Re: One very silly question

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Yue Wang wrote:

> last question: is it possible to add fontconfig-like interface? if I
> define to use minion famaily, then all the alternatives are
> automatically defined like xetex?

i never looked into that interface so i cannot comment on it, but i've 
learned my lessons with fonts ... they are all different and any 'clever 
automated mechanism' will at some point fail, so then one ends up with 
exeptions; when defining a document style one needs to know the font, 
its usage (what variants, styles, etc) and often also it slimitations 
(font feature are not that well defined and fonts might have incomplete 
implementations)

the best one can do is make a typescript (or a collection, as with tex 
gyre which tries to be consistent over the whole range) that implements 
a definition and even then, a different version of a font (i mostly use 
commercial fonts and font ABC may have different implementations) may 
hav edifferent properties; also, there is not one good usage (typescript 
combination) of a specific font, esp now that we have many features

actually, talking about features, you need to keep in mind that even 
when you define a specific instance, applying such an instance to a 
whole document might fail because some features may not cover the whole 
possible set of combinations of characters (take frac as an example) and 
so usage demands knowlegde

eventually we may have a set of predefined typescripts that cover most 
system fonts

Hans



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