Re: Math setup with Times (Termes)

[Mojca Miklavec <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 10:42, Hans Hagen wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>
>> What are we talking about? Do you mean the old virtual fonts (.vf
>> files) or mkiv's virtual fonts or something completely different?
>
> What You Don't Want To Know:
>
> a virtual font is just a regular font but has references to other fonts
> instead, like
>
> char 1 -> font x, char 10 (or dvi commands instead)
>
> and then it can has kerning etc within its own set

I understand that, but I don't know how important is "its own kerning
and metrics". That is: I'm not sure if vf changes or adds some
properties that are not present in original tfm files.

> for tx/px however, as they use virtual fonts, it gets hairy what file to
> load; technically there is no obstacle but i've chosen to stay away from the
> tfm/vf mess and use just the natural tfm variants (i.e. the ones that match
> the pfb) and therefore we might need a few extra vectors (and maybe font
> files) in math-vfu that map to the right slots; using the vf's as well would
> complicate matters and it's not worth the trouble
>
> so, what we need to do is to figure out teh few missing files/vectors, add
> them, and then let users fill in the gaps in vectors

I would say that what we need to do is "parse" the vf file (using
vftothatweirdformat) and copy its contents to math-vfu. At least this
can be done automatically and reliably without having to figure out
what character comes where for dozens of fonts.

It could probably also be done in mkiv, dumped into table and then
that table could be copy-pasted into math-vfu and vf files could be
forgotten. But I'm not sure that I know where to start with that
(probably cleaner & easier) approach, so I can try the first option.

Mojca
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