it
> clear in my example that the basic idea was that only the @fontfamily
> commands would generally need to be specified in the document.

        I see.  OK, then @fontsize and @fontdef should ensure that state
is kept.  This way, when someone switches fonts the right size will be
maintained.

> I don't think `ps' or `mf' actually has to be an argument.  We'll see.
> 
>     because most of them default to 7pt, so we'd have to recalculate
>     everything.
> 
> Really?  That's not my experience.  But it doesn't matter, seems better
> to allow both scaled... and at... anyway.

        My memory could be wrong here.  All I remember is that I would
pick a PostScript font, and scaling it to the same value would not be
correct.  (That's because the CM fonts are actually different at
different sizes, right?  The larger ones are presumed to be titling
fonts.)

>     (Well, you may have to ask for your current font again.)
> 
> The code should reselect the current fonts when a font command is run.

        Hmm.  That would mean an invasive change to keep track of which
font is actually current.  But I can see how this could be done.

>             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.
> 
> There are no suffixes right now :).  For the first stage, we can skip that.
> `ptmr' by itself is ok.

        Fine.  Deferring this sounds good to me.

> Good luck with the paragraph indentation stuff, let me/us know if we can
> help.

        Right now, paragraph indentation stuff requires that you
actually start a paragraph after the section starts.  I think I have a
texinfo.tex patch for this; but it's against the texinfo.tex inside GCC,
and not CVS HEAD.  It does carry the gist of things, so perhaps you'd
like to look at it.

Simon