[texhax] \textordfeminine in plain TeX

[tom sgouros]

Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:

>     There is a mapping in some font map file which maps "Helvetica" to
>     the "real" font name.
> 
> Do you think so?  It's possible, but it would be the "aliases" file
> rather than a .map file per se (.map files mostly map tfm names to
> .pfb/.ttf/.whatever to include).  And we removed the aliases file a
> couple years ago in TL, though I dunno about other distributions.
> 
> My first guess would be that there is a file Helvetica.tfm on the system.

There is no Helvetica.tfm on the system, but there is a
$TEXMF/fonts/map/dvips/psnfss/psnfss.map with a line like this:

  phvr8r Helvetica "TeXBase1Encoding ReEncodeFont" <8r.enc 

Could that be a mapping from "Helvetica" to "phvr8r.tfm"?  When I use
the names in that file, they all work, except for two (EURB10 and
EURM10), which doesn't seem like a ringing endorsement of the
hypothesis, but there seem to be a lot of map files, many of which seem
similar.  Certainly not all the mappings I see in those files work.

This is a tetex distribution, downloaded shortly before they were
discontinued. 

Incidentally, feel free to let it lie.  There is no compelling question
at stake here, beyond my curiosity about how the system I rely on works
under the covers.

> Presence or absence of .afm files is definitely immaterial.

Thanks,

 -tom

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