[XeTeX] Re: MathTime fonts

[Paul Edney]

>  > First things first: the configuration I'm using, in the order it was 
>>  (fresh-)installed.
>>    teTex 2.0.2-36, installed by fink
>>    TeX, from Gerben Wierda's TUG mirror, installer by i-installed
>>    TeX Support: Super-CM, from Gerben Wierda's TUG mirror, installed by 
>>  i-installer
>>    XeTeX 0.85, from Jonathan Kew's i-directory, installed by i-installer
>>    TeXshop 1.35b
>
>Sounds like you have two complete TeX installations there; Fink's and 
>Gerben's. I'd be a little worried about possible confusion, but the 
>terminal output you show later looks as though you're actually running
>Gerben's setup, and the Fink stuff is ignored.
>

Perhaps I should remove the fink one anyway.  I initially installed 
it for some other GNU package, but perhaps I can symlink the fink one 
to Gerben's.  But I'd rather change only one thing at a time for now.


>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!)
>
>Did you do this for the CM fonts (if so, why? the XeTeX installer
>should have provided them), or only for the MathTime ones?
>

I converted the mac font using CMacTeX's 'lwfn2pfb' script. This 
conversion seems to work fine, as these fonts do render in LaTeX, but 
are 'not found' in XeTeX.  To convert them to otf, I opened the .pfb 
files (mtex.pfb, mtsy.pfb, and rmtmi.pfb) in fontforge and generated 
the Open Type (CFF) with an .otf extension.  I also tried Open Type 
(Mac Font) and removed the '.dfont' part of the '.otf.dfont' 
extension.  With the Mac Font version, XeTeX reports 'not found' and 
the display is completely blank (no +,-, and parentheses here).

I didn't touch the CM fonts at all. Only the 3 mathtime fonts I 
mentionned above.


>  > Then I ran
>  > xetex -no-pdf testfile.tex
>[snip]
>  > Output written on testfile.xdv (1 page, 2144 bytes).
>  > Transcript written on testfile.log.
>  >
>  > No font errors here,
>
>Looks fine; so it found the right .tfm files, just like regular
>LaTeX....

Pardon my ignorance, but I didn't generate or move any .tfm files. 
In fact, when I didn't have the .otf (CFF) fonts, XeTeX reported 
'font not found'.  And when I replaced the otf (CFF) with the otf 
(Mac Font), I got the 'not found' message again.  Does XeTeX only 
search for the .tfm if it succeeds in finding a 'decent' otf? 
Somehow I thought tfm's were used before otf's (as in tex before 
dvipdf).


>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.

kpsewhich psfonts.map
/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/map/dvips/updmap/psfonts.map

then grep on psfonts.map for 'mtex', 'mtsy', and 'rmtmi':
MTEX MTEX <mtex.pfb
mtex MTEX <mtex.pfb
MTSY MTSY <mtsy.pfb
mtsy MTSY <mtsy.pfb
RMTMI RMTMI <rmtmi.pfb
rmtmi RMTMI <rmtmi.pfb

there is no explicit encoding, as in, for example:
cmtex10 CMTEX10 " TeXd9b29452Encoding ReEncodeFont " <d9b29452.enc <cmtex10.pfb

I'm guessing (very wildly) from Bruno's message below that this 
reencoding step might have an effect.  Btw, Bruno, I used to use 
mathtime on textures through ATM, so the fonts were never in the 
system folder.  But why would TeX search the classic folder for fonts 
in the first place?  Did I misunderstand you?  Should I _also_ copy 
the original mathtime fonts to the system folder, or at least 
activate them with fontbook?

Also, could Bruno's note about the hybrid mathtime explain why +, -, 
\ldots, and parentheses (of all sizes) render, but nothing else?


>  > What really puzzles me is that in TeXshop, LaTeX handles mathtime like
>  > a charm, whereas XeTeX doesn't.  Don't they read from the same
>  > texmf.local tree?
>
>They do, and they're both handling things fine at the typesetting 
>stage, I think (using the .TFM files); but when it comes to actually 
>rendering glyphs, they're relying on quite different versions of the 
>fonts.

so technically it would be incorrect to think
XeTeX = ( LaTeX + additional_font_engines ), right?


>  > I must be missing the obvious here. Can anyone please help, or provide
>  > a reference to RTFM?
>
>There is no Fine Manual for XeTeX, I'm afraid; just the web pages, the
>XeTeX-notes file (included among the sample files), and the archives of
>this mailing list. Some day, perhaps, that'll change.....
>Jonathan
>


Thanks for your help and patience,

--Paul




>  > 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):
>
>-------------- next part --------------
>A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
>Name: Image 1.pdf
>Type: application/pdf
>Size: 35189 bytes
>Desc: not available
>Url : http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/attachments/20040904/e949cb0b/Image1.pdf
>-------------- next part --------------
>
>
>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
>
>------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>XeTeX mailing list
>XeTeX at tug.org
>http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
>
>
>End of XeTeX Digest, Vol 6, Issue 6
>***********************************