Re: Re: Fonts again in ConTeXt

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 10:07 AM 3/13/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>On Thursday 13 March 2003 07:37 am, Hans Hagen wrote:
>
>(snip)
>Is it possible to take a deep breath and go back to the starting point, the
>TeX primitive \font? It allows one to name a specific font as listed in e.g.
>psfonts.map or some other designated mapping file. Control is absolute. You
>specify the font and if it is listed and installed you get it, in the size
>you specify.  As a practical matter I seldom need a font in  more than two
>sizes, and if I do then I can just dupe the \font statement, change the name
>and change the size parameter. Unfortunately Context has a much more
>elaborate, indirect and confusing (to me at least) mechanism embedded.
>
>Now, starting from this \font base, how do we add features without losing
>simplicity and basic control?  Stated another way, how can one create
>\font statements and alias them into the Context font handling system without
>too much grief?

\definefont[whatever][somename at somesize] \whatever

[or slightly more extensive (see chinese, symbols etc, for adaptive 
definitions)]

>Fonts are the most troublesome aspect of TeX in all versions, from plain
>TeX on forward.  The mission is not to add complexity, difficulty and
>confusion but to reduce them. We need a simpler way to install fonts and a
>simpler and more direct way to call for them.
>
>IMHO of course.

If you stick to english, fonts are less a problem since you can stick to 
tex's default encoding or whatever is at hand; however, it happens that 
most of us use more extensive char sets, and that each language has its own 
patterns, encodings, alternative glyphs etc.

Also, as soon as math shows up, one needs a consistent sub subsub system, 
so this adds to the complication.

And then, users want to combine fonts from different verdors, so we get 
typefaces (in context) and relative scaling, and specific interlinespace, 
and ... and ...



Hans
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