Use of standard font engines on Linux

Use of standard font engines on Linux

[John R. Culleton]

Linux distros have been emphasizing the use of the fonts in fc-cache 
across applications. TeX always did its own thing, with tfm files, 
mapping files  etc.   I note that some of the newer TeX products are 
using  pfb + afm instead of pfb + tfm.  Does this presage the 
availablity of all the fonts described in the fc-cache files or will 
TeX continue to have its own set of fonts?
-- 
John Culleton
ATTN Publishers/authors:
If you don't read you don't succeed.
Free short list of publishing/marketing books. 
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf




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Re: Use of standard font engines on Linux

[Hans Hagen]

John R. Culleton wrote:
> Linux distros have been emphasizing the use of the fonts in fc-cache 
> across applications. TeX always did its own thing, with tfm files, 
> mapping files  etc.   I note that some of the newer TeX products are 
> using  pfb + afm instead of pfb + tfm.  Does this presage the 
> availablity of all the fonts described in the fc-cache files or will 
> TeX continue to have its own set of fonts?

i never looked into fc-cache things (mostly working on windows)

pdftex does not use databases, xetex does, and in luatex one can build 
any kind of font database support; currently in mkiv i just build a 
database based on osfontdir plus the usual paths; i can support other 
'font resources as well' if needed

tfm files are very special to tex and not relevant for other apps (apart 
from the fact that there can be tens of thousands of those metric files)

in mkiv there is support for otf/ttf/ttc, afm/pfb (i will implement an 
alternative loader, the current one is afm driven, but we can also have 
a pfb driven one) as well as ofm/tfm/ovf/vf metric files

there will always be tfm files but new fonts will be open type (lm, 
gyre, etc)

Hans

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