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From: ramsdell@mitre.org (John D. Ramsdell)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Rational for the location of TeX fonts
Message-ID: <RAMSDELL.90Jul26072539@huxley.mitre.org>
Date: 26 Jul 90 11:25:39 GMT
References: <114503@linus.mitre.org> <KRIS.90Jul25164957@freke.diku.dk>
Sender: ramsdell@linus.mitre.org
Reply-To: ramsdell@mitre.org
Organization: Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA.
Lines: 69
In-reply-to: kris@diku.dk's message of 25 Jul 90 15:49:57 GMT

Kristoffer H. Holm writes
   You are absolutely right, and in fact many programs expect
   this. The `proper` way to do it in my opinion (at least on
   un*x) is to ensure that every DVI previewer/driver looks up
   an environment variable for a `:'-separated list of
   directories where bitmap fonts (or ****Script, or whatever
   :-) are stored.  The xdvi program (posted on comp.sources.x)
   carries this a bit further by looking up both

     XDVIFONTS	`:'-separated list of directory patterns,
		   where
		     %f means fontname
		     %d means magnification
		     %p means font family
		   (thus the standard would be to set
		     XDVIFONTS=/usr/local/lib/tex/fonts/%f.%d%p).

     XDVISIZES	`:'-separated list of choices for %d above.

I think this proposal is absolutely wrong.  First, the default
location of the fonts is in the TeX library, which is what I was
asking about in my original posting.  Second, and much more important,
the proposal does not allow easy support for fonts generated with more
than one METAFONT mode.  Suppose you have imagen (300 DPI) fonts and
NeXT (400 DPI) fonts.  It would be quite confusing to put both fonts
in the same directory.  An additional advantage of requiring that your
previewer knows which METAFONT mode is used to generate its fonts, is
that the previewer can initiate the creation of any missing fonts.
Please add a font mode pattern as follows:

     DVIFONTS	`:'-separated list of directory patterns,
		   where
		     %f means fontname
		     %m means the font mode used to make the font
		     %d means magnification
		     %p means font family
		   (and set the standard to be
		     DVIFONTS=/usr/local/lib/dvi/fonts/%m/%f.%d%p).

     DVIMODE	The font mode used to make the font using METAFONT.

John

PS.  Here is how my TeX library is organized:  

	| -- inputs --- | ...
	|
tex --- | -- formats -- | ...
	|
	| -- bib ------ | ...
	|
	| -- tex.pool
	|
	|		| -- tfm ------	| ...	
	|		|
	|		| -- vf ------- | ...
	|		|
	|		| -- imagen --- | ...
	|		|
	| -- fonts ----	| -- linotronic | ...
			|
			| -- sun_hires  | ...
			|
			| -- sun_lowres | ...
			|
			| -- ps ------- | ...

It seems that everything in the font directory but the tfm directory
belong in a dvi library.  Do you agree?