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From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Virtual fonts
Message-ID: <1990Nov14.214911.9996@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Date: 14 Nov 90 21:49:11 GMT
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dezern@uncecs.edu (David H. Dezern) writes:

>Let me apologize if this has been discussed extensively before, but
>could someone tell me what a virtual font is?  I'd appreciate receiving
>an explanation (or a reference to one).

A virtual font looks like one font to TeX, meaning that there
is just one .tfm file, but the device driver knows that this
has been gathered together from various font files.
So virtual fonts is really a device-driver problem.

The reference to go for is of course
 Virtual Fonts: More Fun for Grand Wizards,
 Donald Knuth
 TUGboat vol 11 nr1, pg 13--23
This piece has appeared in TeXhax, and maybe on other
electronic media, so you may be able to dig it up out
of some archive.

Victor.