Re: How to cook Garamond

[h h extern <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

> Dear syndicate,

ok, the always messy font business ...

the problem is not so much in context since what it needs is just a bunch of 
files, but in the simple fact that there are conflicting demands/messy situations

- we need to be able to install commercial fonts (no metrics available)
- some fonts come in more versions (different vendors)
- some users need something different that default/ec/texnansi
- many users want to use metrics from the distributions
- but as times goes by, distributions change, font are renamed, come and go
- the way pdftex deals with fonts improves over time, for instance nowadays one 
can load map files on any page
- some users load map files on demand, others use the big one and therefore 
depend on the [not portable] platform tools like updmap
- locations in the texmf tree change (texmf, texmf-dist, enc/map paths) and 
although it is possible to catch a lot [downward compatibility] with the 
texmf.cnf file this is not what happens in practice
- also, part of the problem is that the past still rules (design sizes, math 
versus text, normal glyphs versus composed ones)

the problem can partically be solved by

- providing more typescripts (i add entries to type-buy, type-fsf, type-ghz for 
each commercial font i use)
- distributing metrics for commercial fonts (+ type-win)
- try to avoid conflicting demands (using platform font names for not 
distributed fonts)

the same is true for hyphenation patterns, and i already have put context 
friendly version on the web; i will probably add them to the distribution

also, if you use context exclusively or don't have a problem with some 
redundancy, live is more comfortable too.

currently when things go wrong there are two situations:

- no metrics found (tex error)
- no enc/map/pfb/ttf found (pdftex backend problem)

when sorting out things, try to distinguish between them; carefully look at the 
log (missing messages)

as soon as

- dvipdfmx supports map file specials
- pdftex is updated around the world

i will change a few defaults in context; currently what works well for new 
versions of pdftex may fail in older ones;

> =============texnansi-urw-garamond.map==============
> % You need to add the following line to pdftex.cfg:
> %
> %   map +texnansi-urw-garamond.map
> %

^^^ this is no longer valid in newer versions of pdftex

> If there are better/more aesthetic choices for sans and math, let me know-)

you may want to apply rscale=... for sans, mono and math

> Have fun with Garamond!

indeed, these are the steps!

concerning platform fonts ... i'll put a zip on the website with the metrics 
(that i so far generated); the only difference there is that you need to make an 
afm file from the ttf and that you need to add the platform font path to the 
truetype paths etc

Hans


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