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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!osu-eddie!zwicky
From: zwicky@osu-eddie.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: A question about TeX fonts
Message-ID: <3006@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Jan-87 17:45:10 EST
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.3006
Posted: Thu Jan 29 17:45:10 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Jan-87 07:50:40 EST
References: <1551@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: zwicky@osu-eddie.UUCP (Elizabeth D. Zwicky)
Organization: The Ohio State University, CIS Dept.
Lines: 36
Keywords: downloading, tfm

In article <1551@utastro.UUCP> anita@utastro.UUCP (Anita Cochran) writes:
>I have what may seem like a dumb question but I have begun to wonder due
>to the discussion on TeX vs. TROFF.  We use TeX with an apple laserwriter.
>We have all of the normal fonts.  I was told that it is irrelevant
>what fonts you use with TeX since that only effects the dvi file and
>its concept of the interletter/interword spacing.  Thus, the metrics
>(whatever those are) are used but since the laserwriter has hard-loaded
>fonts (4 I believe) that those fonts, in a variety of sizes, is all
>you can really get.  Now people are talking about using their own fonts
>and downloading them.  What really does happen?  Does TeX use the hardwired
>fonts, its own, some combination of each, what?  If it helps the discussion
>any, we use dvi2ps to spool the stuff off to the laserwriter.
>
> Anita Cochran  uucp:  {noao, ut-sally, ut-ngp}!utastro!anita

It's like this: TeX really truly doesn't care as long as it has all the tables
it wants. You give it tfm files with the right names, and tell it to load the
fonts, and it will trustingly create a dvi file that uses those fonts. What
does care is the dvi filter. It has to tell the printer how to get to the
fonts. Using the version of MacTeX we have, that means you have to download
weird fonts before you begin, since it just trustingly assumes that if you
use a font you must have made the LaserWriter able to find it. I don't 
know what dvi2ps does, although I would suspect it does the same thing. 
A truly wise dvi filter might know what fonts the LaserWriter had, and
download any others you use itself, in the process of sending the
document. 

The difficult point about getting TeX to use the fonts is getting
the tfm files, and loading them. TeX ordinarily loads some fonts before it
begins, and changing these requires being willing to do icky internal
administrator-type things. Ordinary mortals can get new fonts, but they have
to laod and specify them by hand. If your TeX uses the hardwired LaserWriter
fonts, somebody at your site told it to do so. We run two TeXs under 
different names, one that uses cmr fonts, and one that uses Bookman.
Soon we may run more, because the two other people on staff who usually
use TeX don't like Bookman; one wants Palatino, and the other Times.