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From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Question about \TeX font sizes
Message-ID: <1991Jan25.155934.1275@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 91 15:59:34 GMT
References: <8318.279fe991@jetson.uh.edu>
Sender: news@csrd.uiuc.edu (news)
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
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joseph@jetson.uh.edu (Joseph Davis) writes:

>I would like to be able to use large fonts intermittently in a small
>plain \TeX document

The eternal font selection problem...

The I've implemented it in my own format is as follows:
- there are three parameters: typeface, pointsize, style
- there are three commands: \typeface, \pointsize, \style
- the first two commands only set internal parameters,
- the third command assembles from the three parameters
  the name for the font, checks if that has been loaded yet,
  if not, loads it.
  this what you do ordinarily: you change from \bold to \italic etc
- there is a command \setfont that assembles whatever the current
  parameters are and if necessary loads the font.

Not hard to implement so far. Should take a couple of tens of lines.

Here are the problems.
- the mathfonts should change with size. If I say \pointsize{15pt},
  what do I load for script/scriptscript?
- if I load a different typeface, I want the italic of that as math italic
- same story for roman in math, but now note that capital Greek
  comes out of cmr!
- last but not least: I use Computer Modern, some Bitstream fonts,
  and Postscript fonts. All of which have different conventions
  for names of .tfm files.

All of this can be solved or course (I know because I've done so :-),
but it takes a bit of coding.

Victor.