[Fontinst] fontinstallationguide: building of smallcaps font

[Plamen Tanovski]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 04:27:56PM +0200, Lars Hellström wrote:
> Plamen Tanovski skrev 2012-07-29 11.48:
> >At that point I wonder, why some of the punctuation is also being
> >renamed in csc2x.tex:
> >
> >\renameglyph{ampersandsmall}{ampersand}
> >\renameglyph{centoldstyle}{cent}
> >\renameglyph{dollaroldstyle}{dollar}
> 
> Because the goal is to preserve as much glyph variation as possible. If the 
> ampersand from the csc font is different from the one in the regular font, 
> then one might want to choose between them at the VPL generation phase, and 
> this requires giving them different names in the glyphbase.

yes, I see. I often put such glyphs in the free slots of TS1, just in
case, I have to use them.
 
> >Maybe we need a command \punct similar to \digit to cover the
> >different punctuation (whole currency set, exclamation amd question
> >marks and their down variants, number sign and ampersand) in smallcaps
> >fonts?
> 
> Could be one way to go, but would depend on the naming of punctuation to be 
> somehow regular; if the suffix to add is sometimes "small" and other times 
> "oldstyle" then several \punct macros would be needed. Do you have a ready 
> suggestion for such a macro system, or are you just throwing out the idea?

No, I don't have any macros, and you are right, the naming is to
different for a simple macro. Nevetheless two macros for punctuation
and currency could be easy created. So the \currency macro can go in
t1(c)j.etx similar to digit with suffix "oldstyle" and \punct can go in
t1c(j).etx with suffix "small". The new otf fonts have often just naming
with suffixes. For example Minion-Condensed has:

Euro
Euro.fitted
Euro.oldstyle
Euro.taboldstyle
ampersand
ampersand.sc
dollar
dollar.denominator
dollar.fitted
dollar.inferior
dollar.numerator
dollar.oldstyle
dollar.superior
dollar.taboldstyle
exclam
exclam.sc
exclamdown
exclamdown.cap
exclamdown.sc
lira
lira.fitted
lira.oldstyle
lira.taboldstyle
question
question.sc
questiondown
questiondown.cap
questiondown.sc

So the naming in the t1*.etx files is kind of obsolete anyway.

(BTW, this could be a challenge: to put the *.cap glyphs in some
unused slots and make ligatures with uppercase letters in front of ¿
and ¡ to replace that punctuation with the .cap one.)

> An alternative could be to equip the ETX files with an option that makes 
> them omit these punctuation characters. Then one can leave the 
> specification of these for a small seperate ETX file.

yes, I have for example a minimal version of t1.etx and fill the
unused slots wih some font specific characters.
  
> Yet another alternative could be to explicitly \resetglyph{ampersand} etc. 
> as needed; I'd guess these glyphs are few enough that it would be the 
> easiest solution.

yes, creating font metrics is always an individual, font specific
process. I was also thinking of a global, commented database of mtx,
etx and fontinst files, so one could pick the right one for the
specific task.

Best regards,
Plamen Tanovski