Re: Goodbye for now

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 06:40 PM 3/27/2002 -0500, you wrote:

>Context is undoubtedly the best TeX based typesetting
>system yet. It has a hundred or more hugely useful features.
>And it works. But the font selection scheme is simply too
>complex for this old man. I can see myself writing and
>debugging dozens
>of special scripts just to utilize the 39 standard
>Adobe fonts I can use today with just a simple \font

You can apprach fonts in two ways:

make files with lots of:

\definefont
   [10pt,12pt,14pt]
   [rm]
   [tf=fontname sa 1,
    bf=boldfontname sa 1,
    ...]

that way you can use berry names,

the other way is by means of typescripts and name mapping, which was 
introduced because i wanted to be able to install fonts an a few minutes, 
which is why there is texfont. You loose berry naming then.

it should be no problem to provide presets for the 39 standard adobe fonts, 
actually, the free fonts on tex live *are* supported, so

\usetypescript[palatino][texnansi]

\setupbodyfont[palatino,12pt]

the associated files are generated with

texfont type-tmf.dat --en=texnansi

(in type-tmf.dat you can see the real calls)

Now, i admit that the system is complicated, but the advantage is that it 
permits

(1) mixed usage of combinations of fonts (which happens a lot in publishing 
today)
(2) relative scaling of fonts within a typeface

in due time i can provide lots of default scripts, but only for fonts that 
i've bought or can test;

anyway, keep texing with whatever system suits yor needs,

Hans

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