[XeTeX] Font selection

[Will Robertson]

On 24 Sep 2004, at 6:01 PM, Ross Moore wrote:
> That is, there should be a XeTeX equivalent of  palatino.sty  that is 
> read
> instead of the default:
> ...
> This new variant of  palatino.sty  would have all the declarations
> that Bruno gives below.
> If there are extra (non-standard) features, then there could be
> package options that allow these to be used as well.

This doesn't seem right to me, but forgive my possible ignorance - I'm 
only just learning these complex things!

palatino.sty simply contains:
  \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{ppl}
  \renewcommand{\sfdefault}{phv}
  \renewcommand{\ttdefault}{pcr}

while the actual font selection "stuff" is all contained in the various 
.fd files for palatino et al. for the various encodings. For example, 
t1ppl.fd, contains a whole bunch of \DeclareFontFamily, 
\DeclareFontShape things linking the latex font selection scheme with 
the tfm files which refer finally to the palatino pfb fonts themselves.

So, doesn't this mean we simply need to create a new encoding, call it 
"osx" for now, and create an .fd file for palatino with this new 
encoding - osxppl.fd - which contains all of the \DeclareFont... 
things, and create the necessary files such that a 
\usepackage[osx]{fontenc} is all that is required for the user to 
switch from palatino.sty choosing the pfb fonts to the Mac OS X 
installed ones?

> Ideally someone on this list will volunteer to write appropriate XeTeX
> versions of the packages  palatino.sty , courier.sty , helvetica.sty
> to be included in the installer.

Well, this or the other appropriate files as I mentioned. As Bruno said 
recently, it's not difficult to do this, only tedious. I'd certainly be 
willing to help out, but not before working out the issue I raised 
above (if it's even relevant).

Regards,
Will Robertson