[XeTeX] MathTime fonts

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 4 sept. 04, à 20:34, Jonathan Kew a écrit :

> On 4 Sep 2004, at 6:07 pm, Paul Edney wrote:
>
>> Now for XeTeX: I got everything running (i.e., finds and load system  
>> fonts just fine, works like a charm with euler), except for MathTime  
>> and CM.  I get the same blank screen with a few lines and +, -, (,  
>> and ) symbols.  I read the XeTeX FAQ about CM, generated .otf files  
>> from the .pfb,
>
> How did you generate .otf files from the .pfb ones? Creating .otf  
> files that will work right with XeTeX can be a bit of a hassle, and I  
> haven't gotten everything documented nicely yet. (Sorry!)
>
> [...]
>
>> so I carried on with
>> xdv2pdf -v myfile.xdv
>>
>> and get
>> [1
>> {fontmap:  
>> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/map/dvips/updmap/ 
>> psfonts.map}
>> {activated:  
>> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/otf/xetex/bluesky/mathtime/ 
>> mtsy.otf}
>> {activated:  
>> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/otf/xetex/bluesky/mathtime/ 
>> mtex.otf} ]
>
> So it's finding the .otf files you installed...
>
>> Activated, but I still get a blank output (aside from the few lines).
>
> ...but not finding the actual glyphs you want.
>
> Could you check your psfonts.map file and tell me what the actual  
> entries for these fonts look like? I don't have the Mathtime fonts and  
> so I'm not in a position to try and duplicate your exact setup.

This is also an issue I've been wondering about for some time. I miss  
being able to use Lucida and MathTime fonts with XeTeX. On their own,  
or combined with other OS X fonts: OS X fonts, in XeTeX, work nicely  
for text, but there is no specific math fonts to go with them, and the  
CM math fonts look really too thin to fit in nicely with them; I've  
been willing to use Lucida NewMath fonts, for example, combined with an  
OS X text font. Example (Lucida NewMath with Trebuchet MS):

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I got this to work in plain TeX, where you specify the names of the 
fonts yourself: provided you have your Blue Sky fonts still in System 
Folder/Fonts (the OS 9 font repository), XeTeX is able to find and use 
them (though some encoding issues are likely, according to a previous 
post by Jonathan). So you can write:

	\font\tenbsy=lbmsd at 9.5pt

and XeTeX will understand this, using the information from psfonts.map:

	lbmsd LucidaNewMath-Symbol-Demi <lbmsd.pfb

to match lbmsd with (I think) the PostScript name 
LucidaNewMath-Symbol-Demi, which XeTeX knows (I'm really guessing here) 
by ATSUI to associate with the font file /System 
Folder/Fonts/LucidNewMatSymDem. This is how I got the above example to 
work.

The problem with LaTeX is (1) that LaTeX uses alternative font names 
(Karl Berry's scheme) and (2) that its use of PostScript fonts through 
the PSNFSS package is based entirely on virtual fonts, that XeTeX does 
not handle. A possible solution would be to use not the default T1 (ie 
Cork) encoding of LaTeX, but the alternative LY1 (ie TeX 'n ANSI) 
encoding from Y&Y. An advantage of LY1 is that no virtual fonts are 
required. Compare for example the two lines from psfonts.map:

	hlcbt8r LucidaTypewriterBold " TeXBase1Encoding ReEncodeFont " <8r.enc 
<lbtb.pfb
	hlcbt8y LucidaTypewriterBold " TeXnANSIEncoding ReEncodeFont " 
<texnansi.enc <lbtb.pfb

The first line creates from LBTB a re-encoded font in TeXBase1 
encoding, and the virtual font mechanism converts this font later to 
one in T1 encoding (with metrics name ending in 8t). On the other hand, 
for LY1 (corresponding to the second line), the reencoding is done once 
and for good, and no virtual fonts are involved.

But that, in any case, would only work in XeTeX if XeTeX could deal 
with re-encoded fonts as specified in psfonts.map.

And, regarding MathTime, there would be an additional difficulty: the 
font MTMI (MathTime math italic) is actually a virtual font combining a 
font additional math characters (\ell, an italic "v" looking really 
different from \nu, etc.) from the real font RMTMI with the 
alphabetical characters from Times Italic. So, in some sense, MathTime 
fonts are intrinsically virtual, by design.

So really converting to .otf would probably be the best solution. I 
remember Jonathan told that, in addition to mere conversion from .pfb 
to .otf using FontForge, for example, some trickery, re-encoding was 
necessary, that possibly required the original FontLab and some 
scripting ability (that I don't have).

HTH,

Bruno Voisin