Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!chalmers.se!cs.chalmers.se!jeffrey
From: jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se (Alan Jeffrey)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: RFC -- a TeX font naming system
Message-ID: <4427@undis.cs.chalmers.se>
Date: 19 Apr 91 07:53:16 GMT
References: <DAMIAN.CUGLEY.91Apr17163401@pierrot.prg.ox.ac.uk>
Sender: news@cs.chalmers.se
Organization: Dept. of CS, Chalmers, Sweden
Lines: 33

In article <DAMIAN.CUGLEY.91Apr17163401@pierrot.prg.ox.ac.uk> Damian.Cugley@prg.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) writes:
>This article describes an alternative approach to naming TeX fonts -- I
>would be interested to see if anyone thinks it has anything going for it.

Hmm... very interestink... It does mean you'll need a different
fontname.tex for each installation, but that shouldn't be too hard.

The only serious problem I can see is that dvi files would no longer
be portable.  For example, if you say

   \newfont\thingy{pdc-dict18}

then on a Unix architecture fontname.tex converts this to

   \font\thingy pdc/dict18

whereas on a Scrungomatic 2503, fontname.tex would convert it to 

   \font\thingy pdc@dict18

and so the dvi file would no longer be portable.  (And yes, people do
port dvi files around rather than TeX files---the day TeX guarantees
the same output from the same input is the day people will stop
sending dvi files around.)

Apart from that, the main problem would be getting people to
standardize on it.  Isn't this always the way?

Alan.


Alan Jeffrey         Tel: +46 31 72 10 98         jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se
Department of Computer Sciences, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden