Re: dvips and psfonts.vmap

[Russell Lang <rjl@monu1.cc.monash.edu.au>]

 > Well, handling Adobe's Expert and Alternate fonts isn't too painful: we
 > can just add new variants `x' (`e' is already taken) and `a'.
This solves a few ambiguities in the set of fonts mentioned in dvips,
but not all.  See my list of suggested names below.

 > > The StoneInformal Italics have two variants - Informal and Italic.
By rearranging the order of the double variants, I have reduced the
ambiguious names down to 1.  The other names have an 'i' in the expansion
position which doesn't mean anything, yet.

Is this set of names acceptable?  Should there be some mention made
in your TUGboat article of what to do in the case of multiple variants?
This reminds me of my toddler nephew trying to push a square peg into
a round hole.  It just can't be done - the same for a totally consistent 
short naming scheme for postscript fonts.

Tom suggested creating another set of virtual fonts so that
previewers can substitute fonts.  Who is best placed to do this?
I have done a very simple version of this - take one of the Adobe
VF's, convert it to VPL format, add one line 
(MAPFONT D 0 (FONTNAME cmr10))
then convert it back to VF format.
This sort of works - character spacing is dreadful, many warning messages
are generated about character codes not present, but it does allow the 
previewer to subtitute fonts.
With a shell script, you could make a new set of VF files which map
all the PostScript fonts to cmr10!  
At present, the pslatex included with dvipslib doesn't use the standard
magstep sizes - it uses exact pt sizes.  This makes it difficult if you
try to find cmr10 at 14pt when only cmr10 at 14.4pt is available.

-- 
Russell Lang    Email: rjl@monu1.cc.monash.edu.au    Phone: (03) 565 3460
Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering
Monash University, Australia


Names that do not conform to the proposed naming scheme are marked
with a '?'.

The StoneInformal Italics have two variants - Informal and Italic.  
I have put the italic variant in the Expansion letter position.
Since 'i' is not used as an expansion code, this might be acceptable.  

StoneSans-Slanted has variants Sans Serif and Oblique.
This one is confusing since 'pstrso' could be StoneSans Oblique, 
or StoneSans extra condensed.

pstrn       StoneInformal.tfm
pstrni ?    StoneInformal-Italic.tfm
pstbn       StoneInformal-Bold.tfm
pstbni ?    StoneInformal-BoldItalic.tfm
pstsn       StoneInformal-Semibold.tfm
pstsni ?    StoneInformal-SemiboldItalic.tfm
pstrnn      StoneInformal-Condensed.tfm
pstrs       StoneSans.tfm
pstrso ?    StoneSans-Slanted.tfm
pstr        StoneSerif.tfm
pstri       StoneSerif-Italic.tfm
pstsr       StoneSerif-Semibold.tfm
pstsi       StoneSerif-SemiboldItalic.tfm
pstb        StoneSerif-Bold.tfm
pstbi       StoneSerif-BoldItalic.tfm

Some of the Adobe Garmond names also have two variants -
Alternate or Expert and Italic.
For these cases, the Italic variant is placed in the Expansion letter
position.

rpadr       AGaramond-Regular.tfm
rpadrx      AGaramondExp-Regular.tfm
rpadra      AGaramondAlt-Regular.tfm
padr
padra       (padr with digits replaced with old style)

rpadri      AGaramond-Italic.tfm
rpadrxi ?   AGaramondExp-Italic.tfm
rpadrai ?   AGaramondAlt-Italic.tfm
padri
padrai  ?   (padri with digits replaced with old style)

rpads       AGaramond-Semibold.tfm
rpadsx      AGaramondExp-Semibold.tfm
pads

rpadsi      AGaramond-SemiboldItalic.tfm
rpadsxi ?   AGaramondExp-SemiboldItalic.tfm
padsi

rpadb       AGaramond-Bold.tfm
rpadbx      AGaramondExp-Bold.tfm
padb

rpadbi      AGaramond-BoldItalic.tfm
rpadbxi ?   AGaramondExp-BoldItalic.tfm
padbi