[9fans] troff and times roman, need for accented characters

[Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I again bumped into this awkward topic.

Being Czech I need to write with quite a few accented characters.
Being a physicist I write some math, too, and I use unicode characters
often.

Plan9 as well as p9p troff is not set up for using accented characters
I need (above 0xff but below 0x1ff, such as ď, ě, ň, ř, š, ť, ů, ž) in
Times-Roman. It switches to LucidaSans for the range, which is pretty
bad. Using LucidaSans for all text is not an option. I need
Times-Roman (or some other serif font).

Had it not been for math, Heirloom troff would solve the problem
(knows unicode, typesets all the characters I need). However, for some
reason, it typesets math differently than when plan9 or p9p troff is
used. Basically, results from heirloom troff + heirloom eqn, or
heirloom troff + p9p eqn, are bad for some reason.

Has somebody ever fought with this? (probably not...)

There is a type1 urw font NimbusRoNo9L, which is free, basically
Times-Roman, and has the characters I need. But I do not know
precisely what should be done to be able to use it. As it is, it seems
to be a type1 font, but with more than 255 glyphs, so I believe that
those for-me-interesting glyphs cannot be directly indexed. I read
somewhere they can only be used under their unicode names or what. If
this is true, I need to do something with the font, probably divide it
into two... Does anybody know more and can help?

Thank you!
Ruda