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From: A4422DAE@AWIUNI11.BITNET (Konrad Neuwirth)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: No accented characters
Message-ID: <9009291501.AA02718@lilac.berkeley.edu>
Date: 29 Sep 90 15:08:21 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 51
X-Unparsable-Date: Sat, 29 Sep 90 16:54:58 MEZ

About the subject of the new fonts.

  Reading the last mail about the fonts having no accents at all,
I should say that I am rather shocked. Coming from a language that
relies on accented characters, it is hard for me to understand that
you want to throw those right characters out. TeX educates us to
go for quality, so why should we use second class umlauts? Umlauts
are not, in fact, accented characters but characters on their own
(if you care to look into those old lead things, they had their
umlauts as distinct characters (which could even have a rather quite
different shape than those characters unaccented). If you understand
written german, look it up in `Das Buch des Setzers' by Genzmer).

   Also talking to people from sweden, they have the same problem, too.
Especially with things like the ^"A or so (the A changes, believe me).
So it *IS* necessary to have those things. We are not just PostScript
corrupted.

   I am also somewhat dissapointed that the necesary ligatures like
ch, ck and ft didn't make it into the font. Some other characters are
missing, too, to make some reasonable typesetting. But then, I think we
are talking about different characters!

   I am sorry to say the follwing that geralized, but the Americans always
have a tendency to think that one (at best theirs) solution is good for
every problem.

   The creators of the new scheme never claimed that it solves all the
problems of all fonts of the latin family. It is a better tool for some
languages like German, Swiss German, Polish, Hungarian, Swedish and so
on, but it does not claim to be the best thing for every language. It also
is not meant to replace CMR10 (the math characters are missing then), but
to be used for text typesetting. And if you want to have a different layout,
so then go forth and use it. Knuth gave us a tool to simplify all those things,
so that maybe german typesetting, one day, will be correct again, using the
right ligatures and the right uppercase letters and have real umlauts.  Maybe
we will create a font that does that, but we won't recreate it all in metafont.
Virtual Fonts is the answer!

   Come on guys! You got to be more liberal than that (even if it is hard
for americans.
(set flame off).

have a nice day,
//konrad

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
 As I'm not working for anybody, I can't be representing their opinion!
  Konrad Neuwirth                   Earn/BitNet: a4422dae@awiuni11
  Postfach 646                      VoiceNet: KONRAD!!!!!!(louder).
  1100 Wien, Austria (Europe)       Bloody BIX is too expensive.